Yikes, I haven’t posted in several days! On Tuesday I caught the hotel shuttle to the airport and took the R1 train downtown. I went to the National Museum of American Jewish History…or rather, I tried. The place won’t actually open till 2010, when they will move their collection into the new building. Meanwhile, all that’s there is an exhibit detailing how they’re designing the new museum. Interesting, but not what I had gone there for. So I wandered around Philadelphia for a while, went the long way to get where I was going, and then took the train back to the airport.

Tuesday night we had tickets for the Lights of Liberty show. We went to Kingdom of Vegetarians for dinner; I wasn’t really impressed by it…it was okay but not great. The Lights of Liberty show was okay too, I wish it had cost about half what it did, but it was cute. Our tour guide was none other than James Lewis, famous for his performance of “Go Down Moses” in the episode of American Idol that was the Philadelphia auditions.

Wednesday was the last day of A’s training so I had to check out of the hotel. After I did that there wasn’t really anything else to do, so I sat in the lobby for a while. Eventually I decided to drive downtown, where I found a couple of caches before coming back to wait for the training to be over. We then drove through terrible traffic to Trevose, where we had found a hotel for $70/nt. We ate and I dropped A off in the room before driving back to the city to meet two dear friends at an ice cream shop. (If I can find the entry, I’ll link to the story about the ice cream shop later.)

This morning we drove downtown again, this time over by the Amtrak station for a show at the Esther Klein Art Gallery. A is a perfume freak (her own words) and the show was called “Odor Limits.” I was not super impressed but she enjoyed it. Then we got on the road for Wildwood! We walked along the Boardwalk from Youngs Avenue north to the end of the boards, with stops along the way for SkeeBall, rides, and peering into shops. We had a lot of fun and we decided to stay tomorrow night as well! So we’re not leaving until Saturday morning, yay! We’ll get to see the Friday night fireworks and maybe go on the rides some more.

The reason we are house-sitting is because my in-laws are on the Grand Voyage cruise with Holland America. They are doing the “Grand South America and Antarctica” section, and they set sail from Fort Lauderdale about six hours ago. Yes, that’s a two-month cruise! They booked the least expensive room they could stand (not sure if it’s inside or oceanview, but definitely no balcony) and they packed as frugally as possible…which is not very frugally, if I know my mother-in-law. They are going to go to all kinds of places that are mythical to most people I know. They are not going to set foot on Antarctica, I think, but they are at least cruising by it. Even though I will be spending 11 days in southern California next week and 11 days on a cruise next month, I am still jealous. Who wouldn’t be?! Damn, two months off work…my father-in-law works for the government, I guess that’s how he can manage it. Unfortunately they started the trip by leaving their $2500 camera in a hotel in Georgia…I’m pretty sure my mother-in-law killed my father-in-law over that, but they arranged to have it shipped back to us before they set sail tonight, so I think their minds are at ease for now.

In other news, I lost a game of Scrabble tonight, damn!