After our visit to NYC in March, I spent the last few days of the month in Philadelphia. It was a quick visit, since I wanted to be home for the second night community Seder at our synagogue. And though I don’t want every visit to be about something, since it is a second home for us, this did give us the opportunity to check to make sure the attic is still dry and schedule someone to come in and look at our cabinets.
MJ went up into the attic on Monday before catching his flight out and confirmed that the attic is indeed dry, hooray! We’re aiming to get it properly inspected when we’re in town again next month. The cabinets are more complicated. During the one year walk through the builder followed up on our concern about an improperly hanging cabinet door and ordered us a new one. They showed up with the cabinet door while I was in town, but it turns out, it wasn’t the door, the frame is actually cracked. We notified them and put it on the list for next time.
On Tuesday I took a train down to the city to attend a Docker 5th birthday party with the Docker Philadelphia Meetup. It was hosted by my friend John Mahoney, who I’ve kept up with over the years as a friend, but I’m so pleased is working in a space that syncs up with my own work so well. The event used Play with Docker-driven tutorials to get people going with Docker without installing anything locally, which was pretty neat. I also had the opportunity to catch up with my friends Walt and David who came out for the event, I met up with Walt before the event for some coffee, and got to go out after for some snacks with David. Great night.
The rest of the week was mostly spent just living my life. Working each day, visiting with a friend one evening, making sure snow was cleared off the driveway, getting the car washed.
On Friday I did go out on some adventures though. I closed up the house and met up with a friend to spend the day on South Street in Philadelphia. The first stop was to satisfy my craving for a cheesesteak at Jim’s Steaks. We also swung by a new poutine shop across the street.
As the clouds threatened rain overhead, we decided to spend the afternoon at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens. It opened in 2008, so while I was still living in the area, but I didn’t know about it until he visited a while back. I quite like tiles, and the place is covered in them. It also incorporated all kinds of random things from plates and bottles to gates and chandeliers. The story of the artist turning a struggle with depression into something creative also resonated. Unfortunately it started raining as we were exploring the outdoor areas, but I did get to see all of it before the rain got too heavy.
More photos from Philadelphia’s Magic Garden here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/albums/72157694398936034/
It certainly rained a fair amount, but thankfully I didn’t end up too soggy for my trip home. I got to the airport on time in the late afternoon and was able to hop on my flight back to San Francisco. The flight reached cruising altitude as Passover was beginning in the east coast time zones, but I was flying west, so I got to watch the plane run away from the sunset for a few hours. I think technically that means Passover was delayed for me, but I did skip eating bread during the flight just to stay on the safe side of the sunset.