We're taking Rachel back to New York for her second year at NYU tomorrow, and I may or may not have internet access while we're doing that--it's unclear. (I may have access purely through going to an internet cafe or some other place in public that has wifi if the place we're staying doesn't have access ( Read more... )

Had a fun outing this afternoon to the Franklin Fountain (awesomest ice cream in Philadelphia!) with the other folks of Potterdelphia for a belated Harry Potter birthday gathering. I'm now officially LJ friends with drinkingcocoa :waves: whose little girl was also along for the outing, sporting beautiful face-paint from a trip to the zoo ( Read more... )

Tonight, while walking on Poplar Drive, an extremely verdant road through the park about a ten-minute walk from our house, I passed not four feet from a Peregrine falcon eating what I think was a small bunny. The falcon didn't flinch as I passed; it sat about four or five feet from the sidewalk, on recently-cut grass, very close to a large shrub, ( Read more... )

Some Occupy Philly coverage ( Read more... )

Every day that I commute by bike I ride to and from work via the front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the Rocky statue now resides. And every day there are lines of tourists waiting to have their picture taken with the statue, lines of tourists buying Rocky water-ice (Italian ice to you New Yorkers) and steaks from Balboa's Steaks from ( Read more... )

If a film is being made here, the chances are that it doesn't actually take place here.

Corollary: If a film takes place here, the chances are that it wasn't filmed here.

Exceptions to the rule and the corollary: Almost any film by M. Night Shyamalan

Click to view

Interesting article about the man Chris and I know as "Sensei". He doesn't look that different (a bit greyer) than he did 24 years ago when I took his karate class at Temple, when he didn't look appreciably older than he did 12 years before that, when Chris first started studying karate with him at the West Philly dojo. (Why, oh why, couldn't the ( Read more... )

We had a rather interesting experience coming back from an open house at our friends Frank and Sue's yesterday. In order to get back up to Center City from South Philly we had to wait for the 57 bus on Moyamensing Ave; no sooner had we gotten to the corner of Moyamensing and Morris than we heard the sound of a string band. And not just any string ( Read more... )

Look here if you don't believe me.

Excerpt:

"I believe in the curse. I think there is something to it," said Sports Radio 950 talker Jody "Jody Mac" McDonald. "I'm not a superstitious guy by nature, but spitting in the eye of one of the founders of our city* is a bad move ( Read more... )