Man I love this city

So I have this...quirk? gift? weirdness?...where I tend to really adore wherever I happen to be living at the moment. Before my family moved to Utah, I was so in love with Alabama and swore I would never leave. But then I adored Utah (and you'd pretty much have to tie me to a tractor trailer and drag me there to get me to live in Alabama again) and then Philly and then France, etc. etc. I'm typically fairly convinced that my place is better than other places in the same grouping (e.g. Philly > NYC, Lyon > Paris :)).

So there are these two dueling forces in me. One, the rational one, the one that understands and knows me, says that I'll love wherever we live in the future and will be convinced it's the best ever. The other one, the one that IS the one that the first one knows, is convinced there is no place better than Philly.

On that note, fall is one of my very favorite seasons in Philly and I'm so excited for it. Some reasons why:

a) The weather! I pretty much keeled over from joy and joyfulness today when I looked at weather.com and EVERY. SINGLE. day on the 10-day forecast showed a high temperature of 70-75 degrees for the most part and again EVERY SINGLE day was sunny, oh beautiful glorious sun. (Cleary I had to embed this in my memory.)

b) Everyone's outside again! I love watching the runners by Boathouse Row and going to Reading Terminal and Washington Square (way cooler than Rittenhouse).

c) I think everyone's in a happier mood when it's so lovely out. I actually think people in Philly are incredibly kind and I love how real they are - there's absolutely no pretense. But I think they get even nicer at this time of year. Case in point:

1) A couple of weeks ago, I was at Reading Terminal buying some produce. I was waiting for Dan to meet me there, so I figured while I was waiting, I'd wander over to the cheese shop. Now, I've bought cheese from here, I don't know, maybe three or four times. In any case, I had an idea for dinner that night and it called for Havarti so I was just going to use whatever was on hand, but I figured since I was there, I might as well get Havarti. So I taste it and like it so he's cutting me off some when he (Robert) says that they had already closed down the credit card machine for the day (it was just before closing time). I realized I had literally not one dollar bill with me, which was problematic. He told me that it was fine and that I could just bring it to him tomorrow. I tell him we're going on a trip the next day (why I was buying produce the day before leaving on a trip is only explainable by the celetial quality of nectarines) so he says it's fine, and that I could just bring it the next time I was there, he sees me there all the time. (Um, how nice?!) So I tell him thank you and he wraps it up and weighs it and it comes up to about $4 and he just hands it to me and says "Don't worry about it, it's a gift - enjoy your trip!" Um. He gave me CHEESE. For FREE.

2) The people at the Free Library are the nicest people on earth. Period. Not to mention its utterly awesome history.

3) Except for possibly the people who work at Trader Joe's. I think they're in a deadlock competition for Nicest Slash Most Helpful Service Providers of the Century.

4) We had a little incident with getting our (awesome and totally worth it, but easy for me to say because I wasn't involved in the situation) couch into our apartment. Long story short (that omits the part where the guy who brought it just left it in the doorway after trying to push it through multiple times and putting several holes in the wall but actually I just told you all of that anyway so I guess this really isn't the short version), we had to hoist it over the balcony with ropes. Dan and two of our incredible friends helped out, but it got stuck on the balcony of the floor below us. So they were trying to hold it in place while pushing it out to get it over. Then a guy calls up from the street (after many business suit-types had passed by) and asks if they need any help. They kinda look at each other and are like, yeah, actually, we do. So he comes up through the propped open door, tattoos and multiple canister-piercings and all, and helps pull the couch over the balcony. Just because. People are awesome.

Anyway, this has turned into a why-people are nice post. I'm okay with that.

Fourth

The only thing better than a 3-day weekend? A 3-and-a-half day weekend. :) Since the 4th was on a Friday this year, we got our summer half-day Friday on Thursday and it was glorious. It all started with me morphing into Super Errand Girl and, I am not even kidding, in 4 hours going to Wal*Mart, the bank, Macy*s, Williams-Sonoma, Linens 'N Things, Target, and Bed, Bath & Beyond. Now I know 4 hours is a long time to be shopping, but that's SEVEN places, people. The best part was that we actually made money off of it - I won an award at work for which I received $100 (deposited at the bank), and I spent a grand total of about $29 (about $3 not including Wal*Mart...you still think I'm making this up) since we had wedding gift cards at each of these places and we wanted to use them up in getting all our new house-y things for our open house next weekend. So a huge thank you to all who were kind enough to gift us something in honor of our nuptials. :)

When I got back to the city (finally), I met Dan, Nastya, and Lee at Reading Terminal where we bought approximately 7/8 of the produce place and several types of cheeses for the weekend festivities. That night, we went to Vetri for dinner. Vetri is widely lauded as the best Italian restaurant on the east coast, if not the entire country. Sooo we decided to check it out. OH MAN. Yeah, the portions were miniscule, but the FOOD. Oh, the food. It was magnificent. It was actually less pricey than I expected (~$20 for a pasta entree), so if we had each gotten two entrees, which would have been plenty sufficient, it would've been more along the lines of what I expected in terms of price. So anyway, the spinach gnocchi literally melted into a light, fluffy ball of goodness in my mouth, and the almond tortellini and eggplant ravioli were both wonderful, as was the golden onion crepe with truffle sauce. Whoo boy.

After dinner, we got some Capogiro and wandered over to Independence Mall, where the Philly Pops were performing patriotic music in front of Independence Hall. A Tommy J look-a-like read the Declaration, and the band played the tunes to each division of the services (veterans were asked to stand). Perfect 4th-eve activity.

The next day, we slept in, had Liz & co. drop by to say hi, and went to eat at Sabrina's Cafe, one of our favorite places in the city. Delightful. We went back over to Independence Hall and did a little tour with our wonderful guide, Larry, but sadly missed the giant block of cheese (I'm skeptical about it being donated for food...it was sitting outside the whole time...) and then went home and rested for a bit. Dan & I went over to the Art Museum to meet up with Liz & her friends for John Legend and awesome fireworks behind (and in front of!) the museum. Spectacular, despite the occasional rain.

Saturday was filled with cooking (I made apple scones and a zucchini/asparagus/basil frittata for brunch) and grilling (burgers/veggie burgers, corn, portabellos, other veggie skewers, and the hottest jalapeno poppers on the planet, with caprese salad, good cheese, homemade guacamole, etc.). Let's just say we created our first true feast. Thank heavens Nastya & Lee were there to help out. We went over and watched Fireworks and heard Boyz II Men (whoo!) in the rain that night. We were soaked.

Sunday deserves its own post, and this is getting really long. And the lengthiness is directly correlating to how badly written it is.