Trip First
This Christmas there are quite a few books on my Christmas list (Sports Guy, Al Franken, 700 Sundays) which is funny since I have a pile here that I want to read yet don’t (these include 2 David Sedaris books and Moneyball). As far as those Christmas books go the Sports Guy’s book, Now I Can Die In Peace, was way at the top of the list. When he announced another leg of his book tour and it was stopping in Philly I knew I had to go. Plus, really, what else would I do?
The book signing was scheduled for 5:30 (or 5:00 depending on what site to believe). I checked with Lindsay and of course she had class all day, if the signing was the next day we would have been able to do something for the day, such as finally getting to the Franklin Institute for that exhibit. So I took an afternoon train into the city hoping to make it to Borders before 5, if it didn’t start until 5:30 who cares? Time can easily be wasted in a book store, even for me. The good old R5. I hadn’t been on the train since my last day at GSK, over 2 years ago. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t remember every single stop, but that was more of a concern on the way back. You don’t forget the Center City stops. I wound up getting to Borders a little before 5 and the place was packed. There was masking tape running it some crazy pattern winding through the isles. The signing wound up starting at 5:00 meaning bordes.com was right and The Sports Guy’s own page was wrong. It took me about 45 minutes to get up to the plate. I didn’t have anything clever prepared he just asked what to sign and how I was feeling about the current Philly sports scene. He wound up signing “Hope there is a sequel for the Phillies” since I said to say something about our curse being over. Here is what he put in his column about the signing:
At my Philly signing on Wednesday, I couldn’t believe the body language of the locals — signing a sports book for these poor people was like signing a romance novel for Jennifer Aniston right after Brad and Angelina started dating. You can’t even imagine how many people asked me, “Can you sign it, ‘Maybe this will happen to the Eagles’ someday?’” How can Philly have no titles over the past 22 years, yet the Florida Marlins won two World Series titles in the past eight years alone? How does that make sense?
After that I called up Lindsay and found her having dinner with her friends only a few blocks away. She took me to NYPD Pizza, which I find as a very strange name for a pizza place, not exactly sure what angle they are going for with that. We went back to her apartment and chatted for a while. Her place is really nice, she has it made. Her own room, nice place, classes a block away, and the whole city right in front of her. With the train station down the street it can’t get much better. Her friends all seemed like a lot of fun and one of them even went to UD which was a very random encounter.
Trip Second
This one had a little less planning. Sunday morning I got a call that my neighbor wasn’t going to be able to go to the Eagles game and I could have his two tickets. I was pretty excited but also had a feeling it was not going to be easy to find someone to go see a lousy team in cold weather. People didn’t pick up their phones, didn’t respond to IMs and came up with weak excuses (some were valid). Buck said that he would go so I was all set. Mike came back about 20 minutes later very upset because he hasn’t been to the Linc yet and had been trying to get tickets all year. After the game I got these messages from Mike:
did i tell you that i hate you
that was an awesome game
you need to telepathically communicate with me next time
instead of im’ing
anyway, hope you had fun
As for the game is was really good, except for the loss. They stayed competitive and wound up tied at the end of the 1st half. They Giants got ahead in the 2nd half and I thought the team was done, but they fought back and tied it up. McMahon’s fumble in OT set up the winning field goal. Some facts about my two trips to the Linc, the first being 2 seasons ago: both games went to OT, both lost on a FG as a result of a turnover in OT, Moats had 2 Rushing TDs, first time that happened since the last game I was at when Duce had 2 TDs. Weren’t they fun?
A few pictures from the game, if you saw the pictures from 2 years ago, these are exactly the same except the Giants are on the field instead of the 49ers.
