Valentine's Day in Philadelphia

Merlot in the hotel room service glass, "Night Pt 1: Snow", by George Winston on iTunes. We are arrived in Philadelphia. The sweetgum tree to the right shows it's icy adornment--taken at a freezing rest stop in Virginia where the main building was closed and they had porta-potties set up for the desperate travelers. I don't THINK so.

I held it till some godforsaken dumpy little town in Delaware (Teresa tells me it was Havre de Grace) where the rednecks sat with their butt cracks hanging out of their pants, filling the tanks of their snow plow pick-ups and continuing to block all access to the pumps for the rest of us while they chawed and spat and prepared to to go plow something. I finally asked one of them if he would mind moving as my bladder could not take any more waiting... only to find out that the 7-11 store/gas station didn't have a restroom. We tore out of there to the Shell station across the street... which also didn't have a restroom. What is it with people in Delaware? Don't any of them ever have to pee?! We had to go across the street in another direction to McDonald's--and I was lucky I made it. And every stop required dashing through the salty, wet, cold slush. My poor EnzoAngiolinis.

There is much wet slushy snow everywhere. I wore my flimsy little Italian leather shoes (the afore-mentioned Enzos)... with no socks. I have a couple of pair of boots with me, it's true. They are also nice, thin, leather, and meant for dry, happy times. The hotel is nine blocks from the Convention Center--a good walk for a Weight Watcher... but not one with inappropriate footwear.

On the bright side--and I try to always find the bright side--even though I was not scheduled to unload today I went to the docks at the convention center anyway to see if they could squeeze me in. Turned out there was no wait at all and I had all my stuff in my booth in the time it took to get an assistant badge for Teresa. By the way, check out her work. Cool, huh? Tonight we are in a smoking (blech) double (it was almost a smoking king!) at the Holiday Inn downtown Philly, and have consumed a pizza and almost-copious-enough quantities of red wine for me. I am slogging through my review of the edits of the materials and tools sections of my book and preparing for a long day tomorrow setting up in the freezing (no exaggeration there) convention center hall. They won't bother with the heat till the Buyers show up late in the afternoon for the jewelry preview. Brrr.

Okay, enough already. I'm here, I'm safe, I'm in a smoking room (did I say blech?), but I'll live. There is supposedly network access from the convention center floor this year so I will stay live. Till tomorrow.