another basement discovery

I have no idea what this is, but Greg found it behind some paneling in the basement.

bathroom update

Over the last few years, Greg has been slowly turning into an old man.  It's not that he has gone gray or hard of hearing, but that he's started shaving the old-fashioned way, with a non-disposable razor and badger bristle brush rather than a Bic and a can of Barbasol.  This stuff was his Christmas gift last year, and this year he got a terrycloth bathrobe and slippers.  

All that is to explain why he hung two hand towel racks in the bathroom--one is for a hand towel and the other is for his shaving towel.  I'm cool with it as long as he doesn't start referring to me as a broad or a skirt.

And here's the new light fixture above the mirror.

And very important as well, the toilet paper dispenser.  I much prefer this kind (slide-off) to the kind you have to squeeze and maneuver while you're indisposed.  

Penang

If you know me well, you know that my favorite place to eat is Penang, in Philly's Chinatown. So imagine how cool I thought it was that the local South Jersey paper did a review of Penang!  Well, then I read it.  I don't want to be the stereotypical hyper-PC grad student, seeking out racial, ethnic, or gender slights at every opportunity.  

But DUDE.  He said the waiters looked like NINJAS.  

I sent the author an email.  I won't reproduce it here because I tend to get long-winded and rhetorically self-indulgent when I write angry emails, but I'll let you know if he responds.

good art, good food

When I first came to the Philadelphia area for college, one of my first trips into the city was to take part in College Day on the Parkway.  On a Saturday in September, all of the museums located along Ben Franklin Parkway are free for college students.  It was such a great experience, especially because it coincided with the Steuben Day Parade, so as we walked up to the museums, we watched people in lederhosen shepherding ducks along Philadelphia streets.

The Ben Franklin Parkway is a wide avenue with City Hall at one end and the Philadelphia Museum of Art at the other.  It's lined with museums--the Franklin Institute, the Moore College of Art and Design, the Rodin Museum, the Free Library.  It's a very grand section of the city.  It's also lined with the flags of the nations, but as you can see, the United Arab Emirates flag is showing some wear.

Yesterday, Greg and I and two other couples met up at the Art Museum to go to the Frida Kahlo exhibit, which was a nice break from working on the house and on papers.  The exhibit was really interesting--they displayed a lot of photos from a private collection that had never been exhibited before, as well as, obviously, many of Kahlo's paintings.

I'm no art critic, so I won't try and make up some kind of uninformed review of the exhibit, but I will say that one interesting element of the exhibit was that the walls were painted really bright purples and blues.  I'm only used to seeing art displayed on clean white walls, so the colors were interesting.  Either it was a really cheesy way of recognizing the "exotic" "vibrancy" of the Mexican artist, or it was meant to evoke Frida's house, the Casa Azul, which was painted in these kinds of colors.  

I'd like to give the exhibitors the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't cheesy, but the gift shop that the exhibit dumps you into seriously undermines that reading.  Frida prints!  Frida postcards!  Frida notebooks!  Bright paper Frida flowers!  Frida umbrellas!  Frida jewelry! Alas, I didn't see any Frida shot glasses.  I guess that would be considered tacky.

After the exhibit, we had reservations at a tapas restaurant called Tinto.  (Greg and I decided to count this as our anniversary gift to each other for last year, since we had celebrated by me cooking tilapia and green beans, which I cook roughly once a week.  In other words, it had been nothing special, so we used it to assuage our guilt about going out to such a fancy place.)

Tinto's chef is considered one of the bright lights of the Philly restaurant scene (wow, that sounds sooooo lame for me to write that, sorry) and the food did not disappoint.  We ordered the Chef's tasting, which meant we didn't have to decide what we wanted.  They just kept bringing food!  At one point they cleared our plates and we thought we were done, but then they brought new plates and several more dishes!  Most of the people at our table thought that the duck wrapped in serrano ham and served on a slice of baguette with blue cheese and a cherry was the best, but my humbler palate was delighted by the mini crock of black beans, sausage, and braised cabbage.  There was also a dish that was basically really fancy tater tots.

Greg and I are such dorks that on the way home, we stopped at Blockbuster and picked up the movie Frida.  I had seen it before, but Greg hadn't.  All in all, it was a totally indulgent, educating, and appetizing day.  And now it's back to work!

basement treasure

We really haven't had the stamina or the financial wherewithal to address the basement yet.  The original listing called it a finished basement, but what that meant was that someone, many years ago, stuck up some paneling against the dungeon-like stone walls.  It's really dirty and shoddily done.  We plan to refinish it at some point, but it's not a priority.  However, we realized that we should probably at least try to clean it before filling it up with our junk. Greg attacked one of the closets today.  He pulled the paneling down to reveal some haphazard insulation, mouse bait, piles of dirt, and, oddly, the painting pictured above.

cool product

As I pointed out in a post last week, we have lots of leftover paint.  More importantly, we have lots of half-full or less-than-half full gallons.  We don't want to get rid of it because we'll need to touch-ups every now and then, but the gallons take up a lot of space.  Luckily, Greg discovered these really cool little tubs.  You can fill them with leftover paint, and the top has a brush attached so that when you do touch-ups, you don't have to dirty a brush.  Best part: they cost only $2.

Big week for PA

(Disclaimer: This post mentions politics, but it's not political.)

As you probably know, Pennsylvania hosts its primary Tuesday in the hotly contested race for the Democratic nomination.  It's been fun to see the city so engaged--Mayor Nutter was on the Colbert Report!  Greg and I went to see Obama speak last night, and it was quite a feeling to be sandwiched in between Independence Hall and the National Constitution Center, surrounded by 35,000 people who are excited and hopeful about the future.  I should probably say that we went to hear Obama speak, because we were too far back to actually see him.

Below is a picture of Independence Hall.  This building has recently taken on new meaning for me because I'm training for a new job this summer.  I'm going to be a tour guide for the Philadelphia Ghost Tours!  I can't even explain how excited I am about the job, and everyone I mention it to seems excited as well.  And then they threaten to come see the tour, which dampens my excitement and makes me nervous.  I'm still in the early stages of training--I've only memorized one of the stories--but it's giving me a whole new appreciation for Old City.