PHILONYE in review

Hey-o, Tom here, writing to you from my tiny cubicle in the first row on this, a NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING FOR OUR DEAR PRESIDENT GERALD FORD, at work, after a harrowing nine-hour drive from Philadelphia to Boston.

:: Special warning for New Yorkers ::
Do not take the George Washington Bridge. The traffic.
It is very bad.

I'd like to talk about all the wonderful and magical things that happened in the City of Brotherly Love this past PHILONYE, but fear I will not have the space, and must therefore settle for a few highlights. Also, I have no pictures. Please see Adina, Donny, and Felecia, for your visual needs.

The weekend began Thursday in the late morning when I skipped out of work way early and used MS Outlook's Delivery Options to send an excuse for cutting out early eight minutes after I'd left (brilliant, right? I thought so).

Having secured a few extra hours of pre-PHILONYE vacation I proceeded to play Wii Sports the entire afternoon. On the first swing of the first golf hole my follow-through carried my hand into the spinning blades of the ceiling fan.

Don't worry I'm fine.

The ceiling fan is not.

Also the Wii is ok. I know you are all worried.

That afternoon I packed, called John and Feleica to schedule logistics, spoke to Donny to get directions, and slept.

Friday morning I catapulted out of bed (I had a catapult installed last week) and into the shower, double-checked I had packed my phone, charger, toothbrush, (I had), did not double check that I had packed my razor or shaving cream (turns out I hadn't), and hit the road.

I picked up John and Felecia in Brighton and proceeded to blow through the very first red light we came to. John and Felecia laughed all the way to the Mass Pike.

The ride down was uneventful (for me - I forced my passengers to listen to my music the whole way to Moscow, PA including an entire album of Judas Priest, the new Beatles Love, and most of my Fifty Top Songs of 2006, which you readers may recall seeing here in ten-song installments).

When we arrived in Scranton we looked for The Office and didn't find it, and looked for Donny's exit and didn't find it (Donny told us to take exit 3. We surmise that he meant the number on the exit looked like a "3." It was actually exit 8).

Once ascertaining the proper route to Donny's homestead we were back on track and arrived without incident, and having made excellent time on the highway, quite early. We watched The Blues Brothers for a while, then got back on the road.

On the way from Scranton to Philadelphia we listened to the Beatles Love again, much to Felecia's chagrin.

John also tried to hook up his iPod and play Spanish songs, but we were having none of that.

When we arrived in Philly we parked the car (no small feat considering the one available spot outside Adina's apartment had a giant mutant car-eating shrub leaning into it), unpacked, and played Taboo, and then mafia for eight straight hours. Then slept.

The next day we did a big lunch at a sushi place (my first sushi ever, btw). I had a tuna roll and a California roll. The waitress was not great, but did take a picture of the whole group which was nice.

The group, at this point, was about eighteen people.

Later that day we had a big dinner at an irish bar. I had loads of potato dishes (potato soup, french fries, mashed potatoes on the side of a turkey sandwhich on a potato bun) and it was amazing. The waitress was very nice (though she did bring us a couple of Coors Light drafts when we asked for Sam Adams Winter Ales, but she swapped them, and mistakes are easy to make when the group (formerly of 18 people) at this point was the size of a small army battalion).

On the walk home from the bar one of our members was "free walking" and managed to hop-on, hop-over, spin-on, and tap a good deal of UPenn property. He also snapped the supports of a six-foot steel railing outside the Administration building and knocked it into a flower bed. Then we sang Disney songs.

When we got back to Adina's apartment we (again) played mafia for eight hours. Maureen was mafia. Every time. Donny said the chances of that happening were one-in-eight-hundred-twenty-three-million. Approximately.

Sunday we played mafia and Pit. Nobody wanted to play my stock-market-themed game (except for Steve), but then we played a round and they were all like "Holy crap! This game is better than Mafia! There's yelling and action and it's the best game ever!"

At least that's how I remember it.

The Philadelphia Eagles clinched the division when the Lions beat the Cowboys, and the city was all about green-and-silver.

Sunday night we all went out to dinner at a lovely Thai resturant, drank wine, made predictions (Someone will do the Running Man; Jackie and Steve won't get kicked out of the bar; Mo and Tom will get us kicked out of the bar; Donny will get drunk and start kissing everybody; and so on), and headed over to the Fado's for NYE festivities.

There, we had a great waitress. Her name was Amy and she was on the ball. Within fifteen minutes she had down our names, what everybody was drinking, had cleaned up three spills (it was only eight-thirty) and by the end of the night had posed for pictures with at least four of the group.

There was dancing and shouting, and Green Bay beat Chicago, and people got really drunk.

Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve has nothing on PHILONYE.

After the New Year's celebration and a few more dances we headed back to the hotel. I ended up in a cab with a drunken cabbie who made a stop to pick up beer, and expounded his view that God is a racist the whole way back to the hotel. He also ran two red lights, went down a one-way street the wrong way, and, did I mention, stopped for beer with us in the cab. It was hilarious.

Monday morning we woke up, went to Adina's apartment, and played Pit, and mafia. Then we drove Sam to the airport, and Tom, Mo, and myself drove home. Via I-95.

Don't take the GWB.

-tgme