about a bit

there and back again.
Saturday morning sienna and i took off for the land of Philadelphia; late but happy to be off. we had been planning on leaving at 8 but because of late nights and broken alarm clocks and extensive directions from my father we were off by ten thirty. after accidentally looping through the nearby airport sienna and i made it to Mifflin Avenue, parked (victory!) met with Brae and her newly pregnant college friend Tacy, and headed straight for lunch. she took us to this nearby lunch place that was SO yummy. i wish i could take a few places away from philly and take them back to cambridge with me in my pocket and then set them up between the many downtown shops and nonexistant good cafes and coffee shops. i ordered a zuchini melt on wheat bread, no cheese! good and good for me! --it's a novel idea. they offered brae a vegan philly cheesesteak since she's got a narrow list of foods that don't give her a stomach ache. so no grease, no cheese, no meat. just tofu and soy cheese in a wheat wrap. is this still a cheesesteak?

brae took us around her town: first to a flea market that turned out to be more sketchy than anything else and we left that in a hurry. then off to a photo gallery with huge pictures of light bulbs and little men doing karate and candid shots of people on the streets: do you ever see these shots through your car window but don't have the camera or the guts to get the picture? this is always happening to me. i am filled with such regret when i pass an old many sitting on his sagging front porch with a threading baseball cap, a cigarette bobbing out the side of his mouth and this squinting into the world laid out in front of him. anyway, this photographer didn't capture this exactly but things like it; life with texture. i took two pictures of his work and will post them on my flickr promptly. do go see them.

a coffee shop (where they sold avacados off their shelf and cut one in half for me to eat up, right then and there with my lemonade) and a tiny, funky and incredibly stuffy gift shop followed. but the best part of the trip i think was stopping by healthfood store a couple blocks from brae's house to pick up some ingredients for the night's dinner. i'm not even sure what she made but it was noodles with peanuts and sprouts and yummy thai fish sauce. food like that makes me so happy and my stomach. and makes me realize that i'm definently growing up seeing as how sprouts, peanuts and fish sauce would be torture to a ten-year old. we all sat down (brae, sienna, tacy and me and annie, the woman brae is living with), letting our thankful legs rest from the days walk, and ate good food and talked about which art schools i should visit in august AND we didn't get an ounce lost on our way home! imagine that guys.