lialia5 |

Despite my best efforts, I L-O-V-E instant gratification. Wanting something, anything – ranging from the next episode of a TV show to a snack – and immediately getting it makes me happy. I know patience is a virtue, but I have other virtues. So.

I’m also getting married this year and needs a lot of stuff from the Internet. From centerpieces to bridesmaids gifts, I plan to comb the interwebs to ensure I can get the best prices on all on the stuff I need to keep my budget from ballooning.

Enter Amazon Prime to help in all of these matters. I swear on everything Holy that Amazon has not paid me to write this. I really, really just love Amazon Prime. It’s changed, for the better, my ability to shop and get things done quickly and I’m obsessed with it.

Since I signed up and keep telling people that I have it, I do keep getting the question on if it’s worth it. The answer is yes. Here’s why:

It pays for itself. I am not a big fan of going into stores. I live in New York City, where this is no such thing as simply running a quick errand. If I want to go to stores like Target or Bed Bath & Beyond it’s a bus or subway to get there. Shoot – even to get to the grocery story it’s a half mile walk. As I write this, it’s 11 degrees out. The math is simple. Anything I need at these stores I can get on Prime (though I have not purchased food yet through there), delivered right to my home or work, and save myself the subway fare, cab fare or just the need to brave the elements. This past Christmas, this was nothing less than a god send.
It’s fast. If it’s something I need right away, Prime delivers within 24 hours. If it’s something I can live without for a few days, then you have a number of options to choose from – the most being 48 hours. Occasionally I’ve come across the ability to earn credit for other things on Amazon if I choose a longer-term option delivery (such as 3-4 days.) One of these perks even included a free year-long membership to Amazon Cloud Drive which is normally $60. For someone who takes a lot of photographs, this is fantastic. And with one order, I received something that was 2/3 the cost of the Prime service.
It’s not just stuff. The Prime video library is another perk I didn’t really think about when I signed up – but it’s been a pleasant surprise because it is dope. Not only do you get access to some of Prime’s exclusive content like Transparent (which according to the Emmy’s is something I should be watching) but it has an awesome library of other great shows. Right now, my fiancée and I are four seasons into The Wire, which is incredible. He was also beside himself to find all eight seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which we watch as a palette cleanser between watching people murder each other in Baltimore. I will say – I don’t love that there is content on there that I still have to pay for – such as Outlander – but I do understand that these aren’t American shows and the $14.99 price tag per 8 episodes wasn’t enough to keep me from purchasing.

If there are any other hidden benefits of the Prime membership, I’d love to hear them!

When my fiancee and I travel, we like mixing the must-sees in a city with those sites and places that are a little more of out of the way. So when finding ourselves in Philadelphia with our end-of-the-year vacation time last week, we made the obligatory stops at the Liberty Bell, Constitution Hall and some of the awesome historical monuments – but then we took ourselves over to Eastern State Penitentiary for a spooky afternoon. We’re so glad we did, too, because this place was awesome – a perfect mix between historical significance and dark spookiness. This is the photo that attracted me to the site – you can see why!

Eastern State Penitentiary at night (image courtesy of USHistory.org)

Eastern State Pen has a very interesting history as a prison that worked to reform the way prisoners were rehabbed from their life of crime in the late 1700s. You can read the history and its importance to the overall American justice system here. The net, though, is that the model upon which the prison was based stressed total and complete isolation of its prisoners so that they may reflect on their sins. Absolute and total quiet at all times. No human contact whatsoever, save the sliding of a meal through an available slat from a guard that prisoners never saw or spoke to. So no matter if you were a murderer, a thief or were in prison for something far less bad – you atoned by essentially getting solitary confinement for the entire length of your sentence. That ended only in the early 1900s when the prison changed its model – however, by that time, it was more than 100 years old and less than modern. So the net is that the building, up until it closed in 1971, was the source of enormous human suffering – which on a cold and chilly December day is not hard to empathize with.

To wit this picture of a space – used in later years for actual solitary confinement – which could generously be described as a damp hole in the ground. One story on the audio tour we took involved a dentist treating a patient so dangerous that the guards would only let him be treated through bars in the window while the dentist remained outside of the actual confinement area.

Solitary confinement at Eastern State Penitentiary.

Here are just a few of my favorite snaps from the day! But if you find yourself in the Philadelphia area, with $14 to spare, I can’t recommend this ruin enough. It comes with a free audio tour that provides you a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style experience, so you can explore as much or as little as you like.