A good use of a Sunday, I think
Going to Philadelphia was indeed a good idea. I should do it more--I find it easier right now than going to NY, since I can drive there and gas is currently cheap, and on Sundays there is free parking! I shall return to NY as my city of leisure when it gets warmer, methinks.
Anyway, I managed to have a fairly productive day! I got up in the actual morning and got to Philly around noon, just in time to join shvetufae for her friends' birthday lunch! Or... almost. Despite getting there on time, I spent a good half hour just driving in circles trying to park, before realizing that Chinatown parking was not going to happen, and parking well over half a mile away and just walking to the place. The lunch was worth the walk and the exertion though: it was yummy, and it was at a vegan Chinese place so I got to taste a lot of things and now I see why it's one of shvetufae's favorites.
After lunch Shveta and her friends went to see a movie, but I decided to go pay __sunshine__ a visit at his new place instead. He lives in a not very good neighborhood, but right across the street from a beautiful graveyard. Beautiful. I told him that I will have to come back to take longer walks in it the next time I am in Philly, so he shouldn't think I am being creepy if he looks out the window and sees me outside his house randomly--I will just be there for the graveyard! He told me I should not go walking there when it's dark or by myself in general. Although his housemates do it, so maybe I'll just borrow their dogs and do it too.
Oh yes, he lives with some adorable dogs now. And as always with a lot of bikes.
He and his new housemates wanted to go to check out the James Castle retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, so we drove there next and did that. And then I dropped them all off and went back to see shvetufae at her house and had dinner with her and her fiance. I was kind of amused at the contrast between the two social circles there: Shveta lives in central city in a lovely townhouse, and her circle is all graduate studenty and all her friends deal with writing and/or publishing, and it's rather like my image of what a good "grown up" life looks like. And Alex and his housemates live in Southwest Philly and are all artsy vegan bike punks, and it's an entirely different scene. And I'm drawn to both in different ways.
To finish it off, I ended the evening with my friend T.J. (whom I met thanks to now-sadly-defunct Consumating, sigh). That was appropriate, because his group are sort of in the middle between the two. Which is to say, kind of hipsters-but-not-really? At first we went to a very pretty upscale bar, of the kind I pretty much never go to... unless I am with T.J., apparently. But we left almost immediately to go to a rather more relaxed bar with a wonderfully friendly bartender and patrons and a rock-band hook-up, and spent the rest of the evening there.
My initial plan was to hang out for just a couple hours and then drop in on yet another friend briefly before driving home, but the friendly-bartender-and-nice-people combination proved rather entrapping and so I never did get to check the last person off my list. But it was a pretty chock-full day anyway, and now just gives me another reason to come back again.
Anyway, I managed to have a fairly productive day! I got up in the actual morning and got to Philly around noon, just in time to join shvetufae for her friends' birthday lunch! Or... almost. Despite getting there on time, I spent a good half hour just driving in circles trying to park, before realizing that Chinatown parking was not going to happen, and parking well over half a mile away and just walking to the place. The lunch was worth the walk and the exertion though: it was yummy, and it was at a vegan Chinese place so I got to taste a lot of things and now I see why it's one of shvetufae's favorites.
After lunch Shveta and her friends went to see a movie, but I decided to go pay __sunshine__ a visit at his new place instead. He lives in a not very good neighborhood, but right across the street from a beautiful graveyard. Beautiful. I told him that I will have to come back to take longer walks in it the next time I am in Philly, so he shouldn't think I am being creepy if he looks out the window and sees me outside his house randomly--I will just be there for the graveyard! He told me I should not go walking there when it's dark or by myself in general. Although his housemates do it, so maybe I'll just borrow their dogs and do it too.
Oh yes, he lives with some adorable dogs now. And as always with a lot of bikes.
He and his new housemates wanted to go to check out the James Castle retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, so we drove there next and did that. And then I dropped them all off and went back to see shvetufae at her house and had dinner with her and her fiance. I was kind of amused at the contrast between the two social circles there: Shveta lives in central city in a lovely townhouse, and her circle is all graduate studenty and all her friends deal with writing and/or publishing, and it's rather like my image of what a good "grown up" life looks like. And Alex and his housemates live in Southwest Philly and are all artsy vegan bike punks, and it's an entirely different scene. And I'm drawn to both in different ways.
To finish it off, I ended the evening with my friend T.J. (whom I met thanks to now-sadly-defunct Consumating, sigh). That was appropriate, because his group are sort of in the middle between the two. Which is to say, kind of hipsters-but-not-really? At first we went to a very pretty upscale bar, of the kind I pretty much never go to... unless I am with T.J., apparently. But we left almost immediately to go to a rather more relaxed bar with a wonderfully friendly bartender and patrons and a rock-band hook-up, and spent the rest of the evening there.
My initial plan was to hang out for just a couple hours and then drop in on yet another friend briefly before driving home, but the friendly-bartender-and-nice-people combination proved rather entrapping and so I never did get to check the last person off my list. But it was a pretty chock-full day anyway, and now just gives me another reason to come back again.