offensive and delightful

Wow. What a day. From start to finish. 

Thursday was my last day with Bodhi. So I went over in the morning, fed him some breakfast, threw the ball, and we bid a teary farewell. After that I got cleaned up, dressed up and Sharonie dropped me at the Atlantic City Bus Station for the 9:40am bus. To go from AC to Philly via NjTransit is $13.50....which is a deal considering how much the tolls have gone up, how bad drivers are, and how nice it is to sit on a chauffeured bus without a care! In an hour and a half I was sitting in Shawnie's van, once again being chauffeured around, en route to get VIETNAMESE for lunch. For a while we had been going to this vietnamese restaurant on Washington & 11th ( I believe that the name is Nam Phoung) . Wanted to mix it up, spread the lunch love around, so we went to the Vietnam Palace - right across the street from the Vietnam Restaurant {we've dined at both}. It was good. We split a Green Papaya Salad w/ Beef Jerky, and we both had Vermicelli {mine was the DELUXE - obviously - which had grilled pork, spring rolls, and shrimp:  Shawn had the vegetarian spring rolls on his. ha.}. I washed it all down with a Vietnamese Iced Coffee...obviously. Disappointed though because the coffee and milk was already mixed up and the coffee must have been pre-made. I gotta say, though that place was "nicer", I will never again stray from the tried and true Washington & 11th spot. 1: It's always packed, which means the food is not sitting around. 2: The second you sit, a big kettle of tea is placed on your table. Gratis - AND its pretty phenomenal. 3: Their iced coffee's are the real deal....with the 1/2 inch of sweetend condensed milk at the bottom of the glass with ice. Another glass with the vietnamese coffee press atop, let the rich, bold brew drip down. The way it should be. 4: Their Green Papaya Salad's dressing is made with fish sauce, which is salty as opposed to sweet {vietnam palaces' was way too sweet} and 5: ITS CHEAP. Atleast a dollar or two cheaper, everything on the menu. 

One of the stops was at the AIA {American Institute of Architecture} Bookstore & Design Center . It's totally a pompous shop, where everyone that works there wears black, has a very serious look on their face, and refuses to make eye contact. Robots. This place is basically across the street from Reading Terminal. Located @ 1218 Arch Street. The first time that I went to this bookstore it was with Shawn, my architect boyfriend, so he could buy a gift for a fellow architect. Apparently architects are so picky that they need their own store filled with acceptable architect gifts. Ha. They have some cool stuff in there. At Christmas that had some amazing ornaments, for only about $8 a piece. I bought several of them then, and also bought some cards. They carry this brand called Offensive + Delightful. HYSTERICAL. They are $4.50 a card, but they come in these great little manilla envelopes, the design is great, and the rhetoric is just so funny. They have a website: www.OPLUSD.com . On the website, the cards are only 3.75...so load up on these fabulous, offensive cards. Check it out. 

I almost got lost in a Kitchen/Cooking shop...filled with completely unnecessary cooking gadgets, all that I felt that I needed. Did you know that there are 4 different gadgets out there just for slicing and/or storing avocados!? HA. Shawn had to physically remove me from the store, and I didn't go silently....

Also along the way we picked up some great salt, homemade red wine vinegar, and 2 huge mangoes. We had an IKEA trip that I won't even get into. It was an endless trip, sucking every drop of energy that I had left in me. I got a lemon zester out of it though.... All of this left us exhausted so we parked the van, and napped in the park. After that we grabbed some caffeine, a bottle of wine and headed to the river -  where we would be meeting Shawn's students {the whole POINT of us being in Philly}. His students had teamed up with a class from Moore College of Art, and had some installations {and performance art} set up throughout Philadelphia. While we waited for them we snacked on tortilla chips and hummus, and sipped white wine. They arrived and over the span of the next 4 hours we trekked high and low, covering every inch of Philly. Some peoples projects had been taken down {did I mention that these projects were either on public property, or private - condemned buildings?}, and others required us scaling  barbed wire fences. It ended with a pizza party w/ Jazz and dancing under an abandoned railway {built in the 1880's}. To top it all off, Shawn and I dropped by N.3rd for a burger and beer. The place was cute, with great artwork on the walls. The burgers were pretty top notch (I got mine with bleu cheese, Shawn got cheddar cheese and jalapenos). Fries were delicious...all was well, except for Shawn's flat Lager. Oh well...you win some, you lose some. 

Loaded into the van around 11 to head home. I told Shawn that I would be part of the team and stay awake for the ride home, but I only made it over the bridge before climbing into the back of the van and passing out. I woke up when we were coming over the Ocean City bridge back home.  

What a great success.