Day 1 - Philly

So, this morning started off bright and early at 4a.m. Got up, took showers and got dressed, then said goodbye to the small ones... warning them if they gave Jill any trouble, there'd be hell to pay. I double and tripple checked all of my goods, piled them into Jill's car then we headed out.

Jill and I had decided we'd go eat breakfast together at the ever-healthy Wafflehouse before heading to the airport... so we went and had some Hashbrowns, eggs and bacon. It was good, and it gave us some extra time together. We drove thru the dreary rain until we finally hit Hartsfield. It wasn't raining extremely bad, but I was really worried about Jill driving home (she doesn't drive good in the rain), but I tried to not let it show that I was worried ;) We said our teary-eyed goodbyes, then I headed into the Airport... to go wade thru security, departures and baggage all by mahself.

Security - I got "randomly" selected for additional screening; but it was random my-butt. In the line there were 13 people, 12 of whom were African-American (all of the TSA staff was African American as well). So I have to pull off to the side, empty my pockets of everything ('including lint' - his words) and get patted down and step into some crazy vertical MRI-esque machine to be rescanned. Everything apparently checked out clean and I was able to go to my departure gate... At departure, I just sat there and listened to the IPod (downloaded a couple of free app's for the flight) until my zone was called.

Flight - They should've stenciled "Vomit Comet" on the side of our plane. I'll give Capt'n Buttface McGeee (our pilot) the benefit of the doubt that the weather sucked at Atlanta. He still threw us around like.. I don't know what. I think he must have JUST gotten his Junior Flying license this morning, cause our take-off was like some kind of sick joke.. but it was beautiful compared to our landing. We had a couple people in our plane, I think, get sick and charged for the bathroom. While the weather might have been an excuse for our pilot getting off the ground; Philly was a brisk 35 degrees with little to no wind... there's no reason our plane should have *bounced* when it hit the ground.; Buttface McGee was screaming down the runway too, and just about Jerked us all thru the windshield with as much brakes as he had to use to get us to stop. (even one of the stewardesses made the 'wheeeeeeeeew' face).

Philly Airport - Philadelphia smells like an armpit; there I said it. The airport was nicer than La Guardia, but not as nice as Harts-Jacks. I sat around in the airport for about 45 minutes waiting on the shuttle... everyone seems pretty nice; but everyone's just going about their own business, doing there own thing. It didn't seem too dirty or anything though. My shuttle finally arrived and I met Frank. Frank was a really cool, down to earth, no BS kind of guy... he loves Philly, and told me if I went North of Philly to buy crack, that I might get shot; Always a good tip. Frank told me all about the history of Philadelphia and how now was a good time to be a Phillies fan. After about 15 minutes of hearing about Ben Franklin and the World Series Parade, we picked up Henry at the Amtrak station. Henry was an awesome guy; he was in the mortgage broker business for 17 years, but with all the recent stuff he's closed his mortgage business and now works for AT&T's Business-to-Business group. We had a really good time talking about all the crap going on, with not only mortgages, but the housing market, insurance... everything. Had a really good time and it made the time pass really quick.

Hotel - The Raddison is right on the outskirts of Valley Forges Natl. Park, which is pretty.. and about 3 minutes drive from the King of Prussia mall (2nd largest mall in the country). Unfortunately though, that's all thats around here. The room is pretty nice.. I mean, hotel rooms and fairly standard, right? This has a SleepNumber bed though, which is cool. I'm on the 11th floor and my balcony looks over the front courtyard / entrance. It's not bad really.. there's, 3, I think, restaurants in the hotel, so that'll give a little variety.. I'll probably go to the mall and find a restaurant for dinner though. I already saw a Ruth's Chris, Magianno's, Cheesecake Factory and Chilli's... and the hotel apparently runs a shuttle every 30 minutes to the Mall.

Anyways; that wraps up everything so far from this morning. I'll try and post up a couple of pictures of the room or something in a little bit!

5:30 update - so my laptop won't play WAR; this is gonna be a reeeeally boring week =/