OMG Snow!

This morning it was just a little flurry, but this afternoon it was like a downpour. So pretty! So COLD!

I've been so busy lately I haven't had much tine to post. Here's what's been going on lately:

A couple weeks ago I went back to CA for work. There were a ton of meetings and a visit to my aunt in Sac, so it went by too fast. I did get to eat at all my old favorite places though.

While in CA I picked up a head cold from my cousin, so I got experience the joy of airplane descent with clogged ears. OWWWWW!

Also while I was in CA I arranged to have a shipper pick up my car. It arrived here on Saturday. I am so happy to drive it again!

Monday we went to the Obama rally at Mellon Arena (the hockey "igloo") in Pittsburgh. It was very cool to see Obama speak, and I'm sure Dave will write more about that later.

Last night was my first time making phone calls from the Obama volunteer office. I was a little nervous at first, but after getting a lot of answering machines I realized not that many people were going to pick up the phone and yell at me. I spoke to a few polite people supporting both major parties so that wasn't so bad.

A Nutty First Week In Squirrel Hill

Our home is about a 35 minute walk from CMU. We're in an area of Pittsburgh called Squirrel Hill. Like the rest of the city, everything here is a bit old and run-down. Squirrel Hill is actually a heavily orthodox Jewish neighborhood, but there are plenty of non-Jews here, too. We're just a block away from Squirrel Hill's main street of Murray Ave, which is packed with pizza places, coffee shops, Asian restaurants--and a Giant Eagle grocery store. The area reminds me a bit of the Porter/Davis areas outside Boston.

Virg took off from work for our first week in Pittsburgh, and we figured we'd use the time to explore our new city together. Instead, the first week proved to be a never-ending flurry of work. This included:

• waiting for the Comcast guy to hook up our Internet
• waiting on the phone with Comcast support after the guy left us with a non-functioning Internet connection
• immediately spending $400 on cleaning supplies, etc., at Target (in a great mega-store shopping area a short drive away called The Waterfront)
• waiting for my car not to arrive Saturday evening
• picking up my car Sunday morning, and returning the rental to the airport (30 mins away)
• looking through stores for desk chairs before buying 2 at Staples (and spending forever trying to remove the glued-on armrests)
• waiting for a delivery guy to drop off Virg's computer, and then waiting the next day for a delivery guy to drop off the piece that Oracle forgot to ship with the computer
• exchanging emails with the landlord (who has been wonderful!) regarding much-needed repairs, painting, and cleaning
• calling the repairman, painters, and cleaners
• waiting around for painters to come by to provide estimates
• waiting for cleaners to come and clean the house
• measuring the den and master bedroom, buying massive rolls of foam padding and massive custom-cut rectangles of carpeting from Lowe's, driving a rental truck full of carpeting back to our place, unloading it, and racing to get the truck back before the store closed
• sweeping/mopping the den and bedroom floors and arranging/cutting foam padding for the carpeting
• looking through several stores for desks and desktop computers for me. Ultimately I bought both at Office Depot (desktop pc - $250, LCD monitor - $200, desk - $50). I'm loving the pc and monitor, but assembling the $50 desk required hours of expletives.

We probably spent $500 a day that week.

Finally, on the Thursday morning marking our one week anniversary of camping out on an air mattress, the moving truck arrived with all our stuff. For this we had to lock the poor frazzled cats in the bathroom for a couple hours. When we finally released them, they practically wept with joy upon seeing all their cat trees, scratching posts, and familiar-smelling furniture. Just a few minutes later, a truck arrived with the guest bed we ordered, and we had to lock up the cats all over again. But at last, the cats got to take over their favorite piece of cat furniture--our bed. They've been lying there blissed out and unconscious for much of the week since then.

And as for us, we were also able to relax when all our stuff arrived. We were particularly thrilled to finally have:

• Our tool box. The first week in a new place is a terrible time not to have tools!
• Telephones. We could finally plug in a phone to try out our new phone line. Turns out, we had a whole bunch of messages about deliveries. Oops.
• Our table and chairs. It's been nice not to have to sit/eat on the floor.
• Music. We used Virg's laptop to play songs off my ipod for a while, but it was wonderful finally having access to our full music collection and real speakers.
• The printer. We could finally print out directions, bus routes, etc.
• Our bed! So big and soft and comfy! It was wonderful to finally get a good night of sleep on our bed, even if we did have to fight the cats for it.

Mr. Moustache Goes To Pittsburgh

And that brings us to Pittsburgh. Virg arrived on a red-eye early on June 12th, rented a car, and got the keys to the house we're renting in Squirrel Hill. I got a ride from Louisville with another CS teacher, arriving in Pittsburgh mid-afternoon.

Fort Pitt Bridge, stolen from Wikipedia

Entering Pittsburgh from the south is actually quite spectacular. First you see nothing but highway traffic. Then you go through the Fort Pitt tunnel that suddenly turns into the Fort Pitt bridge, taking you over the Monongahela River into downtown. The city is surprisingly picturesque, with its downtown located at the intersection of three rivers. The city is also built on a number of hills, and across the rivers are steep slopes which provide some great views looking down on Pittsburgh. And there are numerous bridges that cross the rivers--most of which are painted in an ugly color that you see a lot here. Virg and I refer to it as "Pittsburgh yellow."

the house, as it appeared on Craigslist

Virg and I were initially pretty bummed when we saw the house we rented. We knew it was a 3-bedroom 1.5-bath, and we'd seen photos on Craigslist, but otherwise we had no idea what to expect. It turned out to be an old place with damaged creaky wooden floors everywhere, broken door latches, fingerprints and marks on all the doors and moldings, and it was left absolutely filthy for our arrival. Our socks would turn black after just an hour of walking inside, and we constantly needed to wash our hands. We borrowed an air mattress and set up camp in the upstairs rear bedroom (since it had an AC window unit).

Yes, Virg photographed her sock.

In the evening, we bought a bunch of cat supplies and then used our portable GPS to drive to the Pittsburgh airport's cargo area, where we picked up two terrified cats. Jackie and Mr. Moustache had just survived a week of watching all their stuff disappear, followed by a night in a kennel and then a full day of flying as cargo on United with a connection in Chicago. (Their trip was arranged through Pets Express, an expensive service that provided some big time peace-of-mind for us, as these cats do not travel well!) The cats were too freaked out to protest much on the drive home. We released them in the upstairs bathroom and sat with them there for a while, as they nervously explored the space. When we released them into the rest of the house, they pretty much kept to the bathroom and our makeshift bedroom for the first couple of days. They went right back to hiding in terror each time a repairman, painter, delivery person, etc., came into the house--Jackie hiding under the toilet and Mr. M sprawled out on top of the fridge.