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I guess it depends on what you consider fun. I do get depressed and lonesome and homesick without FO, so I don't feel like having too much fun.

We did go out tonight. We went to Jim's Steaks. That's about as close to our route back as I can get Google to do. We got Cheese Steaks at Jim's. It's this dinky little place, they only accept cash (like, it seems, most places here), and it has hundreds of photographs and autographs of famous people on the walls. Billy Joel, Bruce Willis, John Goodman, Mr. T, well, the list goes on. And it has just about the best cheese steaks you ever had.

We've only been walking since we got here. So, that walk helped me burn off at least some of the cheesesteak.

(Zooming out on that map) Wow, at that point, I could have just walked a little further to have ended up in New Jersey.

On the way back, we saw the Liberty Bell. It was late, so the museum was closed. Through the window, you can see it from two angles ... neither of which show the crack. Oh, well. It's smaller than I thought it would be. It's about the size of a small child. I was picturing some big Notre Dame bell the size of several stout men.

Regarding the walk, one person I was with remarked on how much of the city is concrete. The streets of course are paved, but even the blocks are all bricks. There aren't even any weeds, because even a weed has to start somewhere.


The highlight of the conference so far was the talk by the governor of Pennsylvania and the former mayor of Philadelphia. He started his talk with comments about cheesesteaks. He said to get a good cheesesteak, you need to use cheap, fatty, bad-for-you cuts of beef. You need to keep the grease from the grill with the onions when you put them on. And you gotta use melted, artificial, cheeze wiz, to soak into everything.

I've had three cheese steaks while I've been here (and am not sure of my capability to eat more) -- one yesterday, and two today. The first, from a street vendor (which I think had provolone cheese, not melted), the second (for lunch today) from a place next to the convention center, and the Jim's Steak one. The worst was from the convention center place, but it still might be better than what you can get in Ohio.

Empirically, I'd say you can tell the cheese steaks here are better than what you can get in Ohio because it you feel like you have a brick in your stomach when you're done, you can almost feel the impending heart attack and your body's cry for fruits and vegetables -- it's decadent for something so simple. And there's some meaty substance-y flavor-y dense -ness to them that you don't get in Ohio imitations.

Man, I hate hotel showers. I get out and feel no more clean than I was when I went in. I don't know if its low water pressure or what.

One member of our group is a vegetarian. I completely forget about that a lot, especially tonight. We walked two miles to get dinner, everyone was eating cheese steaks, and she had ... a sprite.

I think I might take the day off and go to the Art Museum. I thought about the zoo first, but the museum is a lot closer.

Pictures from my misadventure today.



From most angles, this picture looks like just a mass of feet squished together. So of course it's supposed to represent democracy of the common man.



Did Love Story take place in Philadelphia? Probably? I'm not gonna Wikipedia it.




Proof that Wawa isn't just something that only exists in Hulu commercials.



Catholic churches are always pretty fancy, but this is extra pretty fancy. Full.



Here's a statue. In case you can't quite make out the inscription, this is zoomed in:



So, Civil War generals were known for going around shirtless on a chariot flanked by tigers? It looks so much like him.



I don't know what the hell this is. I guess the boxes could represent caskets or something. The boxes spoke, but with ambient city noises it was hard to hear what they were saying.



For some reason, 19th street goes under the city. Or they built part of the city above 19th street.



I think this has a mundane explanation that it's viral advertising for a Sony movie. The weird thing was that I saw a similar sticker last night on a broken pay phone, where it was much less likely to be seen.



Since I was in the free library anyway, I figured I'd get a shot of a model of the place. You can even see 19th street going underground. Well, on the full version.



Here's old Ben Franklin. Full. By coincidence, I saw the Benjamin Franklin episode of The Office today. I guess The Office does take place in Pennsylvania. I'm almost done with the set! These darn comedies with continuity (like Arrested Development) are so addictive. I might need to get a movie or something to round out the week.



They had a Star Trek exhibit. Borg Queen on the left. If CB007 was here, we could have gone to see it. Then we could have seen the new movie in Imax.



Yeah, the gift shop sells stuffed dolls of Galileo. Though they look to me to resemble Sigmund Freud more.