Crazy art

This is a picture inside the comcast building in Philadelphia. I watched this building being built when I used to work across the street. The first time I saw the "people" walking on the beams, I thought they were real. They are not. The inside of the building is pretty cool (and it has a great food court). They have about 15 very large screens (together about three stories tall and the width of the building) that appear to be wood grain but they are really tv screens. They broadcast cool artsy high def content that mesmerizes tourists and locals alike.

Rocky!

No trip to Philadelphia is complete without a visit to see Rocky and a run up the steps of the Art Museum. The blue and yellow flag is the flag of Philadelphia. It's sort of cool, but not as cool as the flag for Chicago. Point Chicago.

Philly 8; Chicago 4.

Sunset

While waiting to get my hair cut in Manayunk, I walked along the old canal towpath. They created a rails to trails running / walking path along the towpath. It's nice, but it's also lined with some old dilapidated buildings. Fortunately, the pretty sunset obscures these buildings along the west (left) bank and around the bend.

Wissahickon

This is a not so great photo of a great place to run just outside of Philly. I used to make the short drive out to the Wissahickon with Inde. We'd jog into the park and up onto the singletrack, where I'd let Inde off the leash. She loved it! She would run ahead of me then race back to me, so it was like she was running twice the distance! The trail took us down along the creek and on warm days she would jump in for a swim. Even though I like running at Argonne outside of Chicago, this run is a little more spectacular - steep hills on either side of a creek with cute stone bridges every half mile or so. I miss running in the Wissahickon. I like Argonne, but it's more crowded and just not quite as beautiful. Point Philly.

Philly 8; Chicago 3.

Goofy dog

This dog looked goofy and acted goofy. I saw him while I was waiting for the 48 bus in my old hood.

Best city brewery

Yards is a brewery located in an old skate park in the city. I toured the brewery when I was out there in January on my unemployment trip. They make great beer, give a good tour and have won an award for being a green brewery. I enjoy the Brawler and the Thomas Jefferson Ale. Yum. In my opinion, Chicago does not have a brewery close to Yards. Point Philly. Clearly. Philly 7, Chicago 3. I wonder if there is a mercy rule.

Full moon

I know I love a lot about Philly, but this is possibly my favorite fountain in Philly. This is Logan Square, which is actually a circle. A few years ago they had to cut down all the hundred year old trees in the square because they had caught some rare tree disease and the city did not want it to spread to the trees lining the Ben Franklin Parkway (to the art museum). I remember how naked the fountain looked after the trees were removed. The city put in a lot of low shrubs and flowers and the square looks amazing. On the east entrance to the square there is a bronze plaque that tells the history of the square - which was used as a place for hangings. It was also a burial place for victims of yellow fever. Strange that a place with such a dark history is now so light and beautiful.

I love to look through the fountain, west up the Ben Franklin Parkway to the art museum. I give this fountain a slight edge over the Buckingham Fountain, but not enough to award any points.

Ears for sale

One of my favorite places in Philly is Reading Terminal Market. I think I went there three times when I lived in Philly and every time that I have gone back to visit! At the market you can buy fresh vegetables, pastries, crepes, fish, meat and chocolates, among other things. This store had some crazy things, including these chocolate ears. Maybe we can give one to George Weasley.

Don't Mess with City Hall

This is a picture of City Hall in Philadelphia. On top is a statue of William Penn. This was the view from my office when I lived and worked in Philly. I would give Philly a point for this because the building is much cooler looking than the Daley Center, but the Daley Center has two things going for it: (1) the Daley Center is air conditioned (City Hall has window units); and (2) the view from the top of the Daley Center is amazing - the lake and the skyline. I think this comes out a wash. No points, even after discounting Philly for that giant clothespin.

The giant clothespin

This is a giant piece of what we used to call quad art, a derogatory term we used in college for the wacky "sculptures" that adorned any open space between the buildings on campus.

This clothespin is right across from city hall in Philadelphia. I have no idea why this is here. It's just my opinion, but this isn't art; it's more like a piece of trash from some giant aliens.

I know this is a funny picture

But it had to be done. This is the empty bathroom at the Philadelphia airport. Note that the doors open OUT rather than in, which makes it much easier to get in and out with your rolling carry-on bag. The doors to the women's restrooms at o'hare open in, which makes it very difficult to get in with your luggage. Point Philly, which I think makes the score:

Philly 6; Chicago 3.

Trust

Where do you go when you need a soda early in the morning? The Trust Deli, of course! This was one of two corner stores in my old hood (sadly the other one closed after it's owner became sick). The store is all of 15' x 15', but it has everything you could ever need in a pinch and makes great hoagies! The same family still runs the deli so it was nice to see familiar faces. On the way out, I literally ran into a former colleague and neighbor walking her dog. I was home.

However, I can't give a point to Philly on this one because although the corner stores in my hood in Chicago are not as well-stocked or friendly, they do sell beer. By the six pack. (PA only sells beer by the case in state stores.) so this one is a push.

Lager, light

After a crazy day at work and a packed flight to Philadelphia, I arrived at my friends' house. I had a Pennsylvania beer to carboload. Yeah, that's why. But it hit the spot and I chased it with two tall glasses of the city's finest tap water.

In the background is one of inde's best friends - Sam. Doesn't he look cute? And he even remembered me after two years!! Maybe he just smelled a little inde on my clothes. It doesn't matter because he gave me an enthusiastic Fairmount welcome! Thanks, guys!

Oysters!

This is the oyster sampler - two each of their six best oysters. I managed to sneak one away from my friend who ordered the sampler. It definitely tasted like the ocean. I also learned that the oyster chef in the kitchen will judge you based on how you return your empty shells. I guess if you send them back WITH the mermaid they judge you a fool! My friend very carefully arranged the empty overturned shells. I think this is acceptable.

Mermaid on the half shell

I'm not usually one for oysters, but when a friend from out of town suggests an oyster bar because it is rated in the top ten for oysters in the country, then you go. I think the mermaid is sitting on a crab because the restaurant is really a crab shack, albeit a very upscale "shack."

A new tee pee

I have no idea what this is, but I think it's related to potty training. It amazes me that even potty training devices are sort of cute, minus the sort of spooky faceless toddler form.

East meets (mid)west - briefly

This was pretty cool - on the night that we turned our clocks back an hour, Philadelphia and Chicago were on the same time! Of course the good people in Philadelphia were taking their second trip from 1-2 am, sort of a ground hog day type of thing, so I'm sure they were correcting their errors from the first trip through. In Chicago, however, we were making our first pass through the time, so I think we goofed up some stuff. Slight edge to Philly, but no points awarded.

Piece of cake!

The lighting in this picture isn't great, but this is a cake of a red bustier. Maybe it was made for Madonna? Or maybe she was the inspiration? I don't know, but I'm already planning for my next birthday!

Mooooey Christmas

More cows? Really? And it's not even Thanksgiving yet. One good thing to say about this display, for this store, it's very understated.

Kristkindl market

The elves are hard at work building the Kristkindl market behind the Daley center. In a week or so, this plaza will be filled with booths selling overpriced knick knacks that were made in China to tourists. The tree is pretty cool, but I understand it is smaller than last year's tree. I guess the poor economy is even hitting the Germans. I mean Santa.

Soap!

I don't think I've ever gone to a friend's house and wanted to steal soap from their bathroom. Well, there is a first time for everything. I had dinner at a friend's house yesterday and this was their soap basket. There are at least three bars of soap I wanted to take and I didn't even look beyond the first level!

Flatbread!

I didn't know that Jimmy john's made Flatbread sandwiches. Oh, right, they don't! They just smashed mine in the delivery bag. That's ok, I'm sure it will taste fine.

Hot chocolate!!

This was the post-race snack for a recent race in Chicago. I don't think the picture does it justice. This was an entire tent of chocolate fondue, complete with tasty items to dip like marshmallows, pretzels, apples, bananas, and pound cake. Some lucky runners got super giant marshmallows. Yummy. I don't remember anything like this in Philly. Point Chicago.

Philly 5, Chicago 2. (I gave two points because I love chocolate just that much.)

Too early

When did Halloween signal the start of the Christmas holiday shopping season? This is ridiculous. I protest. I will not engage in any Christmas holiday spirit until after Thanksgiving. Or at least after I throw out the pumpkins we carved for Halloween!

Are you a runner?

This weekend I was not a runner, but instead I was part of the support crew. We got on the train about 7 am along with the rest of the city. I noticed this runner sporting her orange d-tag timing chips from previous races on her backpack. She reminded me of those kids in high school who were alpine skiers. They created a chain out of their lift tickets so you could tell just how many times they had gone skiing and to which exotic places. This is just a long way of saying: the d-tags are disposable timing chips. Dispose of them. Don't display them.

Sunset

I don't think this picture does it justice. This is the sunset last night on my run home from work. The sky looked like it was on fire; it was amazing!

Philly 5; Chicago 1. Way to go Chicago!

Guilty pleasure

I have many guilty pleasures, most of which are not appropriate for the blog. If you know me, you probably know about this one - I like grape soda!! I have not had a grape nehi in ages. And I did not have one today. After complaining about the unhealthy lunch, I could hardly drink a grape soda. Disappointed!

Frost!

I guess the cold weather is here! This is the first frost that I ha e seen in Chicago. I was out at 5:30 this morning to monitor polling locations and I saw this terribly upsetting site. Pretty soon we will have snow!

Philly 5, Chicago 0.

Yummy!

Pizza, beer and baseball. Does it get any better? Oh, yeah, there are a number of other TVs showing Monday night football, hockey and arena football. Too bad they are not showing the Phillies! Go Rangers!

Scary!

Here are the three finished pumpkins. They look good here but were even better in real life! I did the bat but only helped trace the other two. A friend carved the scream and the skull. The scream was rated a more difficult design while the bat was an easier design. The skull was from a different pattern book.

Oh yeah, I also learned:

6. The patterns are rated by level of difficulty.
7. Two candles kick it up a notch if there is not much light.

Pumpkin carving - part 2

This is my pumpkin - the bat. After scooping out the insides and cleaning the seeds to roast, I placed a pattern on my pumpkin and "traced" it. The tracing is really poking the pattern into the shell of the pumpkin with a small plastic toothpick. If you look closely, you can see the pattern.

I learned a few important things yesterday:
1. Make sure you really clean out the insides or else they will make it hard to see the light or could actually burn.
2. If you have small intricate parts of the design (like the bat's eyes), do them first.
3. This is a long and slow process. Be patient or else you might make stray cuts into the pumpkin.
4. Carving the pumpkin the day of Halloween is good because then it is not rotten by the time people come look at it.
5. Your pumpkin might scare the kids away. We didn't have any trick or treaters.

Pumpkin time!

I recently took a trip to an apple farm, but all the apples were picked or had fallen, so the only thing left to pick was a pumpkin. They were only a dollar each if you got ten, so our car got ten. I reminisced about days gone by when you could squeeze a bunch of people I to your car and go to a drive-in movie for $10. Ah, the good old days.

I picked 5 pumpkins and put three of them on my porch. I gave one to a friend and still had 4, but I didn't do anything with them. Until 10/31, when I decided to carve them! I had already invested $5 in the carving tools so I figured I'd be wasting almost $10 if I didn't carve them.

This picture is the pumpkin carving prep. More to follow ...

Who needs a compost pile?

This little guy Gus is really cute. And, he helps out around the house. Right now he is helping finish up the coriander. Yummy! He has a sweet gig in my friends' place - they have a sort of barn scene set up for him. Trust me, it's cooler than it sounds.

It slices

It dices, it juliennes! You may be too young to remember that commercial, but these scissors remind me of that famous kitchen product that was hawked incessantly on tv in the early days of cable. My favorite part - the bottle opener because if I'm going to be using sharp scissors to cut something and then possibly sew it up into an article of clothing, I want to male sure I can also open up a beer at the same time!

Wait wait

Before you say anything, you need to know that I was at a respectable store, albeit one in the midwest. These are leggings - Jean leggings, corduroy leggings, even cargo leggings. I now know what is meant by "jeggings." These are weird, at best. One question, if I'm too old to wear cargo pants, am I also too old to wear cargo leggings?

Flannel?

About five years ago I finally recycled my favorite flannel shirt. This was hard for me to do because the shirt was broken in, soft and comfy, not to mention pretty warm. But, I knew it was the right thing to do. After all, I lived in a large metropolitan area, not an LL Bean photo shoot. So, imagine my surprise when I saw racks of flannel shirts at a local store. Does this mean I now need a new flannel shirt? As a matter of full disclosure, I was in the suburbs when I spotted these shirts.

Sadness.

I realize that I was going to try to blog more often, but then I have not posted anything in almost two weeks. Hmm. I'm not doing so well. I'm going to try again; I should have some more free time now that the baseball playoffs are over. Well, they are not exactly over, except for my team.

It was with great sadness that I watched game 6 of the NLCS. The Phillies are my favorite team, even since the move to Chicago. I watched as Ryan Howard stood there looking at the third strike - with two runners on in the bottom of the ninth. I guess I should not have expected anything different - he had zero RBIs in the post-season and 12 strikeouts in the NLCS. The worst part of the whole thing is that Pat Burrell, former Phillies left fielder, is going to the world series with the Giants. Are you kidding me? Ugh!

I am a true Phillies fan. I will curse them out now and through the post-season as the team fails to re-sign Jayson Werth, but I will cheer for them again next year. For now, however, that was a heartbreaking loss to an inferior team. Shame on you, Phillies.

State budget

Ok, so I'm back on my soap box about the state budget. Every month we get a new sign reminding us to wash our hands. From personal experience over the last two months at my new job, the women in the office are fastidious about cleaning their hands. So, rather than paying the artist or company that produces these posters and then distributing them to all the offices statewide, why don't they just leave up one sign, save some money and then use that to give us all an extra vacation day or two! Now THAT'S a campaign platform I can support!

Guess

This reminds me of those contests where you have to guess how manta pieces are used to make the giant statue. I have a different idea - how long did it take to put this together? I used to like Legos when I was a kid, but I never made anything bigger than a shoe box. This shark is about five and a half feet tall. I think it probably took a team of people a week to make. It was worth it because it's cool!

Post-race party!

The day before the race I had two items on my to do list:

1) pick up my race packet
2) stock the fridge for the post-race party!

I picked up a few six packs of some of my favorites and filled the fridge! After the race, I invited a few friends over to celebrate and watch the Phillies! Both Philly and Chicago get points on this one - Philly for winning the first round of the playoffs and Chicago for a beautiful day and a successful marathon. Consequently, no points actually were awarded.

Read the fine print

This was a pretty cool poster that Nike made for the marathon. A really big one also was at the expo. The name of everyone who registered for the marathon was listed in small print in alphabetical order. This version was inside the store on Michigan Avenue when I went to check out the official "finisher's" gear. It's pretty cool to find your name on here.

Ice cream man, ice cream man!!

I would like to think that this wouldn't happen in Philly, but who am I kidding? Nobody! The cop is issuing a ticket to the ice cream truck that was parked to sell frozen goodness to a bunch of hot, hungry marathon runners. Shame. No points awarded or deducted for this one.

More cowbell!

Apparently spectators also had a rough day. This is a cowbell ringing blister. We are arguing over who has it worse, close call. Feet 1; cowbell hand 0. Sorry.

Blister in the sun!!

I know this picture is sort of gross, but I'm afraid these blisters will be with me for a while! On my 20 mile training run, I got a nasty blister that didn't quite heal before the marathon. As a result, I think the sorest part of me after the race was my right foot! I did a short recovery run on Tuesday and turned that mess into a bigger yuckier mess. Oh, well.

Medal!

I'm almost done blogging about the marathon. This is a picture of my medal, which I've been told will double for a bottle opener in a pinch!

The race was held on Sunday, which in any other year I would have appreciated for its unseasonably warm and sunny weather. This year, however, I did not appreciate it. Nor did about 30,000 other people!

Having fully hydrated myself for about two days, I was standing in line for the porto-john when the gun sounded for the race. No worries because I figured it would take me about 30 minutes to cross the start line. Wrong. I crossed at about 7:45. You know you're in trouble when you walk a half a mile to the start line in shorts and a t-shirt and are sweating already. Then it got warmer!

The first half was basically in the shade (or largely shady), so I felt pretty good. My race plan was to drink at every water stop, eat every six miles and run about 9:30-9:40s. I stuck to it for the first 15 miles. At mile 13.1, I was just shy of 2:06. Things were going well. Then we turned west and all hell broke loose, at least for me. At about mile 17, a bank time/temp sign read 85 degrees. I walked my first water station. At mile 18, a training partner jumped onto the course and ran with / dragged me across the finish line. I had to walk about a mile at 22. Another bank time/temp read 95. Wow! Even if it were only 85, that's hot!

With much encouragement, I started running again at mile 23 and jogged to the finish in just under 4:25. I don't know if I will do another. If you were to ask me today, I'd say NO! I think I can shave another five minutes off my time, but that seems like a lot of work for relatively little improvement.

The date to motivate

I think this was one of the official race slogans. It reminds me of the song by INXS where they rhymed a bunch of words that end in -ate. I miss Michael Hutchence.

This banner was over the entrance to the expo. That is some random good-looking dude posing for a picture.

Of course, it only made me a little more nervous, especially when I left the expo and the 11 am temperature was over 80. Not good.

Hot mess!

This shirt was next to the bullet proof bra. I wanted to get one, but they had sold out of my size. Very cute shirt.

Bullet proof bra

I also saw this wonderful item at the expo. I think it is a bullet proof jog bra, although it doesn't say so on the tag. I couldn't help but think the weather was the least of my worries if I needed a bullet proof bra!

Expo!

Back in January I got an innocent email: sign up for the Chicago marathon! At the time, it sounded like a good idea. I had been running consistently and relatively injury-free. I signed up. My first two marathon experiences had been largely unsatisfying and I thought I was in a better position this time around.

What sounded like a good idea ten months ago started sounding less good as the actual date approached. 10.10.10 - the "date to motivate" loomed in front of me. My training went fairly well and I was in pretty good shape the week before the race. I started to get nervous a few days before and by the time I went to the race expo on Saturday to pick up my number, I was regretting signing up. To make matters worse, the temperature was predicted to be unseasonably warm - sunny and mid eighties.

This picture was taken at the entrance to the expo. Over 45,000 fit athletic folks registered for the marathon. And this is the food the organizers offered them.

The expo was the biggest one I have seen. There were a number of vendors, big and small, and some cool running gear. However, weekend warriors like me were sad that they didn't have any marathon shot glasses!

Quoth the raven

Never more! I'm not sure why you have a fake bird mounted on your fence in the city. If it's wild life you crave, there are plenty of rats and squirrels around! I have also seen a few rabbits in my neighborhood. Now that the fake bird has fallen from his post, he should be placed in the bin and forgotten.