Back from Philly

My trip to Philadelphia was quite relaxing: it was cloudy and cold most of the time, so we had lots of encouragement to stay inside. Spring was springing, however, so we braved the cold and took a trip to Longwood Gardens. Longwood's grounds are beautifully manicured, complete with millions of bulbs, and they have some spectacular conservatories. I took a number of pictures, and will try to post some up in the days to come (I just got into town a few hours ago; what do you expect?)

The culinary highlight of the trip was, by far, getting an authentic Philly cheesesteak the first night I was in town: it was deliciously full of greasy thin-sliced beef, fried onions, and melted cheese food product. A good Philly cheesesteak is the one exception I'll make to my typical avoidance of beef, and I mourn along with Pharyngula that they're not available outside of Philadelphia.

The only bad thing about the entire trip is that my SO is staying in Philly for another 3 weeks to spend some time with family. I occupied myself on the flight home with grading; it's a good thing I brought a lot, because the meal was not enough to keep my interest for long:


Ignoring one additional small glass of tomato juice, that's all the food I got for the entire 5 hour flight. They did have lunches on sale for $10, but paying for airline food just seems wrong (and my SO's mother nicely stocked me up with snack bars for the flight).

Thanks to a lot of luck and SeatGuru I ended up getting a great exit-row seat on the plane, which more than made up for the meal. Here's a picture of my leg room:


My knee is in the lower-right corner of the picture, and the white square at the bottom is a standard letter-size manila folder (8.5x11") on the floor with a red pen clipped to it. I couldn't even reach the seat-back pocket in front of me without getting up. For those who care, this was row 21 seats D, E, and F on a US Air Airbus 321.