Philadelphia

My dad was born in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. However, last time I was there, I didn't find it to be the friendliest of cities. A woman literally tried to pick a fist fight with me in a McDonald's! Unbelievable! My trip over the last two days was luckily very different, probably thanks to staying in a beautiful hotel and leaving only to go to Kinko's, Wharton's campus, and dinner. The hotel took good care of us as well. I love chocolate covered strawberries. They are among my favorites of food groups (next to cheese tortillas, of course). When I got back to my room close to midnight last night, this is what I had waiting for me. It was much needed, as I stayed up until 2am working. I woke up at 7 and worked until now... almost midnight. And I still want to blog. Why? Strange... Anyway. My trip to Philadelphia was quick, busy, exhilarating and exhausting. The best part of my job is interacting with the students we recruit. It is truly rewarding. Also rewarding is having an excuse to eat at my favorite restaurant on the East Coast- maybe even in the country. I love Tequila's. It is a nice Mexican restaurant on Locust street recommend to me by someone I used to work for at McKinsey. I went a year ago when Mike and I went to Philadelphia for a weekend and loved it. I was equally impressed, if not more, on this trip. It was such a good dinner.

I stayed at The Rittenhouse Hotel @ Rittenhouse Square. It was a beautiful hotel. My room was twice the size of my apartment which made me both a little depressed and lonely at the same time. The chocolate covered strawberries helped though. I woke up this morning and although most of the snow that had fallen overnight had melted, it was still beautiful.

I seem to have left my brain at my apartment before I left. Here is a list of things I forgot:

1. toothbrush
2. toothpaste
3. tampons
4. underwear (just the bottoms- and I brought a skirt suit for Wednesday. Good thing I had black nylons! Yikes.)
   

#1 & #2 were easily fixed with a trip to Duane Reade right before I got on the train from New York on Tuesday. #3 wasn't discovered until I was IN Philadelphia. My colleague I was working with was actually in the same boat, so we made a trip to a drug store in downtown Philly around 11:30pm. There was an older man in the "feminine hygiene" aisle looking very perplexed and confused. I felt sorry for him & asked if he needed help. Probably a bad idea (I'm still a friendly west-coast girl at heart), but the 5 minute conversation that followed was too funny. "Well, she doesn't really speak English very well, but I think she wants pads. And she's BIG- she's TALL for an Asian woman.... No, those are not big enough. Wings? What are wings? Is that thick enough? I told you, she's large!" We finally found something he was satisfied with, and decided that he must have just picked up his mail order bride. It reminded me of when I was in Paris last spring with McKinsey. I had switched birth controls and it was wreaking a bit of havoc on my body, hence an emergency need of tampons. I had returned to my suite very late, and had no choice but to call the concierge desk and plead for help. It took about 15 minutes, with my (very) limited French and his (very) limited English to figure out exactly what it was I needed. Let's just say it was a very awkward conversation. #4 on my list... well. It couldn't be fixed. Oh well.

I got in two hours (broken up by intermittent blackberry interruptions) of "personal" reading thanks to Amtrak rides to & from Philadelphia. I finally started reading Stegner's Crossing to Safety and I am entranced by it. By the 2nd page I pulled out a pen and started making notes. I love it. It's narrator, Larry Morgan, says this: Though I have been busy, perhaps overbusy, all my life, it seems to me now that I have accomplished little that matters, that the books have never come up to what was in my head, and that the rewards - the comfortable income, the public notice, the literary prizes, and the honorary degrees - have been tinsel, not what a grown man should be content with. I certainly do not receive public notice or have a slew of awards under my belt. But I can relate to this state of existence. I feel like this today, this week, this month, like I am doing little more than existing. This existence consists of processes: bathing, eating, going to work, and picking up the dry cleaning. I have not had (or made) the time to do those things which make me alive, e.g. read my scriptures, go to the temple, volunteer, spend time with friends or curl up with a good book. The past couple of weeks have been so busy, but it isn't necessarily the kind of busy I value. There is certainly value to be found in hard work... I'm just a little drained. Alright. Time to go to bed. This has been all too random...