Last week Kathy & I had our anniversary.

For our anniversary last year we took a trip to Jamaica, where we both got deathly ill, and Kathy had the worst part of it during the trip home, making for a thoroughly miserable bus ride, airport visit, and flight home.

This year, we're both pretty busy this month, so no time to take a trip. We decided instead to take a long weekend at home, and do lots of silly touristy stuff here in Philadelphia. But the curse nearly caught up with us anyway.

Day 1: Everything's just fine.

Friday night we had a fabulous dinner out at our favorite Melting Pot restaurant. Very lovely, and nothing went tragically wrong with that one.

Day 2: Start out running.

After a morning of lazing around the house and watching Charlie & Lola cartoons, our Saturday adventures began with the journey into Philadelphia. We wanted to go for maximum touristy flavor, so as we waited for the train into center city, we got out the camera and took pictures of sitting around at the train station. We got on the train and started moving.

"Hey hon, do you have the camera?"

"No, you had the camera. You mean...?"

Oh crap. Must've left the camera on the bench at the train station.

On a Saturday, these trains run about every 20 minutes. The stops are all about a half-mile apart. If we get out at the next station, we could probably walk/run back to our station, and (assuming the camera's still there) we could hop on the next train and still (barely) make it to our 3:00 tour in the city.

Start running. Or rather, jogging. Or rather, stumbling uphill in a slightly-faster-than-walking gait.

The first half of the journey back home is all uphill, for about a quarter-mile. Jogging & wheezing soon gave way to walking & wheezing, but we eventually got back to our starting point with about 10 minutes to spare.

I came to the bench where we'd been sitting. No camera.

A guy approaching the station sees me looking confusedly at the bench. "Did you leave a camera here?"

"Yes."

"We found it, and figured we'd hold onto it and put up a sign at the station, rather than just leave it lying around. We live in the first house right over here, and my wife was actually just in the process of making the sign. Hold on, I'll run back and get the camera."

He's carrying a folded-up baby stroller, and was visibly on his way to meet up with friends on the opposite platform, waiting for a train in the other direction. He jogs back up to his house, stroller still in hand. He's in the house for a minute, then comes back out with the camera.

He hands the camera to me and goes running off again, because by now his train has arrived and is waiting on the opposite platform. Fortunately his friends are over there to hold the train for him, but he still has to run down the path, through the tunnel under the tracks, and up the stairs on the other side, still carrying the stroller, to get to the train that's waiting there.

Way above & beyond the call for an act of neighborly goodwill.

So, friendly neighbor guy (I never did get his name) got on his train, and a few minutes later we got on our train (with a firm grip on the camera this time), and we continued on our mission. Gotta remember to write him a thank-you note...

Day 2, continued: Quack.

For the anchor day of our tourist weekend, we went for the ultimate cheesy tourist event, the Ride The Ducks tour, where you ride in an amphibious bus/boat, first around the streets of Old City Philadelphia and then down a stretch of the Delaware River. Upon boarding, you're issued a little plastic duck-call toy, and you're encouraged to quack on various occasions throughout the trip.

On cheese, it did not disappoint. Captain Fred can break out enough embarrassing puns & juvenile jokes to put any father of middle-school children to shame. I resisted the temptation to answer any of his riddles about "quacking up" or about exactly where the Declaration of Independence was signed ("At the bottom!"), but I finally gave in & answered the very last one on the drive back to the visitor center: "They had to build this brick wall around the cemetery. You know why they had to put up the wall?" "Because people were *dying* to get in!" I swear, I was Captain Fred's best friend after that. I'm not proud. :)

Day 2, continued some more: Poissons de poison.

After the tour, we wandered around center city for a bit, and ended up at Caribou Cafe for dinner. It's kind of a fancy place, but they were nice enough to let us in with our jeans & sneakers and no reservation, probably because it was still early, before the prime-time dinner crowd would arrive.

On the window of the restaurant, there's a sign for "Steak Frites, Escargots, Poissons". So we decided to get all 3. Escargot for an appetizer, then Kathy had the Steak Frites (steak & French fries, basically), and I got the featured special of fish. The waitress introduced it as "escolar", and when I asked what that was, she said it's also known as "Hawaiian butter fish" or "walu". It sounded interesting, and presented well. Everything was delicious.

For dessert, we went to Naked Chocolate Cafe for some very intense "drinking chocolate". Not so much like your average American hot cocoa, but more like a chocolate bar melted into a cup. About midway through my 6-ounce chocolate, I had the distinct sensation that I had drastically overdone something. It felt like the same reaction I have to cigar smoke. Very uncomfortable, and very much wanting to stop whatever it was that may have brought me to this place. So I left half of the chocolate, which is not at all like me.

My symptoms only got worse after we got home. I was fine after a couple of hours, but it wasn't until several days later that Kathy showed me where the Wikipedia page about escolar details the common "gastrointestinal symptoms following consumption". Apparently this is just a known feature of eating this fish, and yet restaurants seem to serve it, and suckers like me seem to eat it. Well, once, anyway. I think that's one that I'll remember to avoid from now on.

Day 3: Hey, I know that dude!

On Sunday, we headed back into Philadelphia for dinner and a show, but not in that order.

We had tickets to a 3pm matinee of "The Bomb-itty Of Errors" at 11th Hour Theatre Company. I hadn't heard of this group before, but this show was written by the same guys who did "Nerds://A Musical Software Satire", which Kathy & I both loved, so we were very psyched to see it.

On a Sunday afternoon, I'd expect a small, dead crowd, and on a Sunday afternoon under the flooding rains of a noreaster, I'd expect them even smaller & deader. So imagine my surprise when we came into a lively room of about 40-50 people, and I knew *two* of them.

Right after we sat down, Madi Distefano, the teacher of the acting class I'm taking, came and sat right in front of us. She was there with her daughter and some friends.

Then I was looking through the program for the show. The DJ (in the sound booth right next to our seats) looked vaguely familiar, even through big, dark sunglasses, a giant afro wig, and a hat. Then I read that this was, in fact, Mark Valenzuela, who was a few years behind me in college. We were in Nomadic Theatre together, and we acted together in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (coincidentally, another wacky adaptation of a Shakespeare play).

Who knew I was so plugged-in to the theatre scene in Philadelphia?

Oh, and if you have the chance, you should totally see Bomb-itty (it's here until April 29). It was excellent. Even my teacher said so. There was one part (a joke involving Sammy Davis Jr.) that had me laughing so hard I was gasping for breath for several minutes. Right up there with Little Miss Sunshine, in terms of the danger it posed to my health & safety. Go see it.

After that, a lovely dinner at Roy's. No ill effects from dinner this time, so I had all of my chocolate dessert plus half of Kathy's, trying to catch up. So after another anniversary dinner that couldn't be beat, we went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when things started to fall.

Day 4: Plagues & strange noises.

On Monday, Kathy & I had both taken the day off. It was going to be nice not to have my alarm clock go off at 5:30, but I awoke at 5:00 anyway.

I could swear I heard Kathy in the next room (or maybe downstairs, I wasn't sure) moving boxes around or looking for something in the closet. Just the sound of footsteps and some thumping around. But no, Kathy's right here. That's odd. The random thumping noises continued.

Now let's think about this rationally. No, it's not a burglar. These thumping noises are slow and not accompanied by any clattering or crashing like you'd expect if someone was moving in the dark in an unfamiliar space, or trying to get out in a hurry. But seriously, what the hell is that?

I knew we still had that storm moving through, but this didn't sound like rain, so I figured maybe a tree branch was hanging low and bumping into the house or something. Worst-case, maybe such a branch had poked a hole so a squirrel got in? Time to go take a look.

I checked the guest room, checked downstairs, checked the basement. No water getting in, no holes in the house, all good.

Finally, I looked outside.

Snow.

Big piles of wet, slushy snow. Here in the second half of April.

Mind you, we got married on this day a couple of years earlier, and had a beautiful sunny day of 70 degrees. But this year we had mounds of wet, slushy snow. It was apparently accumulating on the branches of the pine tree that towers over our house (directly above the guest room), then the high winds were blowing it loose in fist-sized clumps, which were thudding onto the roof.

The sound, as well as the incongruity of snow in late April, just kept reminding me of the scene from the movie Magnolia ("Exodus 8:2"), where frogs are raining down on everything. Of course, in the movie, they come crashing through the roofs of houses & cars, so I kept expecting the crashing noises to follow.

With all that, it took some time, but I eventually did get back to sleep until a more decent hour.

Day 4, continued: More strange noises.

Later in the day, the snow had mostly been washed away by rain, which then tapered off to just a light mist/drizzle by early afternoon. It was turning into a nicer, more peaceful day.

Around 3pm, when I was at the back of the house, I heard the noise of a sharp crash or snap outside. My mind instantly jumped to that giant pine tree towering over our house. The noise was big enough that I imagined it as the sound of the top 20 feet of the tree breaking off. Of course, if that were to happen, it would be followed closely by another big noise of the tree landing on something (possibly us). While half-expecting to hear that other shoe drop...

"Kathy, you OK?"

"Yeah."

"What was that?"

"I don't know."

"Sounded like it might have been a big tree or something."

"I'll look out front... Oh my God! Oh my God! There's a car, and it's upside-down!"

Indeed it was. Right in front of our house, on our moderately steep hill, slick from the rain, a car apparently swerved off the road, bounced off a low wall of loosely-piled stones in front of a neighbor's house, and rolled onto its roof.

Now, as a person who (A) used to be an EMT many years ago, and (B) once was in a similarly inverted car crash, I had sort of a unique sense of familiarity about this situation.

You're first on the scene. What do you do?

By the time I even got to the front door, Kathy was already on the phone calling 911. We ran outside to see what's going on, if anybody was trapped inside the car, etc.

Other than being upside-down, the car seemed mostly intact. It was still mostly holding its shape (not squashed down or anything), and there didn't seem to be any external danger (moving parts, fire, fuel leaks, etc.). Nobody had come out of the car yet, and it was pretty quiet, other than the horn that seemed to be stuck in the honk position.

The car hadn't hit anyone else, but there was another driver who happened to be coming up in the other direction, and saw the crash happen. She was now out of her car and coming to get a better look. She & I came around the driver's side of the crashed car, where the driver was in the process of untangling himself from a seatbelt and climbing out. He looked fine (other than a bit dazed), seemed to have no trouble moving, and he hadn't said anything. He was able to get out without much trouble in a matter of seconds.

We asked him if there was anyone else in his car. No.

We asked if he was OK, if anything was hurting. He's fine.

He kept pacing around, looking at the car, looking for the pack of cigarettes that had fallen out of his shirt pocket.

Usually in a car crash, the common injuries (which might go unnoticed) are head trauma and back/neck injuries, and all this walking around is not going to help him if he's got any of those. Kathy ran inside to get a chair, so we could have him sit down, away from the car and out of the road. One of our neighbors who's a doctor had walked over, and was asking the driver some questions to make sure he's OK.

All of that was within about the first 2 minutes and then the first of several police arrived. Pretty darn quick response time. Ambulance & fire truck similarly appeared within about 5 minutes.

As far as we could tell, the driver was completely uninjured. Not even a bad scrape or anything. Eventually, the towtruck crew got the car turned upright & hauled away, the ambulance & firefighters drove off, and the owner accompanied the towing crew back to base, while the main police officer followed along.

Looking at the street an hour later, you wouldn't have guessed the scene that was there a little while ago.

So anyway. A nice quiet weekend at home for our anniversary. We're just hoping for an *actually* quiet one next year.