(no subject)
I went to Philadelphia last weekend with my friends Zach and Logan to see Eastern State Penitentary, a historic prison where they do a haunted house every year.
Zach works there every weekend the haunted house is open -- he takes a train up to Philadelphia and stays at his mom's house. After going through the whole thing and nearly wetting ourselves, Logan and I were slightly reluctant to go back inside, but Zach insisted that we'd have fun volunteering as part of the haunted staff...
I became a kind of undead prison guard, and Logan was a convict. We had a lot of fun freaking people out all night.
After the haunted house closed, we went to a bar, and then eventually drove to a restaurant that is open 24 hours to get authentic philly cheesesteak. It was intimidating because Logan and I were told that if we didn't order correctly, we would be kicked out of the waiting line. You had to tell the person taking your order what you were going to order based on the kind of cheese you wanted to eat and whether or not you wanted onions. For example, if you wanted provolone cheese and no onions, you were supposed to say "Provolone without." I felt very much like a gentle, cowering southerner trying to get all this stuff right...
We also went to the Mutter Museum, which was described to us as a "collection of medical oddities." Zach and I had fun looking at a large case full of objects removed from peoples' throats. You can't even begin to imagine how many people swallow safety pins. We also saw wax models of syphilis, the skeleton of someone who suffered from gigantism, and a preserved gangrenous hand.