Monday, July 30, 2012

That takes the (wedding) cake

In the course of wedding planning, I have come across a decent number of ridiculous wedding services - from paying hundreds of dollars to freeze dry your bouquet to hiring a composer to write a custom processional just for you. But I recently stumbled onto the craziest one yet: pay this company money for a "SunTender" to "guarantee sunshine on your wedding day with a Sunshine Guarantee Certificate."

As far as I can tell, you ask someone to be your "SunTender" and if they agree - God knows why anyone would - they pay the company $125 for a "Presentation Folio (containing the Sunshine Guarantee Certificate and Gold-plated Lapel Pin) as well as the beautifully bound SunTender’s Guide," which contains training materials about the ins and outs of the complex art of SunTending. The SunTender also pays the company a $250 "Gift Deposit," which is returned if the weather is good, and paid to the bride and groom if it rains. According to the company, this means that "If the sun shines on the wedding day, then it worked. If the sun doesn’t shine, it pays. Either way, it works!"

So, basically you ask someone to pay you money if it rains on your wedding day, and to pay extra money for the privilege of enshrining the whole debacle in the form of a Certificate and a Gold-plated Lapel Pin. I think the whole thing might be a front for some weird religious cult's indoctrination mechanism.

Anyway, this all leads me to the obvious follow-up question: Who wants to be our SunTender??

Sunday, July 22, 2012

New Digs

Last week our office moved across town to a nicer building, since our old office building was somewhat decrepit. However, our old building was a perfect 15 minute walk away from my house, and this new one is a cruddy 30 minute SEPTA ride away. So, I used to have a lovely free commute and now I have to pay money to be crammed into a subway car with a bunch of sweaty Philadelphians - I'm not yet convinced the nicer building is worth it.

Other tradeoffs: My new cubicle is newer/cleaner, but also smaller than my old one:
There is nowhere for me to look while I'm thinking without creepily staring at one of my neighbors.
Our staff was split between several rooms at the old building, and now we are all together in one big space. Except, the space is really, really open so you can see/hear what everyone is doing at all times:

The old office was in Center City, and had a lot of nearby restaurants for when you didn't pack a lunch. The new office is next to a graveyard, which contains the creepiest grave of all time:

An eyeless, half-naked doll would be sad on a little girl's grave, but on a 68 year old man's grave it is kind of unsettling.
There is some cool stuff near the new office too, like this giant fish mural:


And this building with trees growing out of it:


And this house, which upon closer inspection has a gargoyle on its roof:


And upon even closer inspection, has a Chucky doll in the attic window:


So, you know. Strikes and gutters.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Look at Ben!

Ben's friend who went to Australia with him sent him this nice picture from their trip:


The Sydney Opera House looks pretty much exactly how I imagined based on Finding Nemo:


Pixar really does their research.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Ben's back!

Ben has been in Australia forever, and thanks to a delayed flight and resulting missed connection he got back a day later than he was supposed to. But, he's here now, and he brought me a stuffed wombat and some kangaroo-infested Australian money!
The wombat lives in a "wombank."
Seriously, they have kangaroo money!

While he was down under, Ben learned that Melbourne was founded by Batman. John Batman, that is. Lots of stuff is named after him as a result:

He also learned that the Australian equivalent of the Ivies is the "Sandstones," for self-explanatory reasons:

I guess he also learned stuff about robots, since that was the whole point of his trip, but mostly I wanted to hear about Batman and wombats.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Beach!

We had been planning to just hang out at home during our day off yesterday, but at the last minute got invited to go to the beach with some friends. We ended up spending the 4th of July hanging out in and around the ocean, followed by a barbecue, followed by watching the fireworks from our balcony. Today Ben left for Australia for a conference and he'll be gone for 10 days, so it was a lovely way to spend our last day together for awhile.


Sunday, July 1, 2012

Walking Tour

Ben and I have both been traveling a lot for work recently, and on Thursday he's leaving for Australia for two weeks, so we decided to spend yesterday just wandering around Philly for the day. First, we had to mail some things.
No turning back now!
Then it was down to Penn's Landing for the annual Super Scooper All-You-Can-Eat Ice Cream Festival. Since last year I proved to myself that I could eat a scoop from all 20 vendors, this year I went with more of a "strategic savoring" approach, and only ate the flavors I actually like. That way I had room to go back for seconds of the best ones.
The cup stack is less impressive when you know that Ben and I combined ours.
After we were done with our afternoon gluttony, we walked down along the river to the Mummers Museum. I have been wanting to go there since we moved here two years ago, but had never found the time. It was basically empty and a bit run-down, but the costumes did not disappoint:

Yes, that's a fish.
So many sequins!
Lion King
Mozart?
Sweet boat
They also had the costumes from this year's winning club, which lit up:

Some of the back pieces were enormous, and can apparently weigh up to 150 pounds:
They also had costumes for you to try on. I wasn't quite feeling up to any of the jackets or capes given the heat and the lack of air conditioning, but I did enjoy this (surprisingly heavy) hat:
However, as with any tradition that goes back over a hundred years, there were some disturbing historical artifacts:

This was a giant poster.
It is really, really old school racist.
After we had finished marveling at the costumes and the historical bigotry (and some not-so-historical: women weren't allowed in the parade until 1983), we walked down along the Delaware River Trail, which is surprisingly nice for an urban trail whose entrance is behind a Walmart. Along the way, we encountered our first "Bad Wolf" siting in the wild:
I think the little guy at the bottom should have had two hearts
We finished the day at the movie theater, where we saw Brave and savored the air conditioning before the long walk home. Google maps says we walked 6 miles altogether, but I think it was probably longer given that we wandered down lots of random side streets and got turned around a few times. So, you know, that totally makes up for all the ice cream we had for lunch.