2002-07-30 - 2:09 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "She's Leaving Home", Beatles

Well, um.

Haven't felt much like writing lately. I hate it when that happens.

Maybe I should go to the pool. Hm. I've only got another month to use it.

My parents and brother came down on Saturday. We went to the Eastern State Penitentiary, which I've been wanting to see since last September, when I first discovered it. If you've seen "Twelve Monkeys", you've seen this place.

Everyone was making fun of me because I was so excited about it. Once we got to the place, though, the enthusiastic staffers agreed that it was "the best place in Philadelphia".

Check out the creepy walls and Gothic towers:

That's Poindexter on the far left, then my brother, then some unidentified woman.

Here's me, in my goofy hard hat we were required to wear on the tour, with a guard tower in the background:

I am wearing my New Beetle t-shirt, which my sister-in-law got me in a dollar store. She tried to apologize for its cheapness! It's my favorite t-shirt and I'm trying not to wear it out.

Mainly I was interested in this for the "modern ruins" aspect. Poindexter dug the "violent prison history" aspect. There was an entire cell block with big photos of former inmates describing what they'd done to get themselves in prison. They sounded either insane or colossally stupid. A lot of the stories went like this:

"My wife, she just kept naggin' me and naggin' me, and she wouldn't shut up. I was giving her all my money and she said it wasn't enough. She just kept naggin' and naggin' and finally I grabbed a hammer and hit her over the head and next thing you know, she's deader'n a doornail."

Poindexter says I had better be careful I don't nag him too much.

After the Penitentiary, we had planned to go to Mass at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. I like fancy churches and figured, my mom will enjoy having us at Mass, and I can look at the architecture and decorations.

So we got there, and peeked in, and the place was empty and dark. My brother and Poindexter started laughing, figuring there was no Mass. I said, "But we CALLED and they SAID 5:15!" We (me, Poindexter, and my brother) were ready to leave, since our entire motive for going to Mass had disappeared. My mom's hadn't, however, so she said, "Maybe it's in the chapel".

Well, we found the chapel, and it was boring. And it was PINK. Ugh.

Not only that, but not long into the Mass, we started smelling a smell.

It was awful. At first it just seemed like BO, so I was trying to surreptitiously sniff my pits. Not long after, I noticed Poindexter trying to do the same thing, and he said, "Is it me?" I lay my head on his shoulder and sniffed, but only smelled Sure. ("Raise your hand if you're Sure!")

As the Mass progressed, the smell got worse. It was definitely BO. It was also mixed in with cigarette or cigar smoke, and possibly some alcohol. Yet when we looked behind us, there was no one who seemed to be dirty enough to be emanating such an awful odor.

As soon as we got out of Mass, we all started sniffing our pits madly and finally realized that yes, we are hygenic, clean people who had showered recently and it wasn't us. I still don't know what it was, but that's a Mass I'm not going to forget anytime soon.

We explored the main church for a while after Mass. Apparently the place is open from 9 to 3 on weekdays for anybody who wants to drop in, so if you're local and like Catholic Church architecture, check it out. It's on the east side of Logan Square.

While I'm posting photos, here are a few, finally, of the sandcastles I keep raving about. The last one is a close-up of a replica of a famous painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I think. I took it so you could see the level of detail in the sand. One thing I didn't do was get something in these pictures for scale. The WTC towers are at least 12 feet high, and the figures in the Iwo Jima replica are life-size.

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