Dateline 6/24/07

As weekends go, this one was pretty good. On Friday I met my new girlfriend after work and hung around Center City all evening. On Sat. morning, my friend from home called me at 8am to tell me he had won tickets to a music festival in north Jersey that day. We decided then and there to go on a road trip and a little afternoon we were at the state fairgrounds to listen to surviving members of several 60's and 70's bands, (Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, etc) and a bunch of decent cover bands as well. We smuggled in some mixed drinks and played Frisbee and boccie for hours on the field. In hindsight, playing Boccie in a crowded field while drunk may not have been the greatest idea, although no one was injured... It was also nice to mix my friends from high school and grad school. I hang around with a lot of random people so mixing is always good.

On the way home from the concert, we went down Rt 206 and I made a striking observation about the state of New Jersey. After about an hour of driving, I pointed out to my girlfriend (a longtime resident) that the scenery was like a super nintendo racing game, the same scenery motifs just keep repeating. Basically as you drive you see pharmaceutical companies, small nice commercial buildings, big box stores, and track housing - almost exactly in that order, over and over. I spent the next half hour pointing out each change in this scenery to great effect, after awhile, we could predict almost exactly what was coming up next.