A lovely day reading, eating, napping, people-watching and judging, dog-and-baby-chasing in Rittenhouse Square.
But this only works on the buddy system, so as to protect against the crazies who plop down in the grass uncomfortably close to you and start cackling to themselves.
… sends me an email tonight with this subject line:
And here I am thinking it’s going to be a nice photo from my graduation this weekend, the culmination of 4 long years of mental exertion, an event which my parents drove 7 hours to attend, an event that was heavily-documented in pictures.
But the attachment was actually this:
I very begrudgingly rolled out of bed at 7am today to attend the first of two graduation ceremonies. I am, however, much more eager to wake up to 4:30am alarms to watch Real Madrid play.
It’s been an exhausting day, with another early-morning ceremony tomorrow. And yet, I’m waiting for this RM-Mallorca match to download.
I went to Koch’s Deli, this hole-in-the-wall Jewish eatery, for a take-out dinner today. I’ll capture how great the experience was with this: the owners refuse to open a food truck closer to campus, even though they’re trying hard to attract a wider Penn-student clientele, because a mobile preparation space would compromise the freshness and quality of their sandwiches.
And this: the preparator was shaving off thick slices of roast beef and turkey and ham and trying to get me to sample the meats, but when I told him I’m a vegetarian, he retracts his fistful of (admittedly) delicious-smelling animal and bellowed, “THAT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE SMOKING WEED.” So he fed me samples of pepper jack, garlic, and munchee cheeses instead. And called me “Weed Lady” throughout the rest of our conversation.
It took him about half an hour to make two sandwiches (again, because nothing was frozen and he was putting fresh-cut slices of bacon to simmer in the oven slooowwwly)… but as I was munching on cheese and pickles throughout, I was practically getting free appetizers along the way to my delicious veggie burger. What a nice, nice man running a nice, nice deli. I promised him Koch’s Deli would be my first stop should I ever break my vegetarianism (and he referred to breaking this meat fast as “giving up your virginity” which is weirder in print than it was in conversation, I promise - and it also looks like a double entendre all typed out and stuff but it’s not like that, it isn’t).
Now that I’ve survived the hard parts of this finals period… it’s time to WORK THE FUCK OUT to lose those pounds I’ve traded for GPA points (alas, it’s hardly a 1:1 ratio).
But not until I’ve had my celebratory froyo-lathered-in-lemon-cookie-shit
that rush of adrenaline when you sneak an overdue book out of the library
