So Penny and I have been in Philadelphia for a couple of days now. What a great city. I love all the narrow, one-way streets lined with narrow brick houses. I also love all the murals everywhere. The city has such a great sense of history, while at the same time seems youthful and exciting. Definitely goes on my list of places I could live.

Our trip didn’t start out so hot though. Our flight from Seattle was delayed by 3.5 hours due to fog (I know!?). Of course, that meant we missed our connection in Chicago. The extra time in Chicago wasn’t too bad, though. We had a great, inexpensive breakfast in the airport. I was really surprised at how much tasty food $5 can buy at Midway airport.

Anyway, we ended up getting to Philadeplhia like 8 hours late. That’s effectively one day less to see the city and visit with Carmen. We have managed to vistit the Franklin Institute where we checked out a Titanic artifacts exhibit and walked through the giant heart. Just tonight we had cheesesteaks at Geno’s in South Philly (about two blocks from where Carmen lives). We also walked down the oldest, continuously inhabited street in America and visited Franklin’s grave. In a moment, we’re going to go have some very delicious chocolate bread pudding with icecream at this great diner (Silk something or the other). We had the same thing Sunday night and now I want more.

Tomorrow, we fly down to Charlottesville, VA to see my family. That should be a lot of fun as I haven’t seen most of them for around 3 years. My parents did come out and visit for Penny’s graduation in June of 2003, but I haven’t seen my sisters, grandparents, and others for 3 years. It should be a nice visit.

Anyway, must go for now. I’ll try to update from Virginia. If not, I’ll post when I get back to Philly.

Not really. I’ve just put everything off until the last possible minute and now I must do it all practically overnight. I’ve got a Chemistry final tomorrow and I haven’t really been to class since the last exam (prior to which, I’d not gone since the first exam)! Much to study, much to learn.

Sad thing is, all the people I know who really studied for the last exam barely did better than I did. The mean and mode were around 41%, so my crappy little score wasn’t all that bad. I still have to pull off a decent grade this time - at least above the mean. I’m feeling unjustifiably confident I can do that.

Meanwhile, Penny and I are preparing to make a nice trip back East for the holidays. First, we’re going to visit my friend Carmen in Philadelphia (Her boyfriend Alex will unfortunately be back in SF at that time). Then we’re going to fly south to Waynesboro, Virginia to visit my family for Christmas. After a week there, we’re heading back to Philly and then over to New York for a few days of new year’s fun (six of us are going). We’ll then spend another day or so in Philly and return back here to Seattle a day after classes start back. Whew! I really can’t wait.

Seems I’m experiencing a re-emergence of an old problem… insomnia. I used to suffer from this all the time, but it had mostly gone away since I started at UW. I suppose I was just exhausted all the time and generally satisfied. Given my current lack of interest in school, I’m sure it’s just a sense of displacement that’s keeping me up. I feel a bit like I’m in limbo. I’ve got a million things I’m supposed to do but not one of them is interesting. On the other hand, there’s a million things I’d like to do but I can’t bring myself to do them without feeling guilty for blowing off the other stuff. I sure hope this passes soon so I can enjoy my trip back east and get back to normal for Winter quarter. I miss feeling excited about stuff.

So my blog has been seriously overrun by some kind of comment-posting spambot. Funny thing is, the comments are actually pretty interesting. I assume someone wrote a script that checks for keywords and then posts a “relevant” comment. Of course, they include a link to some online gambling site at the end. Pretty neat trick, really.

I’ll probably leave the comments up for a while, as they’re kind of funny (and it makes it look at first glance like someone actually visits me here). Eventually, I’ll probably get overrun and have to block anonymous posts - which sucks. Until then, enjoy the wisdom of such fine users as ‘texas holdem’.