Our Philly summer began on Monday, June 15th with our cross-country flight. We brought Zara long, since six weeks was much too long to leave her with a pet sitter, but I was really nervous about how she’d handle the flight. Most cats do just fine, Caligula even made the journey when he was quite old, but during one of our drives out to Mountain View during her tail injury period, she peed in the carrier. My hope was that incident was a one-off and just do to being injured and the stress of prolonged time in a cone. Still, I lined the carrier with pee pads and carried on paper towels and extra blankets just in case we needed to do some in-flight clean-up.
Thankfully, everything worked out fine. No accidents! She was pretty quiet too, I think she slept for most of the flight. I’ll also take a moment to mention that I had hoped to bring along a spare Sherpa cat carrier liner, but I couldn’t find the Medium size we needed anywhere. Once we arrived in Philly, I contacted PetWise and they shared that they aren’t currently available, but that they could ship me one for free until they came back on the market. Hooray! We now have a spare liner for our journey home, should we need it.
But on to our visit. I wish our first week in town had been quieter. We discovered some ants had started coming in via the second floor deck door (same thing happened last year) so immediately had to call the pest service to come out. The microwave we had fixed on our way out last time also started acting up again, so we had to call in a warranty claim, thankfully they came out the next day and there were no problems. Then on Thursday I got into a minor car accident, fortunately no one was hurt. I’ll talk about that once everything is settled, but it was all an incredibly jarring way to begin our stay here. I ended up taking the afternoon off from work on Friday so I could calm my nerves post-accident.
And then we could spend our weekend making the most of our time here.
Saturday morning we drove downtown and had pizza at a small pizzeria near the Penn Museum, where we had tickets for “Adventure Mode Activated,” a Minecraft-inspired workshop that afternoon. We ended up at Carters Pizza and Beer, where they had the Brazil World Cup game from the night before playing, and a bunch of board games! We played Sorry! while we waited for our beef pepperoni pizza to be prepared, and then enjoyed watching some of the game while we ate. It was a fun place.
After lunch I had planned to spend a little time at the museum before the workshop, but then started having second thoughts because I was worried the boys would get bored of museum-ing before the workshop began. Instead, we had 90 minutes to kill. You know… we’ve never been to Philly Typewriter!
Back in 2023, we all headed downtown to attend a type-in arranged by Philly Typewriter, and I’ve been a fan of them for some time. At the end of that event I had the pleasure of briefly speaking with the owner, Bryan Kravitz, and about his bay area connection. This time we finally got to see the shop! It started out as a regular visit, but then MJ got talking with Bryan while the boys and I poked around the shop, and once I joined the conversation he could see that I was a typewriter enthusiast, and offered us a tour of the basement!
The shop has an upstairs where some of the work is performed by the typewriter specialists in full view from the street, but downstairs is where they do some of the messier or more complicated work, and keep tools and hundreds of typewriters in various states of repair (or to be used as parts). Seeing this part of the shop was a real honor, and inspired Adam and I to clean up an Olympia I picked up at an estate sale a couple years ago. We managed to not buy any typewriters while we were there, but I was extremely pleased to hear that business is great, and they expected the blue IBM Selectric I was eyeing to be sold rather quickly.
From there we went to the Penn Museum, into the worst parking garage I’ve ever experienced, but thankfully we still made it in time for the workshop to begin. They had 2 hours booked for it, and it started in a classroom where the education guide set some expectations, and then it was time for her to bring a bunch of Minecraft kids around the museum to see how real life exhibits map to the experience we have in Minecraft.
The last time I was at this museum was in 2009, so I didn’t remember much, and it does seem like they’ve made some big changes. It all felt new to me! The guide first brought us all to see some gold weights and talk about gold and minerals used in ancient societies, and asked the kids about use of gold in Minecraft. From there it was over to an exhibit that had some obsidian, a very important material in Minecraft and the boys always ask a lot of questions to about it (especially because of it’s connection to lava, and lava is cool), it was nice to have someone else answering all their questions.
All the kids were getting a bit bouncy from sitting still at this point, so I was glad when we moved on to see the spectacular funerary ensemble of Queen Puabi, which has lapis lazuli! Lapis lazuli is used for enchanting items in Minecraft, so another important one there. I loved the story she told about Queen Puabi, so that was probably the most enjoyable stop for me. Our last stop was to see some armor from Etruscan Italy around 700 BCE. Minecraft characters use armor for a variety of things!
Back at the classroom, the kids got to learn a bit more about ancient civilizations and they looped in Mosaics as a topic because Minecraft has a very pixelated look to it and Mosaics are a bit like ancient pixels. So the craft that concluded the workshop had the kids armed with glue sticks and little squares of construction paper to make their own mosaic. We each left with a custom pin that said “I creeped around the Penn Museum” with a Minecraft-looking Sphynx. Love it. We spent a little time walking around the museum after the event concluded.
Our weekend continued with Father’s Day on Sunday. It started out with a really nice lunch with Grandpa, and then we drove out to Microcenter. MJ has been shopping for a monitor for the downstairs den/office area, so it was a nice opportunity for him to peruse some of the options. I managed to pick up of the official Raspberry Pi monitors that I’ve been eyeing for a while, and will come in quite handy if I manage to squeeze in some time to get the SBCs I keep here going again (one of the Raspberry Pis, and my RISC-V). The boys enjoyed playing on some of the computers they had on display, which is how they discovered some free online games that Adam later got going on the laptop we’re sharing here.
We also picked up a movie theater gift card as a Father’s Day gift so all of us can go out and see Toy Story 5 while we’re here.
It was definitely a mixed arrival week, but I’m glad we could end on some fun activities.