Charlie Says...

Friday night I went around the corner to the usual bar I go to. I met my friend Meghan for a drink or two. Oh yes, I should mention this weekend was my last weekend of my own. I have this new project with work that is traveling with monday night football so my work week is now saturday through wednesday for at least the next eight weeks. So I meet Meghan, she is there with another friend who i haven't met and some of his friends. She was a bit preoccupied with them, but it didn't matter because I fell in love at the bar. Well not really, but this one girl that goes there often I see her every so often but something about friday was different. We shared some glances and almost a smile. She was with another guy and a girl, which i didn't know if she was "with" the guy or the other girl was. In any case, of course, I didn't talk to her. For those of you out there that don't know, I'm the most socially "challenged" person of this millennium. So I'm sure i'll see her again and I'm sure i'll still say nothing, awesome, looking forward to it. So anyway. I call it an early night and head home because when the sun rose the next morning i was headed to philadelphia. One of my friends in boston has a job and he is doing a project in philadelphia, (side note, i will be typing out philadelphia every time because for some reason I hate "philly," another side note i really really hate the name phil, or philip). Also a different friend from boston is dating another of my friend's girlfriend's friend in philadelphia, still with me on that? So i head to philadelphia, which I've never been there before and I'm gonna see friends so I'm excited. I wake up, pack and leave, it's beautiful weather and I'm feeling good. I walk to the bus stop to head to port authority, still feeling good about life at this point, but how that will all change so suddenly. I'm waiting for the bus and it doesn't come, then i think well i'll get on the G train, but then i think well once i go down into the subway the bus is gonna come so i stick it out. So twenty minutes go by and i figure the bus is gonna come. I'm still waiting. I have a half hour to get to port authority and I'm still standing a block away from my apartment, great. So i get a cab, and of course i get in and look behind me and the bus pulls up right then. Whatever I'll deal. So I get to port authority and there's a line for my bus at least two bus loads deep. This has happened to me before. What the hell is the point in selling tickets to something if you're just going to sell more than you can. The purpose of selling a ticket is to guarantee the reservation of space for your person. It makes no sense the way the bus people do it. "Hey lets sell 200 people tickets to get on a 10am bus to philadelphia, best part is we're only gonna run enough buses to take 100 people, suckers." Honestly, cut the shit, i've got places to be. So back on track now. I get on the bus at eleven and we're off. Oh i definitely was the snoring guy on the bus ride down. I woke myself up because of a loud outburst of snore. Which is funny, but at the same time sad because my body was struggling to breathe. Ok fast forward. I'm in philadelphia. My friend evan picks me up and we head to the Mutter Museum (a Museum of Medical Oddities - ed. note). I've been interested in going to the Mutter for a long time. It was nice, I find early medical practices and history quite interesting and the actual building the museum is in is very pretty. From there we head to South Street, which is like the "hip" cool place. It was ok, just stores and other tourist kinda crap. I did notice a plethora of sex stores, mostly sexual attire and what have you. I thought it to be strange I guess philadelphia just has a really high demand for dental floss undies and handcuffs. Then my friends and i headed to dinner at a mexican place which was very good then we returned to the girl's apartment who my friend is dating. The apartment was amazing. She is paying less money than I am and she has this huge one bedroom apartment with laundry machines and a deck that is two to three times the size of my bedroom. Way to go New York. The rest of the night was filled with dessert and drinks. Sunday morning we were off to Eastern State Penitentiary. This was pretty cool. In the middle of philadelphia stands this huge castle looking thing that is the first ever penitentiary. It was pretty crazy and old and creepy. I thought it would be more creepy, but it was real sunny out, i bet if i were to go back at night i'd probably scare myself. So this thing is massive and old and run down. Some of the cell blocks you could go into, but they were still pretty run down, they basically let you go where ever it was safe and something wasn't gonna collapse on you. It was interesting although it's a prison and it's kinda what you would expect. Although for some reason all i could think about was the size of the cells and the size of my bedroom. So they basically built this prison different from our current prison system. The objective was to isolate prisoners for the entire time they were there. When they were brought in they were hooded and couldn't see anything and no one could see their face. And then they were put into their own cell alone. The cell was about 8x16 feet and then on the back through a door was their "backyard" as i thought of it but it was the outdoor section which was the same size of the cell (all of which is bigger than my living space). They never left their cell. There was a window in the wall which was used to send meals in. The cells were completely closed, all cement and stone. Also a fact i thought was cool was that the guards wore wool socks over their boots so the inmates couldn't hear them walking up and down the cell blocks. Anyways if you're still interested, this system clearly didn't end up working because the prison population grew and prisoners could no longer have their own cells and all that. But it was interesting, the whole goal was that a prisoner would be with himself alone for so long, that the only thing to do was reflect on themselves and learn what they did was wrong. So after the prison we went around philadelphia looking for stuff to do but most stuff was closed and then it was time to decide on dinner plans and then that got all screwed up because everyone wanted to do one thing but then one person didn't and everyone wanted to cater to eachother. Blah blah blah and so the night wasn't that fun we went to one place for drinks and then we decided to go bowling and waited two hours for a lane and still didn't get one then my ride and the friend who i was staying with didn't want to stay anymore so we left to another bar which only i was drinking because he was driving and i just gave up and wanted to go to bed because it just wasn't fun and i wanted to stay at the bowling place but since i didn't have the car or the power i was just along for the ride. Well that was philadelphia, next morning got up early headed to the bus station which was not such a clusterfuck as port authority and made it back to new york early. Did some laundry and relaxed for the rest of day. Although still wanting to go to that bar and hopefully run into that girl and look awkwardly at her and never approach her. Awesome. Well those are my weekends because from here on out i'll be working on the weekend. Although depending on how work goes they may make for interesting stories.