Last Monday at twilight, a large cumulonimbus was hovering over east side of Denver. As an official member of the Cloud Appreciation Society, I went out to snap a few photos of this beauty.

As always, click for a larger photo and more can be found on my flickr page. I wasn’t the only one to notice this castle in the sky though. These other Denver bloggers caught photos too:

I was really impressed with Philadelphia as a city. I only spent a long weekend there but I felt like I got to see most of the sights and get a real flavor of the city (though that flavor was slightly greasy [in a good way]). As soon as I stepped of the plane it was straight to Johnny Manana’s for their giant griddle of melted cheese. The queso was excellent, the margs were horrible. I then got settled into my friend’s house who were hosting me for the week, at a yummy home cooked meal and washed it all down with a few beers at the Dark Horse in the city. The Dark Horse is a Philadelphia style Irish pub with strong roots, located in a 2 story colonial rowhouse complete with dark wood, exposed brick, and one of the oldest working fireplaces in the city.

We kicked off our first full day in the City Of Brotherly Love with Philly cheese steaks of course.

One of the people I was staying with was a highschool history teacher, and a native Philly who’s in love with his city. He was the perfect tour for all of the historical sights we visited on Saturday. We spent the entire afternoon seeing all the historical sights. The liberty bell, Independence hall, First national bank, The oldest residential street in the US, the National Constitution Center, and a bunch more. I think I might have been a little bored if it weren’t for the interesting anecdotes and facts provided by our good friend/tour guide.

For dinner we went to the tasty but slightly overpriced White Dog Cafe. A restaurant known for there social activism as much as their food. The atmosphere was cool and a little fancy. It made for a great “nice night out”.

Sunday I slept in and had a leisurely breakfast then went to the Mütter Museum. This has to be one of the most interesting museums I’ve ever been to. It was filled with biological/anatomical oddities - conjoined twins, casts of heads suffering from acute, a 30 foot colon, the soap woman, the Chevalier Jackson collection of over 2,000 objects swallowed and removed from the trachea, celebrity body parts, encased longitudinal slices of the head showing the brain. It’s all enough to make you gasp and then get a little queasy. Muffled shouts of “My God, look at that BABY MONSTER!” are often heard and quite appropriate.

Then it was off to the impressive Philadelphia Museum Of Art. I must have spent nearly four hours exploring this place.
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On Monday we spent the morning hiking around the Wissahickon Creek. It’s so great that Philly has a such a large, heavily wooded park right next to the city.

In fact, Philly was filled with parks and was one of the many things I found attractive about it. Anyway, our trip ended shortly after with a flight back to Denver that seemed to take forever.

The free corporate tickets my company gave me to last nights Rockies game are on the third tier. From up there we could see me girlfriends’ firms tickets - front row directly behind the cameras next to the visitors dug out. We also saw that one of the guys she works with had two empty seats next to him. A couple of text messages later and we were right there practically on the diamond. You couldn’t get any closer to the game.

As I was scarfing down a bowl full of deluxe nachos and a beer, an usher brought a group of six young boys, all decked out in there little league uniforms, up to the cameras right next to us. He set the boys up in a staggered line with the smallest kids in front. On the ushers cue, one of the cameras stopped filming the game and swung around to face the boys. The kids went crazy cheering and pumping there fists. And then I noticed they were on the jumbotron.

Now was my chance!

I leaned way over in front of a kid. Never taking my eyes off the jumbotron I put a big smile on my face and popped a deluxe nacho dripping with cheese, chili, and jalapeno into my mouth. I did it! I finally made it onto the jumbotron at a major sporting event. Eating nachos for the world. An then the camera immediately turned off. I wasn’t on the screen for even a second. And to be honest there is some dispute as to whether my face made it onto the screen or if it was just my elbow. But I swear me and my nachos were on there for a-half-a-second.

The Rockies may have lost but I got to put another check mark on my bucket list. Next time I’m bringing my camera.