RETIREMENT SEMINAR

Today I went downtown to Two Penn Center to attend a citywide retirement seminar.

Two Penn Center

It's across from Love Park.

 I signed up for it months ago and was afraid I wasn't going to get in.  I found out about a week ago that I could attend.  You can attend only once in your city career, so I wanted to make it as close to retirement as possible.

We had six lectures.   They were really interesting.  They were on financial investments, how the retirement plan works, Social Security, deferred compensation, health benefits after retirement, etc.  I thought it would be deadly dull, but it wasn't and the day went really quickly.

I have not worked downtown for about 17 years now.  I worked in center city for about 20 years and loved every minute of it.  It is a whole different lifestyle.  It was deja vu going down in rush hour, walking along the streets, going into a high rise office building (the meeting was on the 17th floor), and taking the train home again (something I used to do every day).

Carole drove me down this morning.  I didn't know how the trains and buses ran, so I was afraid I would be late.  She got me there at exactly the right time.  That was so nice of her to drive me in rush hour.  Not an easy thing to do -- so many crazy drivers.

I didn't know where to eat lunch, so asked one of the ladies who worked down there.  She told me about a place on the ground floor of the building called Lunch Express so that is where I went.  They had all kinds of sandwiches (hot and cold), soup, a huge salad bar, and an iced tea bar.  Never saw that before.  There were about 12 different kinds of iced tea.  I got a meatball sandwich, a bag of chips and an iced tea and it cost me over $7.  Joe says that's called the "center city gouge".  Everything costs more there than here in the northeast.  I would have paid about $4 for it near home.  They had tables and chairs outside, but they were all chained up.  It would have been nice to eat out there since it was a beautiful, but HOT, day.  Instead I ended up taking it back to the building and eating in the seminar room with a lot of the other folks.

While I was out at lunch time I looked around until I found the entrance to Suburban Station so that I wouldn't get lost going home.  The station is underground.

Don't know if you can see it, but it says "Pennsylvania Railroad/Suburban Station".

Coming home I went into Suburban Station and made my way over the the ticket counter for the train.  It was so strange to be there again.  When I entered the station I knew exactly where I was and how to get to where I wanted to go.  I guess when you do something that long, it all comes back.  

Suburban Station

This is where you go down to an even lower level to get onto the train.

Ticket counter

It was really interesting to see all the shops.  I kept saying things like "Oh, the Hallmark store is still there.  How many times did I shop in there?" and "Roy Rogers is gone -- now it's Church's Chicken.  Interesting."  There were a couple of guys playing guitars and singing and farther along there was a violinist.  I even saw a woman with a fresh fruit and vegetable stand and she was doing quite a good business.  I thought, "If I still worked down here, I would probably be buying off of her to take things home for dinner!"

Some of the underground stores.

It's only a 12 minute ride on the train.  I even remembered which car to get onto to be able to get off at the station.  

Platform where you wait for the train.

The commuter train.

I had parked in the train station parking lot near home in the morning, so could just walk across the street to get the car and drive home in 2 minutes.

I really enjoyed being a center city employee for a day, but I don't think I'd want to do it every day again.  I'm spoiled now being able to drive to work in 10 minutes and come home for lunch.

I can't take credit for any of the pictures today.  I got them all from Google because I wanted to show you where I was.  Thanks to all the great photographers out there who made my post today so much nicer.  (None of these were copywrited!)