Lemme tell ya, staying in sometimes on a Friday night is awesome! It doesn’t happen all that often, but I’ve just felt so beat up lately that this past Friday I decided it was full on “stay in” night. After grabbing a quart of water ice to mix with my 99Bananas that was it for me and the outside world until the next morning. The whole of my eve would be spent on the living room floor reading the entirety of Matt Wagner’s Grendel – or at least as much as I could before my eyeballs gave out.

Quick aside: I’m also writing something (I don’t quite know what it is yet) about all that I’m reading, like breaking it down mini by mini, issue by issue and telling what happened or how books link or what belongs where chronologically. What I’d wanted to do was put it up in pieces here but I think I’m gonna hold out until I’m finished and perhaps put together something really cool to read about the story history of my favorite character. We’ll see I guess!

Waking up on Saturday only served to prove how physically exhausted I must have been. It is really rare that I sleep past 9 in the morn, but here I was jumping out wide awake close to 11! Once Heather had finished getting ready it was out the door and into a lovely day we went. It felt like a long time since I was able to do my weekend exercise walking into the city and on this day when I had so much energy we’d end up doing both up and back! (about ten miles, maybe a little more/less) Eventually we’d discover this wasn’t our brightest decision of the day but that’ll come up later.

On our way up into the city I stopped off at Pop’s for a medium Root Beer water ice and we proceeded to walk straight up Broad Street, which is a surprisingly pleasant walking route. The sky was kind of patchy with clouds but after virtually two full weeks of rain, I’ll take it. We dropped in on the travel agent and pick up our Vegas info for the trip that we four Mouseketeers are taking. Next up on the walking tour was an awesome food/fashion festival that I accidentally happened upon this same time last year that was occurring again on the very day we were in the vicinity!

Having Walnut Street closed off from Broad to Rittenhouse is just awesome. The atmosphere was just so conducive to my having a wonderful afternoon. All along the street were tents set up from many of the direct area’s best eateries serving up affordable samplings of their wares. Music played all via DJs here and there along the pathway. There was a moderate-sized stage set up for a fashion show, again of the direct area’s best clothing stores, many of which aren’t franchises. Lunch was totally on the list, especially since I hadn’t been hungry when I awoke. Combine that along with the walk in a moderate heat (resulting in lotsa sweat) and I was ready to gorge myself on something decadently delicious. I’ll be honest, the sweet smell of BBQ and general grilling going on at tents set up by Table 31 and Alma De Cuba and others wasn’t helping me to easily decide where to go or what to eat. Had a genie been available, two of my three wishes would have been for lots of money and a stomach that wouldn’t hurt if I were to dine at every tent along the way.

As Pal Buzy and I were deciding on which tent we’d each eat from there were two beverage tents that drew our attentions. One was set up by this Japanese restaurant/sushi house that I’ve eaten at but can’t for the life of me remember the name of (they’re solid though, just can’t remember the name!). They had a sign stating “1 beer $3 / 2 beers $5.” Really, in pointing out the obvious, this is a sign that got a lot of people’s happy attention. Rare is it that you are allowed to legally walk around with alcoholic beverages in Philly and this closed off street festival was one of’em. We were handed our Yuenglings in little white paper bags and off we went once again. The heat, the throngs of people, the music and the heavenly scent of cooked meat in the air…never a more appropriate time to have a nice cold beer.

So speaking of cold beer, we happened upon a tent that wasn’t a part of any local establishment but was from the fine purveyors of Blue Moon Beer. They were there handing out all kinds of goodies from free Blue Moon bottle openers to coasters to…wait for it…FREE SAMPLES! Yes, as long as you provided valid ID and were of legal drinking age, you too could finagle yourself a few of the little bathroom-sized cups of tasty Blue Moon. Then came the surprise that the company is looking to pull a Sam Adams on the brewing world by creating seasonals. Since they were freebies you can bet your sweet Aunt Sally that I tried each of them and possibly more than once on my empty stomach. There were actually only two new flavors both of which are easily distinguishable just from their names: Honey Moon and Pale Moon.

Besides all the free swag and brews, what also got me giddy at the Blue Moon tent was that they were letting people paint. See, there were two artists there who had laid out the groundwork on what will become a billboard up in the city and with the paints there on site they allowed random commoners the experience of coming up, following the color key to the painting and freely putting the colors to canvas. As a writer, I’ve got to say that one of my dreams would be to have the ability to also draw my thoughts so standing there and painting the mural for about fifteen minutes was really satisfying. Afterwards I had to sign a release and put my signature on piece that’ll be blown up to accompany the mural so I’ll have to drive by so that I can see my name/logo all huge upon billboard that I helped to paint. Awesome!

After painting and drinking and quickly walking around Rittenhouse Square I had grown hungry. Heather tends to be hungry every ten minutes so it was nothing new for her. (I kid I kid…somewhat lol) I had decided that I’d be eating from the tent that had that largest line. Rouge had to offerings: a mega-sized Kobe Beef hotdog and delicious slider versions of their signature Rouge Burger: lovely beef on a Challah roll, caramelized onions and gruyere cheese…I had two of those babies for the insanely cheap price of seven bucks.

On the way back toward Broad I bought the next round of beers at the 2/$5 Japanese tent, this time changing over to the more exotic Tsingtao Chinese beer; again, another winning choice. Heather ended up getting the burger I originally was freaking out over at Nineteen at the Bellevue’s tent. That thing was a MEGA-burger and the bite I had was nearly as delicious as my minis. Oh if only I had the tummy room!

So now here is where our walking back to my house becomes a badly executed plan. See, we had tickets along with Cavs to see The Shining at the Ritz on a midnight showing. Initially, we planned on walking into the city and then coming back to my place to rest, possibly falling asleep for a few hours. This now became impossible with walking home since we got back at my house at 5:30 and had to clean ourselves up for Cavs to pick us up at near 8 to hit Olde City for some more dining/drinking fun at Buffalo Billiards.

I swear that I only fell asleep for maybe five minutes near the end of the movie. Maybe if the air conditioning in the theater hadn’t been broken and the movie not sold out so as to heat the room to the point of sweating while not moving…I’d had stayed awake the whole time. It was really great to see the flick up on the big screen since I didn’t see it the original time around. What shocked me though was that seeing it there with all those other people…it didn’t scare me at all, and especially not like it does when I’m home watching it either alone or with a friend or two.

Special kudos go out to Cavs who surprised me at Buffalo Billiards with his drinking a Pabst with a side of Crown Royal. My boy hit it big time old school!

Yep, another great weekend in a year that already has had many and we’re not even at the halfway point in the year! Soon’ll be Vegas and then soon after that I’ll be seeing one Tony Bennett and then Fleetwood Mac and maybe even a Country Kenny concert. Who knows what’ll happen this summer!?