the Hardware Store

I just got back from walking over to Suburban Hardware in Bryn Mawr, and it made me realize that hardware stores are probably my favorite places to go! They are full of adorable old men (I love old men, I think they are the cutest people ever, I know it's sick and weird) and all sorts of fun tools and hardware things that I don't know how to use, but I want to! Plus, hardware stores make me think of all those Home Depot commercials with people being happy and painting their walls and doing all sorts of things to their houses to make them even more adorable than they already are!


Hardware stores also remind me of when my grandpa worked at Fishkin's, which is actually a camera supply store according to what the internet is telling me, but that is basically the same thing. When we used to go visit them in Perth Amboy from California, my mom would always take me to go visit him at work, and I would get to sit on his lap behind the counter and for some reason he would always be eating a doughnut with chocolate icing on it, and I would get to eat some.

Then, in the hardware store today, they were playing Steely Dan! That is basically my dad's favorite band and I have been listening to them since I was in the womb. I know every word to every Steely Dan song, and that is not even an exaggeration. So, that made me happy, and I told the old man who was ringing me up that my dad and I love Steely Dan. I am pretty sure that my dad loves hardware stores, too. He definitely loves Fry's, and that falls under the category of (specialized) hardware store in my brain.

I also realized today that Southern California must miss me, because while they are stuck with the humid, super-hot grossness that we would normally be having in Philly right now, the wonderful, seventy-something, sunny, beach weather has followed me here! That kind of weather makes school so much better, even if Bryn Mawr doesn't have ocean views from the English classrooms like my high school does. Now I am going to run over to the Campus Center to see if my package got here yet!

Love, Jillian

P.S. Restaurant Week in Philly is coming up, and I am planning on doing a big post about it with pictures of the restaurants that María and I are going to go to with our friends! It should be super cute, so look for that sometime this month.