Monday Numbers

• Well, it wasn't that eventful of a weekend, but it sure feels like it! On Friday, I was fortunate enough to meet up with one of my college roomies and her husband, kids, sister, brother-in-law and brother-in-law's mom for a fun afternoon of historic tourism in Philly. I had such a great time. I don't always realize it, but it's so nice to see people you know and who know you. It's great to catch up, and chill out. It was a pretty cold day, but they were troopers! And I really couldn't think of another way to spend 11.11.11!
• One of my friends had her baby on 11.11.11! A little boy - so cute! Enrique...I think I might call him Ricky-cito :)
• I spent most of the weekend around the house, doing errands and cleaning up. I think it's literally the first weekend I've been home in months and honestly, it felt great to be a little lazy, just hang out and do nothing. 
• We're on a cooking kick. We're a bit in debt from the whole wedding thing, so we've decided ot cut back on eating out, and cook more at home. With our busy schedules, the best bet for us is to cook something pretty big and then eat that for a few days. This week, it was lasagna, which turned out amazing. We made two batches, and we should be able to feast off it for a few days, at least. I also made two pumpkin breads, a double batch of hummus, and I am attempting a sourdough starter. I hope it works!
• We also used a Groupon that I bought for a "Ghost Tour" of Philadelphia with a group called the "Spirits of 76". Get it? Haha, right? So, in case you didn't know, I am into ghost stuff. I don't know that I am a "believer", but I love ghost stories and spooky things, just like when I was a kid. (Although, as an aside, I don't really love "ghost movies" unless they're really well done. I loved The Sixth Sense, but the Paranormal Activity movies? Not so much. I do, however, love Ghost Adventures, which I know is a completely stupid and useless reality TV show. I can't get enough! I realize I have a problem!). When I went to Scotland with my parents over ten years ago, we took a ghost tour of the Edinburgh vaults, these regions of the city that are literally a city underneath the city. Yeah, Ghost Adventures went there - they caught some amazing stuff on camera, which I love. Anyways, we had this amazing tour guide - a really spooky man who totally acted the part. They took us into the vaults and we heard sounds (a child, specifically) and I felt something brush up against me (a dog, I thought at the time). They had candles, and shut them off in the middle of the tour, making it pitch dark. Edinburgh is full of spooky, haunted tales, so it was a wonderfully spine tingling tour! Fast forward to Philly, 7:30pm in Old City. We get this bubbly, cheery young woman as our tour guide. She tells us tales that are "really sad, right?" and she expresses emotion about the ghosts. I'm a firm believer that once you start to think of ghosts as real people with real stories, that's when the "ghost story effect" ends. Of course, someone catching on fire on her wedding day (an subsequently burning the whole damn building down) is really sad, but I want to hear more about the ghostly tales - chairs dragged around, unexplained sounds, eerie footsteps, that kind of stuff. Instead, I hear about historic stories of the buildings, with little or no emphasis on "ghostly encounters". I hear about "a lot of bodies buried here", but nothing of any encounters or anything interesting. A big disappointment. The one thing that I thought was funny was as we were standing in front of Independence Hall, a light kept flickering on and off, over and over again. I'm unsure if someone was playing a joke on the security guard at the door, or whether the wiring at the Hall is pretty faulty, but I thought it was pretty funny. I would imagine Benjamin Franklin would find "elecktricity" quite interesting - perhaps he stopped by to play?