Thursday, July 10
Turns out I've got to get the car inspected within 10 days of registering it. Just wanting to be done with all that, I take the car down to the same mechanic first thing in the morning, and by afternoon my ancient New Jersey registration sticker has been replaced by two PA stickers.
The Salvation Army people had finally picked up the old couch that had been left wasting away on the front porch, so I got this great idea to spend a couple minutes quickly running our new vacuum cleaner over the porch to finally clean it up. I'm feeling very pleased about halfway through when the vacuum starts smoking, so I decide to empty it. Turn it on again and it's still smoking. After just 30 seconds of use I notice it's full again. Now I empty it again, and this time I start reading the manual to get dust out of the various filters and hoses. There's dust spilling out everywhere, all over the porch again, covering the vacuum cleaner and my clothes, rising up as smoke, and I'm sure I'm breathing it in by the pound.
Another minute or so of vacuuming and it's still smoking. I dissect the vacuum again and it's completely full again, in all the filters and hoses. After a couple hours of this, the porch looks a little cleaner, but our trash can is half full of nothing but porch dust, and our poor brand new vacuum cleaner looks like it's just fought a war in the desert and aged 50 years. I use the dust buster to clean it off, and it's been sitting in the dining room ever since looking old and miserable. I've been scared to turn it on, sure it'll start spitting up plumes of porch dust all over our home.
In the evening, I met up for dinner at Lulu's with a student of mine who's in town for a summer program at CMU, during which time Virg bought the first flowers for her garden.
Friday, July 11
Virg planted her new flowers, while I hid inside feeling suddenly very sick, sneezing pretty much continuously all day. Virg thinks it's all that porch dust I inhaled, and I have this vision of my lungs looking like the insides of our vacuum cleaner. I managed to go out for lunch. We tried the nearby New Dumpling House, which turned out to be very good. I ate some udon soup between sneezes into my pile of tissues. In the evening I'm still sneezing too uncontrollably to get out for dinner, so Virg ordered in a couple sandwiches and more soup for me. I called my Dad to let him know that I may be too sick to see him the next day.
Saturday, July 12
I'm feeling the same in the morning, but Dad and Hilary decide they'll take their chances and come visit anyway. By late morning I'm feeling well enough to suggest that Virg and I go to a movie. We settle on a lunchtime showing of Pixar's Wall-E. We know it's got incredible reviews, but we haven't read any. I'm expecting something like Monsters, Inc., except with the wisecracks uttered by an unbearably adorable little robot.
stolen from http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/wall-e/
Being an early showing of a Disney movie, there are lots of little kids in the audience babbling through the previews. The movie starts, and holy crap there's no dialogue in it, and for a while there's just one character--a robot moving garbage around on a totally vacant post-apocalyptic world. But those mundane activities are given this sense of purpose somehow, and the robot is so expressive. 40 minutes into the movie and still no dialogue, but we find ourselves hanging on every movement on screen, with no idea how the story will unfold. And all those little kids are silently engrossed by the movie, too. The movie is like poetry, and we're finding ourselves choked up by it (or perhaps by Thomas Newman and Peter Gabriel's beautiful soundtrack). And although it eventually settles into something a little more formulaic, it's my clear pick so far for the best movie of 2008.
After the movie, Dad and Hilary arrived. We showed them our home, and in the evening, we all went to the fancy Capital Grille steakhouse in downtown (a place that would have to pay a hefty fine if Dave Barry had succeeded in passing his Extra 'e' Tax).
Sunday, July 13
The four of us drove into downtown and parked there, and in accordance with a Pittsburgh tradition, we walked across the Roberto Clemente bridge to PNC Park to see the Pirates lose. But, ah, what a stadium, with its fantastic view of the Pittsburgh skyline across the river. For dinner, we ate well at the Rock Bottom Brewery in the Waterfront.
walking across the bridge to PNC Park
Monday, July 14
Virg stayed home and worked while Dad, Hilary, and I walked from our home to my future office at CMU, to Shadyside (where we had lunch at Pamela's Diner), and back through Forbes/Murray. It was a great walk in unusually great weather. Must have been over 6 miles. And it was good to learn that I really can walk to Shadyside from either CMU or home.
In the evening, the four of us tried the nearby Murray Avenue Grill for dinner, which was fairly good.
Turns out I've got to get the car inspected within 10 days of registering it. Just wanting to be done with all that, I take the car down to the same mechanic first thing in the morning, and by afternoon my ancient New Jersey registration sticker has been replaced by two PA stickers.
The Salvation Army people had finally picked up the old couch that had been left wasting away on the front porch, so I got this great idea to spend a couple minutes quickly running our new vacuum cleaner over the porch to finally clean it up. I'm feeling very pleased about halfway through when the vacuum starts smoking, so I decide to empty it. Turn it on again and it's still smoking. After just 30 seconds of use I notice it's full again. Now I empty it again, and this time I start reading the manual to get dust out of the various filters and hoses. There's dust spilling out everywhere, all over the porch again, covering the vacuum cleaner and my clothes, rising up as smoke, and I'm sure I'm breathing it in by the pound.
Another minute or so of vacuuming and it's still smoking. I dissect the vacuum again and it's completely full again, in all the filters and hoses. After a couple hours of this, the porch looks a little cleaner, but our trash can is half full of nothing but porch dust, and our poor brand new vacuum cleaner looks like it's just fought a war in the desert and aged 50 years. I use the dust buster to clean it off, and it's been sitting in the dining room ever since looking old and miserable. I've been scared to turn it on, sure it'll start spitting up plumes of porch dust all over our home.
In the evening, I met up for dinner at Lulu's with a student of mine who's in town for a summer program at CMU, during which time Virg bought the first flowers for her garden.
Friday, July 11
Virg planted her new flowers, while I hid inside feeling suddenly very sick, sneezing pretty much continuously all day. Virg thinks it's all that porch dust I inhaled, and I have this vision of my lungs looking like the insides of our vacuum cleaner. I managed to go out for lunch. We tried the nearby New Dumpling House, which turned out to be very good. I ate some udon soup between sneezes into my pile of tissues. In the evening I'm still sneezing too uncontrollably to get out for dinner, so Virg ordered in a couple sandwiches and more soup for me. I called my Dad to let him know that I may be too sick to see him the next day.
Saturday, July 12
I'm feeling the same in the morning, but Dad and Hilary decide they'll take their chances and come visit anyway. By late morning I'm feeling well enough to suggest that Virg and I go to a movie. We settle on a lunchtime showing of Pixar's Wall-E. We know it's got incredible reviews, but we haven't read any. I'm expecting something like Monsters, Inc., except with the wisecracks uttered by an unbearably adorable little robot.
stolen from http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/wall-e/
Being an early showing of a Disney movie, there are lots of little kids in the audience babbling through the previews. The movie starts, and holy crap there's no dialogue in it, and for a while there's just one character--a robot moving garbage around on a totally vacant post-apocalyptic world. But those mundane activities are given this sense of purpose somehow, and the robot is so expressive. 40 minutes into the movie and still no dialogue, but we find ourselves hanging on every movement on screen, with no idea how the story will unfold. And all those little kids are silently engrossed by the movie, too. The movie is like poetry, and we're finding ourselves choked up by it (or perhaps by Thomas Newman and Peter Gabriel's beautiful soundtrack). And although it eventually settles into something a little more formulaic, it's my clear pick so far for the best movie of 2008.
After the movie, Dad and Hilary arrived. We showed them our home, and in the evening, we all went to the fancy Capital Grille steakhouse in downtown (a place that would have to pay a hefty fine if Dave Barry had succeeded in passing his Extra 'e' Tax).
Sunday, July 13
The four of us drove into downtown and parked there, and in accordance with a Pittsburgh tradition, we walked across the Roberto Clemente bridge to PNC Park to see the Pirates lose. But, ah, what a stadium, with its fantastic view of the Pittsburgh skyline across the river. For dinner, we ate well at the Rock Bottom Brewery in the Waterfront.
walking across the bridge to PNC Park
the view from our seats
Monday, July 14
Virg stayed home and worked while Dad, Hilary, and I walked from our home to my future office at CMU, to Shadyside (where we had lunch at Pamela's Diner), and back through Forbes/Murray. It was a great walk in unusually great weather. Must have been over 6 miles. And it was good to learn that I really can walk to Shadyside from either CMU or home.
Dad and I outside my future building
In the evening, the four of us tried the nearby Murray Avenue Grill for dinner, which was fairly good.
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