Berlioz and Saint-Saëns

The Philadelphia Orchestra is starting up again after the summer break, and once again I’m glad to be part of the eZseatU program ($25 for a full year of free concerts). My first experience with Berlioz was to see Faust, which was good but I hadn’t been so enthralled that I went out and got [...]

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Four Concerts & New Classes

Back in Philadelphia, which is quickly vaulting itself into Spring (with some crazy thunderstorms – hail!), and classes have started once more. This quarter looks promising – I was unsure at first whether or not Cataloging would be for me, but the kind of cataloging I do is so different from normal cataloging that I [...]

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Dvorák and Friends

This afternoon I attended my second concert using the EzSeatU program (see previous post). Due to the lack of people at the last concert, I did not hurry to get to the concert far ahead of time. And so I was surprised to see at least 40 students waiting to be seated with the program. [...]

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Philadelphia Orchestra

Yesterday was my first concert using the Philadelphia Orchestra’s new EzSeatU program. Basically how it goes is that I pay $25 up-front, and then get into (nearly) every concert for free for one year. The only drawback is that you don’t get to choose where you are seated. 5 minutes before the performance starts, the [...]

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Christmas in Philadelphia

Well, not really Christmas. Yesterday the roommate and I went to Rittenhouse Square to see the tree-lighting. The promise of booths and fun was sort of ruined by the rain – there ended up being about two booths, 50-odd people, and a somewhat disappointing tree, although there were some good times had thanks to free [...]

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First Snow in Philly!

After a very brief flurry last night, this morning I awoke to find it snowing intensely outside. The flakes are large, and rather floaty, and I’m relishing my walk to the library through Rittenhouse later today. Also appreciating that I neither have to drive in this, nor do I have to slide down hills to [...]

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Terrible Day for Philly Libraries

Thanks to my new Twitter, I discovered last night through CBS3 that Mayor Nutter was giving his budget crisis speech. After 2 minutes of talking about how great our city is (Woo, Phillies!), he got to some terrible, terrible news. We have to close a deficit of over $108 million in just six months. Here’s [...]

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Philly Storage Solutions, pt. 2

The same week as my visit to the HDS, I went along with a Drexel section of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) to get a tour of the inner workings of the Philadelphia City Archives. As it turns out, the City Archives are located in the same building as the HDS, but we went in [...]

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Philly Storage Solutions, pt. 1

The other day I got the chance to go see the library’s high density storage (HDS) warehouse. It sort of felt as if I were being inducted into some kind of secret society. We entered the ware house through an unlabelled lobby, signing in with a guard, going down a few levels in an elevator, [...]

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The Lowdown from “Main Street” on the 40

While waiting for the 40 the other day in West Philly, I had what started out as an interesting conversation with a fellow SEPTA believer (some day, SEPTA will be on time!), and turned into a very awkward one. It began the way almost all of my SEPTA bus-stop conversations begin – being asked what [...]

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