you give me Phever

Phillies fever: I have caught it.

Wednesday evening was spent yelling at the TV with my roommates, then running around our street (and the bigger ave. up the hill) getting people to honk, screaming "wooooo!" for home videos and waving rally towels.

If you couldn't tell, this is a huge deal. This is their first trip to the World Series since 1993, and beating the LA Dodgers to get there felt great. I am part of this as an outsider; my enthusiasm is only a small fraction of my roommate Melissa's (who has tickets to Game 5 if such a game will exist) but it's still very exciting. This is definitely a sports town and the celebrations across the city proved that. Philly fans have stuck with it through the years (and all the letdowns) but they're still so hopeful. The only thing I can compare it to is more baseball analogies (Red Sox in 2004), which may be lost on some of my audience. This helps to settles which sports team's bumper sticker I will put on my car.

Another edition of Philly food review:
- Buffalo Chicken Cheese Steak: this is what I want from my "steaks" here. Warm, gooey, spicy, cheesy, delicious. No onions or peppers necessary. I plan on trying this at many different restaurants/bars/street vendors.
- DiBruno Brothers cheese selection: I'm not sure how many they carry, but they had all of my favorites from the Kluge Estate Farm Shop; Monte Enebro, Idiazabal, several types of Manchego, Prima Donna, and Hoch Ybrig. There are a few other cheese shops in town, but this is part of the most awe-inspiring gourmet market and store I've laid eyes on.
- Breakfast/lunch cart goods: There is a magical silver truck (Lien's which apparently used to serve Chinese food) that parks right on campus and serves delicious, cheap made-to-order food all day long. I had the cheese fries a few weeks ago and was impressed, but yesterday I got bacon, egg and cheese on a sub roll for $2.50 and it was perfect. I couldn't even eat my lunch hours later.
- Campus food in general: I'm allowed access to the Faculty/Staff restaurant, which is actually very reasonably priced. My coworker took me there last week and I enjoyed their soup & salad bar as well as their tempting menu. Then the convenience store/grab&go food market on campus is also surprisingly cheap. They had TastyKakes for way less than Wawa, along with an enormous selection of energy drinks.
- I'm baking again, after over a month of resisting the call of the oven. I made these last night, and they are calorie-laden bites of mint chocolatey goodness. Thank goodness I've also taken up running again.

My parents visit this weekend and I also have a morning flu drive on Saturday, so hopefully I can get my room and photos re-organized by Sunday. Along with some grad school essays. The World Series starts Wednesday, so I know how my weeknights will be spent.