Philly

Well, daddy had to travel to Philly for 5 days for work, attending a Transit Operations Modeling application training class. It felt like grad school all over again since the gentleman teaching the class was a semi-retired professor from Carnegie Mellon and helped create the application. Let me just say, his teaching style was not favored by anyone of my colleagues. He basically taped all his presentations on video, which was a how to click type of video that didn't teach us anything and we could have watched the videos prior to training and just had 2 days of lab work. On top of that, he wouldn't help us, rather instructed us to use the built in help button and converse with our colleagues! Oh well, I learned a lot and enjoyed the class.

The best part though was that I met up with a great friend and old neighbor, Tim who picked me up at the airport Sunday and went to dinner with his wife and daughter over in Collingswood, NJ. We had a fabulous dinner at an Italian place and then he and I took the train over to Philly to watch the Steelers-Browns game. Ironically, a colleague in Philly lives 2 doors from Tim! We found this out Monday as I was telling him my events from Sunday. We went to a bar called Good Dog to watch the game and I enjoyed some local micros (of course!). Monday night we headed to a bar and watched the Dallas-Eagles football game after class and then Tuesday night, Tim again took the train over and he and I and another colleague from our NYC office went to the best Belgium bar in the US, The Monk's Cafe. Here, I enjoyed some fabolous beers from Belgium! Then Wednesday night we hit Jim's for cheesesteaks (YUMMY), then McGills (sp??) bar which is the oldest bar in Philly where I finally found Yards ESP on tap, then back to the Monk's Cafe where I had a fabulous beer from Flying Dog that was aged in whiskey barrels (which you could taste the whiskey) called Barrell Aged Gonzo (BAG) Porter! It was awesome! Then had a night cap at a micro called nobhead. All in all, it was a fun time.