Asymptomatic

I've been doing a lot of things lately. Getting out of the house is becoming more common for me. And as I look forward to presentations at the PHP meetup at the end of April and PodCamp Ohio at the end of June, I've been attending little gatherings here and there as time allows. There are a couple trips in particular that require more elucidation than what effort I want to put into this seating, but I did want to write about something simple that strikes me every time I venture into the city for an event or meeting or whatever.

As I've observed in the past, you always take something with you when you visit somewhere like a major city, even if you're mostly retracing your steps. I've gotten in the habit of taking the R5 from Malvern to Market East on the instructions of folks whose company I enjoy but much less frequently these days than I like. On that route, I manage to walk through a good chunk of the Gallery, a kind of "train station meets three story mall". It is in this place that I've encountered one of my favorite Philly oddities.

It's just a matter of so many odd things being in one place at one time that strikes me, not that any one of these things in particular is odd. First off, I think that mall-on-station is probably a great idea commercially, but is still a tad strange. But then you add the fish and meat market. I think this is the only shopping center I've ever been in with a regular old Radio Shack, a bookstore, a CVS, a Game Stop, a standard food court, and... A fish market. Ok, maybe that's not weird, maybe it's just me. But then......

I took Nana and Riley out to lunch today, something I'm thinking of making a regular Thursday outing. Today we went to Cheeburger Cheeburger (note the surprising lack of "s") in Frazer, and had some yummy burgers. Nana said she hasn't had such a good burger in years, and I learned that she likes mayonnaise and fried onions on her burgers.

After we sat, a group of ladies came in and sat at the table behind me. I don't know if it was just one of them, or the whole group, but the terribly overpowering odor of baby powder slammed into my nostrils. It was so powerful, I nearly gagged and I could occasionally (depending on wind shift) barely taste my food.

I'm not sure what it is that possesses some people to odorify themselves like this. I mean, you might do this if you absolutely had to cover some other less attractive odor, but by all means, take care of that problem before slathering yourself with some other more powerful odor. I really don't see how that helps the problem, and I can only imagine what I wasn't smelling underneath all of the overlying stink....