last week   sunday oday I made plans with my friend Alyssa to go blading in Central Park with her friend David. I decided to blade across Central Park to her apartment. My first mistake. I got very lost, and ended go up and down every hill in the park. I went north 30 blocks too far, then 10 too far south. Did I mention it was 98 degrees?
[Click on the "eye" icons to see the pictures.] [Alyssa & me]	finally got to her place and we all went for a very short blade into the park. We checked out the place where you can dance on your blades or skates, and I watched from a safe distance. We found another great pizza place and then I booked it home in time for the Simpsons.	[Skaters]
[Jill & me]	monday y friend Jill stopped by "my" apartment this morning and we went out for breakfast at Bagels & Co., a kosher bakery on the corner of 76th and York. Then she was off to some shoot or something so I went back home to crank out these pages. It's been really hot here in New York, in the mid-nineties and humid, so I didn't mind some time in the air-conditioned apartment. ater I hooked up with my friend Becca and her friends from high school. We went drinking at the Brother Jimmy's on 3rd where we celebrated her softball team's victory with a bowl of Swamp Juice, (somewhere between an Alabama Slammer and a Fuzzy Navel, with a rubber alligator thrown in for good measure.) Then we watched as the very cute, silicone-friendly bartender poured shots and funnels down her patrons throats. omehow I made it home in one piece.
	tuesday an, I felt great this morning.
	amn, it's hot. There's actually a heat advisory in effect for New York today, but I couldn't sit in the apartment all day long, so I decided to take the subway down to Greenwich Village to check out some used record stores and get a psychic reading. went to four different places and they were all closed. I couldn't believe it. Is it some kind of national psychic holiday? Didn't these people know I was coming? However, I did find a Curious George t-shirt I had been looking for, so the day wasn't a total loss.
[Becca & Me]	t night I got together with my friends Becca, Alyssa & Alyssa's boyfriend Mathew and we headed out to dinner at Revolution on 9th ave. near Times Sq. After dinner we checked out this Russian restaurant called "Firebird" where all the wait staff dress like the czars must have just before the revolution. quick walk to Times Sq. and we called it a night.	[Times Sq.]
	wednesday eeping this journal updated daily is harder than I thought. It's now Friday afternoon and I'm just catching up. after doing my laundry I headed south to Princeton, NJ where my old college roommate Bula lives with his fiancee, Mary, and their dog, Nauga.	Picture Not Available
	rinceton is a beautiful town, although I didn't get to see much of it. We went out to dinner at Triumph, a mediocre brew pub with great architecture which unfortunately reverberates every conversation in the restaurant until you wish that drunk girl in the corner would just shut up already.
	thursday woke up when Nauga started licking my face. Not the worst experience ever, but I'm not going to leave my alarm clock behind. then drove down to Philadelpha, PA to visit my friend Emmy; another Skidmore graduate, class of '90.
	he heat hasn't let up, and Em hasn't yet heard of the benefits of air-conditioning, so we went to Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in Allentown. They have a great roller coaster there called Steel Force; "the longest, tallest, fastest coaster in the east". maximum drop: 205'; maximum speed 75mph. I somehow convinced Em to go with me, but couldn't get her to go twice. While I highly recommend the coaster, don't bother getting the $7.50 photograph they try and sell you on the way out. It looks great on the giant T.V. screens, but it looks like crap when they print it up.	[Steel Force]
	hat night we went out with one of Em's friends Amy to a cool little area called Manayunk; a one-mile stretch where you could live for a week and never eat at the same restaurant twice. We had sushi at a restaurant called Hikaru, and except when our overly-familiar waiter told us that sake tasted like Japanese sweat, it was a pleasant experience. fter dinner we rented Swingers, which I hadn't seen yet, but my brother Doug recommended. I highly recommend it as required watching for guys before they go out on dates. oug, you were right: you're sooo money.
	friday m had to work today, (I forget, what's that like?) so I took some of her advice and checked out the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia: a collection of everything that can go wrong in human development. It's part of the College of Physicians located at 19 South 22 St. Open 10-4 Tuesday-Friday, admission is $8, or less if your a student, elderly, or know how to unlock the back door. (Kidding, of course.) here else can you check out a dead woman's body that turned to soap after burial, a wide collection of Siamese twins, a baby with severely swelling bowels, or human horns? Not the museum for those with weak hearts or stomachs.	[Horny Woman]
	also finally got some exercise in today by blading down Kelly Dr. a couple of times by the boat houses. Sorry, no pictures. m and I went out to dinner for Iranian food at the Persian Grill, then out to one of the cheesiest bars I've ever been to called Rio. Unless you want to celebrate Spring Break with bad cover bands all year long, don't go there. You've been warned.
	saturday think that these pages are taking too long to load, so from now on I'm going to be using the "eye" icon when there is a picture you may want to take a look at. Using the same image more than once should speed up the loading time. You're welcome. You can see an example by clicking on the eye to the right. left Philadelphia early this morning, said my good-byes and headed southwest.	[Em & me]
[Harper's Ferry]	left Pennsylvania, took a short trip through Maryland, and entered West Virginia near Harper's Ferry; named after a famous blues bar in Boston and the site of John Brown's famous 1859 raid on the U.S. Armory. Once there I finally broke out my bike and took a 12 mile trip up and down the Shenandoah. nce I got back to the car I got my stuff and went swimming in the river. The water was so warm it was almost wasn't refreshing. Almost. As I laid there, the warm water splashing over me, I watched rafters and tubers float downriver. This is the reason I wanted to go cross-country. etting back to the car I checked the map and saw a green strip of road called Skyline Drive and headed towards it. Unfortunately upon arriving there it turns out you have to pay a park entrance to drive down it. I decided to forgo the pleasure and hunt for a campsite.   round 7pm I saw a sign for a KOA campground and got off the highway. "We got both kinds of music here, country AND western." --Blues Brothers "Country music sucks." --Bart Simpson urns out that Saturday night at the KOA is country music night. They had a band play 'til about 11 that night. Well, at least they played some Skynyrd.
	next week
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