What a unique and exciting weekend this was!On Friday, Mike drove 8 hours from Ohio to visit me! But before he arrived, I snuck into his motel room and placed a few drinks in the refrigerator, a rubber bug beneath his pillow, a can of mixed nuts (with a fake snake inside!) on the breakfast table, and--among the fresh fruit I left for him--a plastic apple.
I even placed in the bathroom a few copies of the Catholic Witness newspaper, so that he would have some good reading material. :-)
I did all this because I had thought to myself, "When does a girl get an opportunity like this to plant fun little surprises in someone's room?" Hehehe.I called my friend Brooke on the way home to tell her what I did. She thought I was absolutely out-of-my-mind, considering that this would be the first night Mike ever met me. But we reasoned that if he found these things to be incredibly annoying and childish, then he probably wasn't my kind of guy anyway.
Sadly, he was too smart for all of them. The rubber bug did not make him gasp; the spring-loaded snake did not escape the can of nuts; and he did not bite into the plastic apple. Oh well! I tried!That night we had dinner at the Iron Hill Brewery. When I ordered a large glass of milk instead of beer, his eyes widened and he laughed, but we had a nice time.
On Saturday, we spent the afternoon walking around Philadelphia. Instead of being logical and taking my out-of-town guest to see the Liberty Bell, I took him to Rittenhouse Square Park where fun things are always happening. We met two bunnies and walked one on a leash, then ran into my friend Kalyn...and later made our way to Anthropologie (which overlooks Rittenhouse) where we marveled at the discovery of the portraits of Catholic popes on their ceiling! In there I also found the fake food Christmas tree I want for my apartment next year! :-)We finished the night at the Catholic Underground at the Cathedral of Sts. Peter & Paul. It was a delight running into so many of my dear friends there. And yet another one that night told me that he has the call to the priesthood! Brian will make an excellent priest. :-)
The musical entertainment was fantastic, as always! I have yet to meet a friar who is not musically talented! Father Christopher is an extraordinary man of God, and it just so happened that he knew friends of Mike's from Franciscan University. It's such a small world!Before driving home, Mike wanted to recreate the famous scene from the movie Rocky by running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. So we drove to the museum, parked the car, and did it -- even though it was near midnight!
Before he departed for Ohio today, we made an interesting discovery in the parking lot. Who knew that the tires on my car came from the SAME Cooper Tires plant where Mike works as a supervisor?! Yep, the codes printed on the rubber indicated that the new tires I got recently traveled to me from Findley, OH a few months before Mike did. :-)
