Greetings from Shawshank

Happy Memorial Day 2008! This weekend was fun. Major gripe though. Our landlord, Mr. Wurm, is a real busybody. He has admitted that sometimes he will just stop by our house while we're at work and look in the windows, to make sure everything looks OK. Well, the past few weeks he's really been increasing the volume of his 'drop bys'. And I know that he thinks if there is no car in the driveway, that must mean no one is home. Below is a picture of his truck in our street parking spot. He thinks there's no one home, but I am!

I apologize for the quality of the next two photos, but I was taking them through the screen door. There he is, roaming around our backyard! Yes, I know it is technically his backyard, but still.

Then he was chit chatting with the neighbor behind us for like 25 minutes! I think he saw me after this, then knocked on the back door. I didn't answer it. He eventually just left.

Moving on. Saturday our friend Bob had a party at his parents' house, who were in Florida. I made my new cookie specialty, chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. Everyone loved them. I also made regular guacamole, and a super yummy mango guacamole. I'm not sure why I didn't snap any pictures at the party, I'm sorry. Sean had a lot to drink, but I managed to get him home safe and sound. He was walking really unsteady. Picture Dan Akroyd's character in Trading Places, when he's stumbling around in the Santa suit. Kind of like that. But he went to bed right away, and was up before I was on Sunday morning, at 8:00am! He had a big day. Him, Brian, Brennan, and our friend Dan, went to the Mariners game at Yankee Stadium. I forgot to give them extra batteries, so they were really only able to take a few pictures. Sorry!

Apparently they had great seats, as you can see from this picture. Here's Ichiro! They were winning the whole game, but ended up losing 6-5.

And finally, here are some pictures from today. It was just beautiful out. We decided to head into Philly, to a great neighborhood, Manayunk. I love it there. It's very hilly, has cute shops, and lots of good restaurants. It's just nice to go into different areas of Philly besides North Philly. Below is a picture of the Banana Republic in Manayunk, Sean and I just thought the building was really pretty.

Sean suggested that we go to the Manayunk Brewery for lunch, since they had a deck. We managed to get the last table right by the water, and still underneath shade.

Our waiter sucked, but the food was good. And the beer was yummy! The raspberry lager I ordered was very fruity and refreshing.

Here's the view from our table. When you think of Philly, you don't normally think of a beautiful green view like this, but there are a lot of nice areas. Right now, it's very green, and very pretty.

A pretty church in Manayunk

Next and final stop. Eastern State Penitentiary in Philly, a famous prison built in the 1800's. They gave out headsets to listen to an audio tour, and you could just walk around, go inside the cells, etc. It was closed down in 1971, and it's pretty much the same as how they left it. Here's Sean in one of the common shower areas, pretending to soap up.

...Pretending to drop the soap.

One of the cells

A cute beagle...I forget his story.

A shot of me outside one of the cellblocks

Sean and I during the self-guided audio tour

A neat shot...

Al Capone's cell, where he stayed in 1929, for 8 months, sooooo plush compared to the rest of them!

There are all these white kitty cat statues around the prison. After the prison closed in 1971, it was inhabited by a colony of cats, taken care of by one man for over 20 years. They were eventually trapped, spayed/neutered, and returned to the grounds, where they all lived for the rest of their lives. Cute story! It was fun trying to find all the cats around the prison.


Here are some artistic black and white shots of Sean and I at the death row building. Understandably, we look very grim.

Well take care. We miss you all back home, and think of you a lot! Oh cool, Dan just asked Sean if he could have Joey's graduation party at our house. I think within the next few weeks. That will be my next project! Oh yeah, congrats to Alyssa, getting accepted to Western! Love ya!