One of the best parts of fall is the crisp, cool weather. Now is the perfect time to reserve that outdoor table at your favorite restaurant that you’ve been avoiding during the uncomfortable heat of the summer.

    Dozens of restaurants along the Main Line are taking advantage of this gorgeous autumn weather and are offering special three-course prix-fixe dinners for their customers. Main Line Restaurant Week is running through Oct. 3 and will offer dinners for $15, $20, $30, and $40 per person. Participating restaurants will treat their guests to special, mouth-watering menus showcasing their talented chefs’ greatest dishes.

    Some of the participating restaurants include Azie on Main, Blackfish, Dettera, Morton’s, Nectar, Sullivan’s, Verdad, and many more.

    Many special events are planned during this week-long event including a birthday party for Main Line Restaurant Week founder Sarah Lockard at georges’ <http://www.georgesonthemainline.com/>  in Wayne (Oct. 1).

    For further information, please visit www.mainlinerestaurantweek.com.

           No doubt about it, Philadelphia is a creative city. Who else would have ever imagined that cheese-whiz and steak paired together would create a global phenomenon? The City of Brotherly Love is also an incubator for creative design. From beautiful architecture on Broad Street to trend-setting fashioninstas at the local art schools, Philadelphia definitely has its own style and flavor.

           No wonder the largest design festival in the United States will be hosted in Philadelphia. Design Philadelphia is an eleven day event that celebrates the city’s contemporary significance as a center for creative achievement. Multiple venues throughout the city will host exhibits, lectures, workshops, studio tours, and runway shows from Oct. 7 through the 17. Some of the events will include an experiment with LED light graffiti, an exhibition of products, from jewelry to furniture made entirely of discarded skateboards, an underground subway video festival, a temporary interactive public mural made of lights, and a mobile app that helps participants discover Philadelphia’s hidden design treasures.

           During the sixth annual festival, Philly will be transformed into a design mecca for more than 500 artists, professionals, and students display their craft to the public.

           For more information, please visit  http://www.designphiladelphia.org.

   When I was still in college, I took a class about Native Americans. We read books about long-lost tribes, learned how they built their houses, irrigated fields to farm and hunted food. I was endlessly fascinated by the lives of these people.
            The Lenape Indians of Pennsylvania were said to have left the region at the opening of the 19th century. Yet, many still remained in secret. Children of the Lenape lived on their homelands, practicing their religious traditions in secret. Hiding their true heritage, they avoided discovery by the government for more than 200 years.
            The Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is featuring a new exhibit that pays homage to these incredible people. Fulfilling a Prophecy was organized with the help of the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania and features never before displayed objects from the private collections of Lenape people in Pennsylvania. Guests will be able to view historic and contemporary photographs and archaeological objects including ancient masks, dolls, jewelry, and traditional art, as well as a number of once-secret family heirlooms, woven rich with hidden Lenape symbolism.
           The exhibit will also address the activities and goals of the Lenape of Pennsylvania today, as members of the community speak out through a video. The exhibit is running now through 2011. For more information please visit www.penn.museum/.

           I have been living in the same splendid little apartment in South Philadelphia for the last two years. I love it. I’m within walking distance from Center City and four blocks away from Ikea and I have an incredible (yet distant) view of the skyline. However, I am a product of the suburbs and sometimes I really, really miss having a backyard. I miss trees and flowers and woodland creatures. This is why I am such a big fan of urban gardens and I have even (unsuccessfully) tried to grow one myself out on-top of my building’s awning.

            Whether your intentions are good, like mine, but you end up killing all of your plants accidentally anyway, or are involved in a community garden plot, the upcoming PHS Gardening Festival will have something for you.

            The Festival, which will take place on Saturday, Sept. 11 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, will teach guests how to garden, showcase seasonal winners and have some special programs open to area gardeners from the PHS. Experts will be there to answer any gardening question you might have. There will also be a special sneak peak of the 2011 Philadelphia Flower Show.

            The kids will have a blast also! There will be the interactive Veggie Race and a fun water stations brought to them by the Philadelphia Water Department. There will also be live entertainment all day. Best of all, this event is free!

   I am not a sports fan. I think baseball is primitive and football is downright barbaric. I don’t know if hockey games are divided into innings, periods or quarters or what a touchdown even is. I didn’t even know Philadelphia had a soccer team until last Wednesday. I am fascinated, however, by the appeal of Jayson Werth’s beard.

            My father is a diehard Philadelphia fan. His mood is solely determined upon whether or not the 76ers win (so he is perpetually miserable) or if the Phillies will make it to the World Series again this year.

            Philadelphia sports fans have a long, colorful history of being obsessively passionate about their teams. This almost frightening loyalty is documented in hilarious accuracy in "The Philly Fan," a one-man hit show starring two-time Barrymore Award-winner Tom McCarthy, written by award-winning playwright Bruce Graham.

            This in-your-face journey through the eyes of a devoted Philadelphia sports fanatic takes the audience through 50 years of Philadelphia sports history (and the frustrations and perils therein!).

I’ll admit it — I don’t have a favorite color.
I can’t consistently rank the belovedness of my childhood pets, either. Bojangles the dog learned how to open the gate and let himself out. So he gets five points.
Ashes the cat gave my sister allergies. That’s worth about 10.
And that unnamed hermit crab down at the beach ... those were 36 magical hours we had together.
Throughout most of history, the inability to name a favorite color, pet or other bit of one’s past probably wouldn’t have mattered. But today, failing to produce an answer can lock you out of that most precious form of communication: your e-mail account.
I am always getting locked out and having to sheepishly call tech support for assistance with made-up excuses.
Me: “Hi there, I’m locked out of my e-mail. I tend to shuffle my feet, so I think I might have zapped the keyboard with static electricity.”
Tech Support:  “OK, I can certainly help with that ... let me pull up your account. For security reasons, please tell me: What was the name of your high school?”
Me: “Oh, that’s easy. It was ... Right, OK, wait. It was a saint, I know that. Saint Mary, maybe? Or Francis? How many guesses do I get? I think our mascot was a mongoose. Who was the patron saint of mongooses? Or is it mongeese?”
I always regain access eventually, but I’d rather avoid any unnecessary hassle.
Online correspondence has been growing ever more secure in recent years. The rule of thumb generally followed by network administrators is that a password should be secure enough that hackers can’t crack it, but simple enough that you yourself can remember it, but secure enough that you yourself can’t remember it if it’s 4 a.m. on New Year’s Eve and your resolution is a drunken, misguided adherence to total honesty.
Frankly, I’m not sure there is a happy medium between all those levels of security. That’s why I’ve come up with an idea that would bolster the economy and help keep us from unnecessary lapses in communication. Basically, I think there should be a new field of technology professional whose job is to verify our identity through our unique talents. A typical exchange might go like this:
Employee: “Yes, hello, I’ve forgotten my password.”
Tech Support: “OK, let me just pull up your account ... For security purposes, I’m going to have to come up to your office and make sure you can walk from one side of the office to the other on your hands.”
Employee: “Fantastic, I’ll start moving the filing cabinet out of the way.”
Not only would this create jobs, but it would help co-workers learn about each other. Now, of course, this might not be totally secure. Some people have shared talents that could be copied.
But I’m not worried about it, personally. If there’s someone out there who can recite the whole “Monorail” song from the “Simpsons” like I can, I just don’t see them as a security threat.

           When I was a little girl, I was absolutely fascinated with The Brothers Grimm’s folktales. Instead of reading "The Babysitters Club" or anything Barbie related, I chose to sneak peeks at the darkly illustrated children’s stories. Maurice Sendak, the mysterious man behind most of the illustrations, was quoted as saying once, “That’s why the children loved them because they were real life. Dreadful things happen. What more could you want?” That is precisely why I was so enticed by the original tales of “Snow White” and “Hansel and Gretel.” They weren’t simply sugar-coated fluff pieces; they actually had something real to say.

            Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum and Gallery is paying homage to Sendak’s morbidly moving illustrations in a new exhibit called Dreadful Things Happen: The Brothers Grimm and Maurice Sendak. This intriguing exhibit will take a close look at Sendak’s illustrations for many of the Brothers Grimm’s most notable stories. It will also present guests with detailed notes that Sendak made on his translations of the original stories and the museum also highlights why Sendak chose specific scenes to illustrate and what he chose to draw.

            Dreadful Things Happen: The Brothers Grimm and Maurice Sendak is running now up until Sunday, Nov. 7. For more information please visit http://www.rosenbach.org/learn/exhibitions/dreadful-things-happen.

            Philadelphia has its fair share of great concerts, art galleries and theatrical shows. One of the more famous artistic events in the city is the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe. It has an occult-like following and many local artists spend hours upon hours of rehearsal time preparing for this beloved annual festival.

            Nothing represents Philadelphia’s vibrant art scene better than this yearly celebration of bold artistic performances. The Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe are sure to make hearts race and jaws drop!

            This year, a new fundraiser will be added to the artistic festival. Called The Feastival, this delicious benefit co-hosted by Audrey Claire Taichman, Michael Solomonov and Stephen Starr, will feature food from the city’s top restaurants. The Feastival will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 15 at the Festival Hub in Northern Liberties. Tickets are $200 for general admission and $300 for VIP passes.

            For more information, please visit http://www.livearts-fringe.org/feastival/tickets.cfm.

              One of the things that I never understood about men is their obsession with cars. I never could see the appeal of spending your evenings in a dirty garage bent over the open hood of the "Little Ford that Couldn’t." Cars, to me, were always simply a method of getting from point A to point B.

            Despite my inability to treat my Honda as a pet, I am fascinated by cars from the 1950s. The bubblegum colors and rolling curves of those old clunkers are gorgeous.

            On Sunday, Aug. 1  from noon to 5 p.m., Philadelphia’s East Passyunk Avenue will celebrate America’s love for old automobiles. Over 100 classic, antique, muscle, custom and car shows will be lined up along a four block stretch of this south Philadelphia street.

            Along with a vast number of cars to look at, guests will also be able to enjoy car memorabilia vendors, a craft show hosted by Nice Things Handmade at the Passyunk Fountain, and face painting. There will also be two DJs playing your favorite summertime jams.