Wanderlust

Well, it's been a little over a week since we got here, and we're all settling nicely. This city is pretty big - they say 300,000 in the greater WB/Scranton area - but it feels similar to home in that it's set down in a valley and has a river running through it. People seem friendly, chivalrous and heavily accented. In fact, we were told we had accents the other night, which was a first!

We made it down the road to Pocono Downs. Even though the live racing doesn't start until April 1, they still have simulcast and a casino. The cool thing was a poker machine with a huge flat screen with the image of a dealer - like a virtual dealer - life size, with seats for six. Hadn't seen that before. Not sure who picked what the dealer looked like, but only one of the ten machines had a male dealer, hehe. Anyway, we got a drink and wandered around, looking for that perfect machine or perfect horse to bet on, but nothing leapt out, so we then decided to take our budget of $20 each gambling money and go out for dinner instead, ha! Not sure if that's a sign of age, frugality or hunger. At least we got something from the money. Beer and full bellies are always better than nothing.

The campaign is starting to heat up here, and Hillary came to Scranton to speak - in her speech she mentioned loving a white pizza at a specific restaurant - so we went! It was a great little place, really classy appearance with a homey attitude. Everyone was greeted warmly at the door, most of them by name and with a hug. Cool little place. Oh, and yeah, the pizza was great too. Kinda like a calzone, but much flakier and more flavor. And buttery. Mmmm. So yeah, I got food out of a political speech. Go figure. Not a surprise if you know me at all.

There is an AHL team here - the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins who is the farm team for Pittsburgh. Thanks to them, I saw my first hat trick! Complete with fan's hats all over the ice, it was very cool. They have these great jerseys right now - I'm assuming it's for St Paddys - that are totally Irish with Celtic font for their names and clovers on the front and arm. It looked like they change up their jerseys for holidays, I saw a Christmas themed one last night as well. The turn out was pretty good for a Wednesday night, I was surprised.

Diesel is $4.29 right now! Just thought I'd throw that in. In case we can't afford to ever leave here.