4th of July Weekend

Google maps says it's a 6 1/2 hour drive from my home in northern Massachusetts to my hometown in South Jersey. But really, with traffic and the inevitable pit stops, it's at least 7. And not the easiest 7 hours, either, especially once you get into the Tappanzee Bridge area and pretty much all of New Jersey. It's definitely not the kind of drive you want to do for a weekend trip, which is why we took two days of vacation time for the 4th of July weekend. With the federal holiday on Monday, which our company observed, we got a 5-day weekend, so making the trip down was a bit more reasonable. Still, it was kind of a pain in the butt.

Anyway. We had to work a half day on Friday, then we drove back home to have lunch and pick up our bunny. We had our neighbors look in on Winston and Lucy, but we took the bunn with us because he's higher maintenance (knocking over his food dish and water bottle so he can't be unsupervised for very long) and doesn't handle heat well so we didn't feel that we could leave him. We had to do a few errands before we could leave, so we didn't get on the road until 3pm, and I think we arrived at my parents' house sometime after 10pm. But leaving at 3 was actually kind of good because we managed to miss the rush hour traffic.

On Saturday, we went into Philadelphia. Our original plans were to go to the art museum to see an exhibit on Renoir, then meet up with Lisa for dinner, but we got such a late start that once we were in the city, we realized we'd only have two hours in the museum by the time we got there. So we decided to check out the Old City, and I called Lisa to let her know the change of plans and she met up with us at Christ Church. It was a hot day but it was really nice to see the historical parts of the city right before the 4th of July - it definitely got us in an Independence Day kind of spirit! We saw the Portrait Gallery, Carpenter's Hall, the Indepence Hall area (the lines were huge! But we didn't have any interest in going in.), Elfrith's Alley, the Betsy Ross house, and Ben Franklin's grave. It was great to see Lisa, who we hadn't seen since our wedding. We went to dinner at a place Lisa recommended, the Continental Midtown. It has a funky, modern-retro decor and yummy food. We had a good time!

Sunday was the 4th of July, but Pitman wasn't celebrating until Monday. We pretty much bummed around the house (it was a gross, hot day) until dinner. We had a big 4th of July feast and my aunt Franny came over, so that was good. We watched the Washington DC Independance Day celebration on TV, and the Philadelphia celebration - but the Philly one had a really obnoxious band playing for a lot of it, so we mostly watched the DC one.

On Monday morning, we watched the Pitman parade with my mom. We had good seats under a tree, but it was still really hot. We watched until my dad marched by in the Hobo Band, then James and I walked home.

We had lunch and then went back into Philly to get a tour of a Navy destroyer that was parked at Penn's Landing. The tour was free, and the destroyer is in duty, not retired like I expected it to be. It's stationed in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Somolia. It was insanely hot while we were waiting in line, so much so that I almost passed out and James had me sit under a tree while he toughed it out in line, where there was no shade. It was a long wait, too - over an hour. Luckily we had our water bottles, and when those ran out the Navy had some ice cold water coolers, so we refilled our bottles and that helped a lot. Once we were on the tour, I tanked up our bottles again from water fountains that were located around the ship. The tour was very interesting and and a really neat way to spend the day. We got to see the guns on the front, the helipad in the back, the deck where they steer the boat, and the tactical deck where they control the guns. After the tour, we went looking for an ice cream festival that was also happening at Penn's Landing that day, but it was all closed up by the time we got there. So we walked back to the train station, stopping along the way to catch out breath in the relatively cool shade in courtyard of Ben Franklin's ghost house. We passed by the house where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, which was neat.

That night, we watched Pitman's fireworks from the street in front of my parents' house. We put folding chairs out in the road and got a pretty good view of the fireworks from across town. It was a lot nicer than dealing with the crowds.

On Tuesday, we were planning on going down to Delaware to visit my cousin and her toddler daughter and newborn baby son. Unfortunately the daughter picked up some kind of stomach bug earlier in the week, and although she was better in time, my cousin caught it and was feeling sick that day. Boo. I was really disappointed that it didn't work out. I haven't seem them in way too long.

With our plans for the day totally skuttled, we didn't have much to do. James slept in until noon. We went to Jim and Mike's for pizza and and french fries, which is something we look forward to every time we visit Pitman, but I think this time the magic was gone. The crust was too thick and doughy, there was too much cheese, it just didn't do it for me anymore. The fries were still good, but very salty and greasy. I think our love affair with Jim and Mike's is over. We watched some Sopranos back at my parents' house, but their couch is pretty uncomfortable for lounging. That evening my parents took us to a restaurant in town, and I was really surprised to see a number of new restaurants on Broadway - restaurants with linen tablecloths! It seemed really fancy compared to the pizza and sub places I'm used to - a really nice improvement for the town. Unfortunately the meal I ordered wasn't good; I got gnocchi, which is one of my favorite Italian dishes, and the menu said they were homemade so I really wanted to try them. They had the texture of paste. They didn't have the nice pasta-y al dente chew, they just collapsed on your tongue in a pasty mess, and it just wasn't a pleasant experience. Bleh. I guess I was kind of grumpy all day too so that didn't help.

On Wednesday, we drove back home. It was another long drive. We had worried about our pets over the weekend, when it got much hotter than expected, and we asked our neighbors to move Winston into our bedroom and turn our window a/c on, because we were worried it was getting too hot in the house. When we got home, the house was warm but not stifling, and Winston seemed fine. Whew! All in all it was a really good weekend, it was nice to see my parents (we hadn't been to Pitman since Thanksgiving!) and we had some good adventures.

And, bonus: we had a two-day work week that week! A lot of people at work took the whole week off, so those days were really quiet, too. It was pretty great.