Philly

On Thursday, I was going to go down to Philly to meet my friend Min's Mom from Missouri.  I was supposed to meet her last fall, but I had to work and couldn't get out of it.  I figured I'd kill 2 birds with one stone, since for some inexplicable reason, Angie didn't bring her weapons with her in August, and practice started already.  Then she added sweatpants and t-shirts to her list. Then she added a bunch of VHS tapes to her list (well you get the picture - point being I had a full trunk!)  Then she asked if I could have dinner with her.  So I asked my friend if it would be a huge problem to add Angie to dinner.  THEN out of the blue Curt announced he rearranged his schedule to come with me.  I was a bit concerned at this point, because my friend has been under the weather and I didn't want to innundate her with known crazy people.

So when we got to Philly, since I never really discussed times before heading down, I bought Curt breakfast at a place we attempted to find during one of Angie's visits during a monsoon. I went with Min in August after we moved Angie into her dorm, turns out we were only a couple blocks mis-placed.   When we were done, Min and her Mom were still in NJ, visiting a friend and shopping, so to kill time we looked on our phones to see what  was around.  What we settled on was The Foodery.  Part of it was a sandwich shoppe, part was a beer store.  ( I would say liquor, but I only saw Beers and Malt drinks) They had a ton of different beers, a lot of imports and a lot of micro breweries.  What was even better was that everything was sold as singles.  And if you filled a six pack holder with singles they were 10% off.  I though I exhibited remarkable self control by only getting 2 sixes:



When we finally met up with Min and her Mom ( and I just now realized I forgot to get a picture :( ) 
I brought a giant mouse for Fe (he really loves his mice - and actually when we were there he was playing with the one renamed Triscuit)  I think he thought it was a NYC sewer rat, because he seemed leary of it.  I brought Min a pint of jalapeno jam and a half pint of habenero pepper jam.  I brought her Mom a pint of Jalapeno Jam because I wasn't sure how into heat she was, and you know, it's bad form to light your friend's Mom on fire.  She brought me three gifties!!

To understand the first giftie, you need to realize that for some inexplicable reason, Min's Mom is a Joey Logano fan.  She thinks he's cute.  I think the cute identification part of the brain must be the first to go.  Anyway, I had noticed a trend of after Joey crashes a car, we run out of toilet paper at work.  Most people think it's because out store mgr is too cheap to sign off on the expense POs.  I think it's cause we keep having to buy new parts/cars when Joey wrecks them.  So I told Min her Mom owes me some toilet paper.  Now you can see giftie 1:



She also made me two Tony pillow cases!



It wasn't until I took the pictures that I noticed the JL in the corner.  Funny, very funny!

We hung out.  Min's Mom discovered what it's like having a story told by someone with ADD.  Late in the afternoon, we left to go get Angie's stuff in her room and arranged to meet Min and her Mom at the restaurant.  We emptied the trunk, and went up to Angie's room.  It was relatively neat.  I was impressed until her roommate confessed to spending most of the morning cleaning up.  Oh well.  Angie's really happy, having settled in to dorm life.  Her hallway is the "social" hallway, everyone has their room & suite doors open when they're in.  They bring their dinner up to the hall and sit in the hall on weekends eating and having fun. They created a hallway long Twister field and had most of the floor and part of another floor in a huge 70+ person game of Twister.  Her building is split between athletes and honor students (interesting) so she easily finds people to go to the games with her.  She learned that ping-pong is a blood sport. 

Angie said she needed more Temple wear, as she only had one pair of sweats and 2 t-shirts.  So we went down to the Barnes and Noble across the street, but she couldn't find what she wanted.  So we went to the bookstpre in the Student Union.  I ended up buying her a t-shirt, a long sleeve thermal shirt and a stuffed zebra wearing a Temple shirt. (She currently is into zebra stripes.  Has a zebra snuggie.  Ordered 2 pairs of zebra knee high soccer socks to fence in, has a bunch of zebra unmentionables)  Does anyone want to guess when she decides she needs a hoodie?  My guess is Halloween.  Her brain thinks since she is south of here, she doesn't need cold weather gear.  College kids, just want to smack them.

We met Min and her Mom a few minutes after we were supposed to, because the parking garage we went to has the SLOWEST valets ever.  We went to the Italian Bistro.  The food was pretty good, and the beginning of the meal was great ( Angie really liked Min's Mom - she was originally expecting a more grandma-ish person) but then a party was seated right next to us.  30-40 people I think.  The manager was "surprised" that many people made so much noise. WHo'd have thunk that?  Jeesh.

After dropping Angie off at her dorm, we went to Trader Joe's.  Min has a friend (vying for Minister of Medicine wth Med-student) (longer story than I have room for here)  who works there.  We had a vague notion of going in with Angie's sabres, until I paid the armorer $200 before bringing her equipment down.  So we had cocktail sabres.  it would have been funny too, except Curt and Min's Mom are spoilsports.  And afterwords I realized I forgot to ask about the swiss cheese!  Ugh!  Well, next time I suppose.