Philadelphia is my figurative (and may soon be literal…) second home. Visits are always filled with activities, events, friends and family. This trip was a considerably less structured. I flew in several days before the conference I was attending and stayed in my friend’s guest room, and didn’t take much time off from work, instead working from a couch most of the week with my little dog friend Blackie.
I did have some time for adventuring throughout the week though, taking a day off to check out The Science Behind Pixar exhibit down at The Franklin Institute with a friend. On our way down we stopped at Pudge’s in Conshohocken to satisfy my chicken cheesesteak craving. It hit the spot.
Then we were off to the city! The premise of the exhibit seemed to be trying to encourage youth into STEM fields by way of the creative processes and interesting jobs at a company like Pixar. As such, they walked you through various phases of production of Pixar films and have hands-on exhibits that let you simply play around with the themes of what professionals in the industry do. It’s probably a good idea to encourage interest, even if a museum exhibit can’t begin to tackle the complexity of these fields, as a technologist I agree that the work is ultimately fun and exciting.
But let’s be honest, I’m an adult who already has an STEM career and I’ve been a Pixar fan since the beginning. I was there so I could get selfies with Wall-E (and Buzz, Sully and Mike, Edna Mode, Dory…).
A few more photos from the exhibit here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/albums/72157671629547292
We had the whole afternoon, so I also got to see the Lost Egypt exhibit, which was fun to see after the Egypt exhibit I saw at de Young last month. We went to a couple planetarium shows and also got all the nostalgia on as I revisited all the standing exhibits. Like the trains. I love the trains. The Franklin Institute is definitely one of my favorite museums.
That evening I also got to check out the new Hive76 location. The resurgence of hackerspaces had just started when I left Philly, and while I was never super involved, I did host a few “PLUG into Hive” meetings there when I was coordinating the LUG and had friends at Hive. It was nice getting to see their new space. After dinner I had the amusing experience of going to catch Pokémon in a park after dark, along with several other folks who were there for the same reason. There really is something to be said for a game that gets people out of their house at night to go for walks and socialize over augmented reality. Even if I didn’t catch any new Pokémon. Hah!
Wednesday and Thursday nights I spent time with my best buddies Danita and Crissi. Dinner, drinks, lots of good chatting. It had absolutely been too much time since we’d spend time together, spending time catching up was just the thing I needed. I’ll have to make sure I don’t let so much time pass between getting together in the future.
More photos from various wanderings this past week (including dinosaurs!) here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/albums/72157671629567332
And then MJ and I spent Friday and Sunday on a secret mission before flying home. I’ll write more about that once it becomes unclassified.