Small rebellion

This appeared at the park near our house over the weekend:

Take that, The Man.

As seen in Philly

A giant green guy in a third story window:

That is all.

Autumn Express

Ben and I love trains, so when we heard about Amtrak's special Autumn Express train we bought tickets with only a mild amount of embarrassment. It was great to spend a day doing nothing but staring at pretty scenery, reading, and chatting. While we enjoyed the being-on-a-train aspect as well, we definitely weren't as enthusiastic as many of the other passengers - when the conductor announced that the train was being powered by some sort of historical engine or other, our car literally burst into applause.

Excited to be on a train, but not enough to applaud about it.

Look at that fall foliage!

Ben modeling the commemorative lunch bag. Yes, there were commemorative lunch bags.

They handed out brochures about the National Association of Railroad Passengers, figuring - pretty accurately, I'm sure - that people who pay money to ride around on a train going nowhere would also likely be interested in joining their train club. I was somewhat interested at first, until Ben pointed out that NARP is only one letter away from AARP (which also described the demographic of the vast majority of the other passengers). Perhaps in a few decades...

Goodbye, dress!

I always said I would donate my wedding dress after I was done using it, since I'll never wear it again so it might as well make someone else happy. After a year of it sitting in the back of our closet, I finally got around to actually donating it!

Me with my dress for the last time, right before dropping it off.

There are actually a number of places that accept wedding dress donations; I ended up going with Brides Against Breast Cancer - mostly because they were having an event in Baltimore this weekend, and I was going to Baltimore anyway to hang out with my sister. I have to admit to feeling a twinge when I handed the dress over, but now that it's gone I can't say I miss it, or even notice its absence. Here's hoping someone else loves wearing it as much as I did!

Gentrification

Ben and I have been on a bit of a John Landis kick lately, so we just watched Trading Places. We didn't realize it was set in Philadelphia, so we had fun identifying all the Philly landmarks in the background of various scenes. We had to laugh, though, when Dan Aykroyd goes home with the prostitute to her rough neighborhood...

...and she lives at 12th and South. That's about four blocks from where we currently live, and that corner is currently home to a Whole Foods and a Starbucks. A lot has changed in the three decades since 1983...

Barnes

Ben and I decided to get some Culture-with-a-capital-C today and visit the Barnes Foundation. If you haven't heard of it, Barnes was a self-made gajillionaire who invented an anti-gonorrhea drug, and spent his money on buying lots of Art, which he filled his house up with. When he died he wanted his collection to be available to the public, but on the condition that it remained exactly in place, in his house out in the suburbs. In the early 2000s the foundation successfully petitioned to move the collection to downtown Philadelphia so more people could access it (and they could bring in more money), and it was a whole big controversy that all the Art people were very upset about. They even made a movie about it. Anyway, the shiny new Barnes building opened up shortly after Ben and I moved to Philly, and today we finally got around to going.

I can't say that I really got or was excited about any of the art, since it all looks the same to my unsophisticated eye (although some of the antique locksmith materials were cool). But the building itself was really fun to be in - all high ceilings and unusually-shaped rooms; there's a multi-story indoor garden, and even the bathrooms were architecturally interesting. You couldn't take pictures inside, but here's a picture of the exterior (including the moat that surrounds it), which gives an idea of the type of place it is:

I wouldn't pay money to go back, but I think we will add it to the list of interesting places we take walks to. You know, so we can class ourselves up a bit.

Boston!

Wednesday was my birthday and this weekend we went to Boston - we actually went to go to a Final Fantasy concert with friends, but I'm pretending it was for my birthday since I never played Final Fantasy. We had a sleepover and went to dim sum and bonded, and the highlight was a midnight picnic with this box of happiness from Finale:

As much as we love Philly (which is a lot!), every time we go to Boston we end up yearning to move back. We actually like the city of Philly better, but Boston has all our friends... we just have to figure out how to lure them here!