It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

So how's this for fun. On Saturday last I, along with some friends took a trip to the City of Brotherly Love. This was the third such trip to said city in my life. Every time it seems to get better. The first was a trip two years ago, and I decided that it was about the biggest hole in America. I gave it another chance in January, and I found that there is a lot more that the city could offer, including an exhibit about King Tutenkhamun. However that day it was too late and I decided that I wanted to make it back to see it. Since the exhibit is closing next week, I knew I had to go soon. So, four of us, Amy, Sydney, Reed and I loaded up and left early in the a.m. to make the journey to Philadelphia.Amy and Sydney Walking Like Egyptians

We made it to the city about three hours later. We went directly to the museum since our tickets were for eight (we knew we could get in any time so we bought the early tickets). We stood in a long line and finally got in with the hoards of others who were there to see the exhibit. It was very interesting. I, for one, learned a load of stuff. For instance, I never knew that he married his half-sister. So, it was a pretty cool exhibit, but with all of the people there, it was kinda crazy.
By the time we were done, we were pretty hungry, so we decided to get a pretzel from a street vendor. They ended up being a little soggy, but they were satisfying nonetheless.
We went to see some of the local sites of Philly and here are some photos to document the day.

Reed in a Monopoly Wheelbarrow Fountain at Logan Square
Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell

Ahh, Precious (I know I look like a fool)
Closer to the reality of my life

Rocky!!

Sydney and me after running up the Rocky steps

Before we left town, we decided to get a cheesesteak from Pat's King of Steaks, which is one of the two most famous places in town. It was very tasty indeed.Enjoying cheesesteaks and fries at Pat's

After that, we packed up and left for a three hour ride home.
All-in-all, I have to say that my humble opinion of Philadelphia is improving with every visit there. The history, the museums, and the amazing murals throughout the city give it a distinct charm that is a bit different from any other city that I have been to. I am sure to go back and see more. I hope you have enjoyed this adventure Saturday as well as I did.
(on an unrelated note, I am sorry that this isn't very witty. I am tired and not in the mood to think of funny lines today. Maybe next time)

Hey Y'all

Music City USA!!

Sweet!!

Greetin's. How y'all doin'? I know it's been a week or three since I have posted anything, so I thought it was high time that I give an update or two about what I have been doing recently. So, I'll start with my adventure to the south.
For Labor Day weekend, a friend of mine and I decided to take a trip to Nashville, TN. I had been there once before and enjoyed it, so I thought it could be fun, and a whole lot less expensive than the other option of going to New York City.
You may not know this about me, but I am a bit of an elitist snob. I have said in the past that if you are ever feeling bad about yourself, all you need to do is to go to the closest Wal-Mart and take a look around. You'll realize that your life isn't all that bad. And what is the South but one humongous Wal-Mart? Everywhere you look you see mullets, ill-fitting Nascar tee shirts, toothless-folk chewin' tobacco. There are large women with even larger hair who just haven't been properly fit up top if you get my drift--though they probably don't have a lady who can help them when the buy their delicates in bulk at the Piggly-Wiggly (note I don't really know what they sell at the PW, I only know that I have seen a couple of them in my adventures to the south). So when you're down south, you can't help but think "my life is pretty decent." Who needs Prozac? A trip to Dixie is a sure-fired way to clear up any bout of depression.
So Nashville was pretty fun. The coolest part was when I bought a map of the stars' homes, and my co-pilot and I went cruising around the far-regions of the town looking trying to catch a glimpse of the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Unfortunately, we didn't get to that until it was getting kinda late so we only caught a couple, but here they are for your viewing enjoyment.

First, we have Tim and Faith's house. This seemed kinda weird since we had to drive about a mile up a private road to find it.

Next was Dolly Parton.

This is Kenny Chesney's house.

Trace Adkins

Last, but certainly not least was Alan Jackson's mansion. Seriously, his barn on the property is probably nicer than the nicest house in my home town. Now I know where all of these folks live for when I get invited to a party or to dinner at their house.

So, there you have it. Some of my sweet adventure to Tennessee. In my humble opinion, the south is a nice place plenty of friendly folk, but I would never want to live there. Sure they are as sweet as can be, but I don't think for my health it would be a good thing to be there long-term. You're hard pressed to find something that isn't deep-fried and smothered in butter. I'll tell ya, that's where my diet began to tank.

Me on the former (and still occasional) stage of the Grand Ole' Opry

LP Field, home of the Titans (sweet pic, I know)

Youtube Treats

So this is the second time writing this, I am not happy. You see, the autosave feature is not enabled on this computer (something to do with activeX controls being disabled), and when I went to post apparently the server at blogger.com was down, so I lost all of what I had written. Though it was masterful, and will likely be tough to re-create, I will try. So here it goes:

Youtube is definitely a treat. Who would have thought that this simple sight would be so influential, and so much fun on a boring day at work. I for one would never have guessed. It has, indeed helped me out on many occasions. Not to say that I don't do anything at work, but there are some days that are just so boring. On those days it is nice to find random clips to make the time go by. It's really cool to be able to find comedy sketches, political ads, old commercials, and eighties sit-coms that i enjoy. I would like to share two of my latest finds, which I actually didn't find myself, but was shown by friends.

First is a take on the Michael Jackson classic, "Thriller." However this comes with a twist. It's like "Thriller" in Hindi, with a Bollywood flare. So cool!! Actually it's crazy and kinda creepy looking, but definitely worth watching in its entirety. Only that way will you be able to see all of the reasons why I laugh so hard when I watch this (i.e. crazy hip gyrations, epilleptic fits, the chicken run and the side-to-side chase scene). So here, for your viewing enjoyment is Indian Thriller:

See that was fun.

Now, on to another. I present to you Milky, the Milking Cow. Obviously, a top-selling toy in its day. I can see why. Sure, filling a plastic cow with water doesn't sound that fun, but when you get to pinch little rubber teats and squeeze out "pretend milk" I can only imagine the minutes of fun that could be spent doing that. My guess is that this toy didn't last long. I would just take a stab and say that probably a small child didn't realize that the chalky water wasn't really milk, took a swig of it, and was promptly rushed to the emergency room. Bear in mind this was likely the seventies (from the look of the commercial). They didn't have the protections on toys we do now. Have you ever wondered what a Toxic crayon looks like? They must have had them, all of the crayons I see now say "non-toxic." Now we can rest assured that every one of our Chinese-imported Wal-Mart toys is 100% safe, right? Sure Wal-Mart may save you a buck or two, don't mind that they shave about ten years off your life--but I digress. So, without any further ado (what is ado anyway?) I present to you Milky the Milking Cow (listen to the song, it's great).

Radio From Where?

So, I just realized last week that my favorite radio show from back in Utah, Radio from Hell on x96, is available as a daily podcast. This is great because when I moved to Virginia, I found that I missed hearing Kerry, Bill and Gina (if only for a little bit) each weekday. However, when I started my job, I found that I could listen online, which I did--daily. This allowed me to hear from the beginning of the show, for which I was normally asleep when I lived in Utah. It was fantastic for the month that it worked before one day the streaming audio along with yahoo music videos were disabled. I am sure there are other things that don't work, but I don't know because I haven't tried them.
Anyway, I just went without the show for the past eight months, would check their blog and all, but it wasn't the same. Finally, when I was on the iTunes store the other day, it occurred to me to see if they had a podcast available. When I found they did, I promptly subscribed. I also subscribed to NPR's Democracy Now. "What does this mean?" you may wonder. I shall tell you. This means that I can add the latest shows on my iPod and have four hours of listening enjoyment each day, which gets me through half of the day. Along with that, it gives me a healthy dose of liberal chatter daily. And it gives me a little bit of Salt Lake City.
Anyway, I don't know where I was going with this, however I felt I should share my latest find, which in my humble opinion is pretty cool. Though they can be a little irreverent at times, but they make me laugh a lot.

What the Random?!!!

Just three random bits that I was thinking about today

MEOWW!!!
So there was one thing I left off the Gettysburg post. While walking in the town, we spotted an odd couple. They were obviously very fond of their cats. No offense to cat lovers out there, but some can be a little odd. Why else would you find toys like this online, or in the shop in Tucson where I saw it the first time? All I am saying is that you never hear of the "Crazy Fish Man" or "The Insane Parakeet Woman." So, as we were walking there was an eccentric-looking couple we passed. They actually were pushing their two cats around in not one, but two strollers. I would have taken a picture, but that would have been terribly uncouth. And you may call me many things, but uncouth is not one of them. On that note, I took the liberty of creating an artistic representation of one of said cats, and one of said owners (I apologize to anyone who may be an animal lover and takes offense to my calling the care-taker the "owner," believing that animals cannot be owned). *Please note that this rendition was done on a laptop mouse, and for that reason, and that reason alone, does it look like a five-year-old drew it*
He had a wife, but I opted not to draw her.
CASABLANCA

On Monday last, my ward went to the final Screen On the Green. And as I am sure you can guess, they showed the classic Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman classic Casablanca.
I had seen the movie once before, and remembered it being really good, but I couldn't remember much about it. It was really a good movie. One that I would recommend to anyone. I am sure some people will be upset for me saying this, but in my humble opinion, Casablanca is far better than Citizen Kane, which many people consider to be the number one movie of all time. Anyway, this is a picture of some of us playing cards before the movie began.

HEY THERE DELILAH

So, about two months ago I heard this catchy little tune by the Plain White T's on the radio (I think it was the day that my roommate broke his arm). I thought it was a really good song and I found the video on youtube. I listened to it about six times in an hour between my house and my neighbor's (you'll remember Tammy from a previous post, who's name has officially been changed to Topaz now per her request). I bought the song on iTunes the next week, and it is now the most-played song on my iPod. So, since it's my favorite song right now, I share it with you in it's music video form. In my humble opinion, it's great. I hope you enjoy.

I Survived the Ghosts of Gettysburg Tours!!

Some of you may not know this about me, but I generally have a tendency to believe what people tell me when they say that they have experinced ghost sightings and whatnot. I (not so) secretly have a desire to actually see one. That being said, why would I not want to go to what has been said to be the most haunted place in America to try to find a floating phantasmic friend. So that is what I aimed to do last Saturday on an attempt for fun adventure. In the end, it turned out to be an exciting evening. However at first, I was afraid that the fates were conspiring against me to ruin it all. You see, the plan was to pick up this evening's adventure buddy, who we'll call Katie (since that is her name), at 5:15. She lives about ten minutes away, so I was sure that leaving at 5:00 on a saturday afternoon would allow enough time to make it to her house. Little did I know that most of Northern Virginia would be heading west at that exact time. The traffic on I-66 was bumper-to-bumper for the entire six miles. I called and said that I was going to be a few minutes late. You can imagine my relief when I finally exited the freeway and started toward her house. The relief was short-lived when I got to the street needed to access her house, and found that it had been closed in both directions due to an accident. Once again I called Katie and got directions for a big loop to take me around another way. This was all good and well until I hear the beep of my phone telling me that it's battery is low. "How could that be?" you may ask, "why didn't [I] charge [my] phone?" I did. It had just been acting up all week, and chose to do it again. Luckily I made it to her house only 30 minutes late and we were on our way to historic Gettysburg PA.

When we arrived in the town, we were only about 40 minutes from the time of our scheduled ghost tour. Knowing that there was not time to have a meal, but myself being hungry, I suggested that we go to this quaint little ice cream shop in town, hoping that a tasy treat from there would hold us over until the end of the tour. So we went and got their specialty, a chocolate malt. I opted to add a banana to mine (I wouldn't want to be unhealthy now), and boy-oh-boy was it good.

After that, we went to meet our group for our tour. The lovely lady in the picture is our tour guide, Anne. On the tour she shared with us many stories of supposed hauntings and spooky incidences that have happened on or around Seminary Ridge in Gettysburg. She suggested that we take many pictures because there have been many people on the tours who have captured ghostly images in their photos, and she shared some experiences of guests to the tour, saying that oftentimes, the "soldiers" would be interested in teen-aged and twenty-something young women. Considering that my companion for the evening fit into that demographic, I knew that I was going to be having some fun that night--though I did it like twenty times, I never got tired of running my finger through her hair and making her jump. I ended up taking a lot of pictures, and I was super-stoked to see what I thought was a person/ghost in a picture. However, upon further investigation, the ghost turned out to be a stop sign.

Anne was a great guide she showed us some cool sights, this house actaully has a cannon ball from the battle left in the wall. But also, she reminded us that there was a meteor shower that night, and that the ridge was a good place from which to view it, which we ended up doing. Before the meteor shower, however, we went to Pangs Restaurant and had Sushi--in Gettysburg, weird, no? Though an odd place to get Sushi, I assure you, it was very tasty. This picture was in the men's room their. I found it very strange that this is what they put on the wall in the restroom.

The meteor shower was fun. We saw a couple, but not nearly as many as I had read there would be. After watching for meteors for a while, we decided that it was time to head home. On the walk to the car, we saw a person across the street who may or may not have been the ghost I was hoping to see. He walked behind a bush when we were getting in the car, and when we drove off, he had seemingly disappeared. There wasn't really anywhere that he could have gone.

So, in sum, the Ghosts of Gettysburg Tour was fun, and I am a survivor indeed. In my humble opinion, it's the best ghost tour that I have been on, and I have been on a few--well maybe two, but it was better than the ghost tour in Alexandria, VA.

August Sucks!!

So, I've been told by a certain co-worker that I am the cheeriest person she knows. I, and many of my friends, would probabably have to disagree with that assessment. So, lest she continue in this fantasy land where I am a nice guy, I have decided to make an entry about some of my complaints.
First off, August in the DC Metro area blows. Actually it doesn't, the air has seemed to stand pretty still in all of it's muggy nastiness. Today for example, it is only 8:30 am and it is 82 degrees. Now, that may not seem bad. 82 is generally a nice temperature, however when it's en route to 98 degrees for the high, that is not fun. Combine that with the fact that it is foggy, yes foggy in August. How does that work? I have no clue. Where I come from, it's foggy when it's cold like in January. All that this does is makes it so that you are walking through a sticky, nasty cloud while it's 80 degrees.
This past weekend was miserable--temperature-wise. It was about 100 degrees and muggy as could be. I have a tendency to sweat in this humidity too. This does not make for much fun in these conditions. On Saturday afternoon, I helped some guys move some furniture, which was really a nightmare. We had to go to one of the guy's parents' house and get two couches and a big-screen TV, drive in the U-haul that had no AC and then move the stuff up three floors. By the time we were through I was soaked. Disgusting, I know, but seriously, I don't even sweat that much when I run for a half-hour. Anyway, I guess I was giving meaningful service and I am fulfilled--that's what they tell me at church at least. I don't know where I am going with this rant, but suffice it to say that I am not a fan of the heat out here right now.
So, another thing I hate about this time of year is the METRO. Not that I am a big fan of it for most of the year, but now the general mediocre service provided by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has gotten even worse. It's awful. For the past three weeks, every train is packed, the airconditioning on said packed trains is sporadic at best, and they have the gaul to charge me extra fare for riding at peak hours when riding at that time is miserable.
Yesterday I had about had it with the METRO. In the morning, I had my least-favorite train driver. It's this woman who puts on this fake, ethereal, pseudo-sophisticated voice. She tries to over-enunciate every sylable that she speaks, and she will say (in the aforementioned voice) something like this "The next (pause) station, East (pause) Falls Church. (Long pause) Doors opening (another long pause) ontheleft. Seriously, she pisses me off every time I ride on her train. I think they need to move her to another line because I don't need to deal with that in the morning. She's obnoxious, and it's a good thing that I ride in the middle of the train, far from her, cause if I were in the car she was, I would probably tap on her window, open it up, and yell at her for sounding like an idiot--she drives a train for crying out loud, she doesn't need to sound pretentious. So that was the morning. On the way home, I got to the station and they said that I would have to wait for 10 minutes for the next train in my direction. And when It showed up, it was so packed that I couldn't get in. The next one came, and I got in, but so did the most uncouth, ill-mannered group of Euro-trash imaginable. There was a group of about 10-15 teenaged girls from Britain, and they were loud and obnoxious. They had to squeal every time that the driver braked quickly. The broke into song at times (John Denver of all people too), and were completely aware that they were angering many of their fellow riders. I could go on for an hour or so about how I wanted to tell them off (but I wanted to be better behaved than them, so I didn't), or about how relieved I was to finally get off the train, knowing full-well that I would never see them, but I won't. Know this, that experience didn't help me to have any more fond feelings towards METRO.
The one highlight of the heat and WMATA is that when the air is nasty like it is today, bus rides (at least in Northern Virginia) are free. Good thing, cause there was no way I was going to walk a mile in this soupy mess outside to get to the METRO. So, I boarded the bus this morning, happy to see that the little red bag was covering the meter saying that I got a free ride. Then I paid my normal tribute to Rosa Parks by being a white man and walking to the back of the bus for a seat (I really do think of her when I walk back there, which I do every time that I ride the bus).
I guess the good thing about the heat is that it makes me appreciate the fact that I have pool at my apartment (which was fantastic on Saturday). So, in my humble opinion, the August heat is miserable, however, the worst of it lasts only about a month. The METRO is horrible, but it's cheaper than parking and has been pretty handy considering I didn't have a car for a year here. And though the soupy air is nasty, it's very nice to ride the bus for free.