Well, I managed to get another room on the floor. Third room’s the charm, right? It too is nicer than the first room, which I looked at this morning. The smell was gone, but as I told the lady at the check-in desk, “I don’t feel comfortable staying there.”

There was unabashed sun today for the first time in a several days, and I certainly got my RDA of vitamin D in. I felt quite carsick in the bus to the APS this morning, and so sat in the park outside the library instead of going in with Double M, intending to eat my breakfast and head on in. But then:

- I ate my banana.
- The chatty APS curator came by and said hello and encouraged me to check out benfranklin2006.org, which was put up for Ben’s 300th birthday next year.
- A pigeon fluttered down, hoping for some crumbs. I threw it a piece of my donut, and then lectured it on the effects of eating junk food, which it ignored. After a while, it gave up and flew away.
- A gaggle of children came by with a couple adults and ran around and screamed and did generally kid things, and eventually went away.
- Horse-drawn open carriages clip-clopped by at intervals. I took note of their orange triangular “license plates.”

Eventually, I realized I didn’t feel like going into the chilly APS library, so I took out my reading and finished it up, then went on to backlogged torts reading. Calabresi and accident law and strict liability – oh my!

Double M came out around noon and we went to lunch. She told me about her experience this morning with the Divine Tracy grandmothers; she’d gone out for a jog, with her sweats under her long skirt, and came back inside dressed the same way, earning the evil eye from the Elevator Operator, an elderly black woman in a brown uniform who sits next to the elevator. She headed upstairs and then got a phone call from Elevator Operator.

Double M: “Hello?”
EO: “I have some questions for you.”
Double M: “Yes?”
EO: “Who is this?”
Double M: “[Double M].”
EO: “Do you have anyone staying with you?”
Double M (confused): “No. What is this all abo ---“
Click.

Double M was, understandably, pissed off. The DT grandmothers are not your grandmother’s grandmother, but this was pretty rude. I told her that I’d also been somewhat taken aback by the general feeling of disapproval, but that it didn’t matter, as long as I got what I wanted (which, this morning, was another room). It is disconcerting when you try to be pleasant, and you think of yourself as fairly modest and independent and all the crap that the Divine Tracy movement espouses, and you keep getting the fish-eye from everyone at the hotel.

We agreed that the skirt business wasn’t all that bad, but with all real evils in the world today, concentrating on such peccadilloes was about the equivalent of burying your head in the sand. Double M pointed out that the DT started out as part of the peace movement, so why weren’t they out there agitating for peace instead of intimidating their hotel guests? I must say.

On top of it all, the Evil Archivist is on duty today, and is, for no appreciable reason, stymieing Double M’s research. Oh, the characters in Philly!

On the bright side, though, we went to a charming little restaurant in Rittenhouse Square, which is picturesque and full of babies and doggies and well-heeled folk. I’m getting quite a pleasant picture of Philadelphia. Who knew?