Busy, Busy

It's been a busy busy couple of weeks. I'm not sure where the time went but there was a lot of working and cooking going on. I'll post some recipes in follow-up posts.

Dave's Aunt Jeannie and Cousin Lynn came by from NJ for a visit Sunday afternoon. We tried to ignore the heat on Monday, and took them to see the view from Mt Washington, gave them a CMU campus tour, and then a very humid walk through Phipps Conservatory before saying Uncle and having a lovely air-conditioned dinner at Bravo followed by a screening of Julie & Julia.

I am a big fan of Julia Child. My mom and I watched her show when I was young (I think it came on after Lilias Yoga and You on PBS). Mom gave me her Mastering the Art of French Cooking when I started to appreciate finer foods (she wouldn't part with her copy). And now this movie was brilliant!

Unlike many of the reviewers I enjoyed the character of Julie, perhaps because I strongly identified with her. So many times in my life I've been uninspired by everything happening in my life, but cooking something yummy with the best, freshest ingredients I could find/afford brought me joy.

Even the shopping for the ingredients was part of the fun. I loved the scenes in the movie of Julia shopping in the Parisian outdoor markets gasping and cooing with delight at the wondrous array of produce on offer. I was so inspired by the movie I made Julia's Chicken Fricassee recipe on Tuesday night along with some fresh corn on the cob.

SPOILER ALERT

The thing about the movie that I didn't like much was the part where Eric walks out on Julie...I mean this guy was so supportive and patient all along it just seemed totally out of character for him to not come back after a couple of hours, and not even call to let her know where he was.

Carlos Times

Friday, August 8
Carlos (renowned coin flipper, and editor of The Carlos Times) arrived in the evening. The three of us got dinner at the Murray Ave Grill and then filled Carlos with ice cream at Bruster's, which turned out to be a great find.

Carlos made good on his threat to bring Virg some NY memorabilia.

Mr. Moustache closes his eyes and muses that Carlos is simultaneously
half alive and half made of Coke.

Saturday, August 9
A day of ill. Virg made sure Carlos had the full midwestern experience by stuffing him with Bob Evan's breakfast food in West Mifflin. Then we drove up the Mt Washington lookout to stand above the Pittsburgh skyline, and headed home. Afterward, Carlos and I went for a long walk around our neighborhood, CMU and Shadyside, making sure to stop for the obligatory Coke to keep Carlos running at peak efficiency. Then we all attempted to finish off an extra large pizza at Aiello's and found room for dessert at Aladdin's. We also taught Carlos to play Big Two, which he insisted on playing for the rest of his visit.

Sunday, August 10
Began the day with coffee and muffins at the nearby 61C Cafe. Then Virg took us to the Andy Warhol museum. We had heard from people here that it's so much more than a museum, that there's so much to do there. Wrong. It was your standard art museum. If you're willing to stretch the meaning of the word "art" to include the works we saw there.

Carlos was deeply moved by this painting.

We then introduced Carlos and ourselves to another essential Pittsburgh experience--hot dogs at The Original Hot Dog Shop near Pitt. Supposed to be the most incredible hot dogs. Wrong. They were hot dogs. Nothing original about them. And the place was hot and dirty.

Greasy french fries. How original.

Having filled him with hot dogs, pancakes, coke, and ice cream, we sent Carlos on his merry way back to the futures that awaited him in NY.

In the evening we ate healthier at Rock Bottom and then watched Shaun Of The Dead on DVD. It was entertaining, but no Hot Fuzz.

Ravi Comes To Town

Last weekend, August 2-4, Ravi came to visit us, so we attempted to do our best to show him around our new hometown which we barely knew ourselves.

Shortly after Rav arrived Saturday afternoon, we walked down the street to one of our favorite Thai places, Sweet Basil, for lunch. Unfortunately they do not have the lunch specials available on the weekend. Still, the food was great there!

Afterward we attempted to drive up Mt Washington, but we did not carefully plan our trip, so we wound up driving all the way AROUND Mt Washington before figuring out the route to the top of the Dusquesne incline.



Then we drove over to downtown and over to Oakland. We parked at CMU and walked over to the Cathedral of Learning at Pitt. First we took the elevator to the top floor to see the view, but we were disappointed to learn that the larger windows out of which great views are sure to be had were closed off in rooms that were locked for the weekend.

Then we went down to the 3rd floor and visited some of the international rooms. These rooms were apparently decorated by different groups of various nationalities living in Pittsburgh at the time the Cathedral was built. These were an interesting curiosity but nothing to get too excited about. Before leaving the building, we stopped at the 1st floor to get a look at the beautiful soaring arches in the grand hall, and Ravi found some thrones for us to act like royalty in.



Since it was a hot day, we could not leave the area without an ice cream from Dave and Andy's. Then we walked over to CMU campus where Rav got to see Dave's office, and we got to laugh at the brand name of the toilet stall door latches: Hiney Hiders.

All of this walking around made us very hungry so we walked over to Rose Tea Cafe for dinner. Rav introduced us to the heavenly Sa-Cha sauce (GARLIC!), and our meals here were excellent as always.

The next morning we had Sunday brunch at Harris Grill.



The tatooed chain smoking crowd we saw there last time we brunched was nowhere to be found. In fact the place was completely empty at 10:30 am. I had a steak and eggs platter, Rav had the frittata, and Dave had the blueberry pancakes. The coffee and Bloody Marys were excellent, and the bacon was awesome! Apparently they have "Bacon Tuesdays" where you get baskets of bacon for $1 during happy hour. I think we'll be back.

After such a heavy meal we thought the virtuous thing would be to take a walk in the park. We hadn't been to Frick Park yet, so with a vague sense of direction we headed toward the East and found a paved trail with a par course where we could demonstrate feats of strength and agility.



After awhile we headed into the woods for the shade and found ourselves utterly confused by the signs. After a bit of guesswork and pure luck we found our way out of the woods and in a neighborhood we'd never seen before. Having no idea where we were we let the angle of the sun be our guide and hoped we would come across a familiar street sign sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Along the way we cam across some boys selling lemonade, juice, and water from a TV tray table on the sidewalk. They were too cute to pass up so Rav and I bought drinks, and though we told them not to spend the money on video games, the boys were evasive in a way that indicated that was the motivation behind the enterprise.

Once we found our way home we were beat so we sat around the porch playing cards until we got hungry enough for dinner. For dinner we drove back over to Oakland and ate at the Union Grill. Dave had been there during his CMU interview, but it was new to me and Rav. The turkey Devonshire sandwich was billed as World Famous on the menu, so Rav could not pass it up. It was just white bread, tomato slices, turkey, and bacon smothered in cheddar cheese. I'm not sure what this sandwich is famous for, but rest assured that I will not be ordering it any time ever. That evening back at home we enjoyed some more porch sitting and games with a pitcher of Pina Colada.

The next day I had to work and then go to a doctor's appt over lunch, so Rav and Dave amused themselves and had lunch at Smallman St Deli with a friend of Rav's from school. After lunch Rav had to go back to NYC, and so ended our lovely visit.

The Beechers Come To Town

My parents stopped by Pittsburgh for less than 24 hours on their way to DC, so we didn't get to show them around much. Also they brought boxes of my crap that's been stored in their basement for over 12 years.

When they got in Friday night we took them over to the Murray Avenue Grill (we had success with Paul and Hilary Feinberg there during their visit a couple of weekends before). This time they were not out of all the specials, so everyone got what they wanted.

That evening we went to Gullifty's for dessert. Dave and I got the flourless chocolate cake which he liked but I thought was very disappointing. The raspberry sauce had a lot of seeds in it, and the cake itself was chalky, not the decadence I was expecting. We stayed late enough to hear the first jazz act start. In spite of the poor execution of our Pina Coladas I think we'll be back for the entertainment.

The next day while waiting for everyone to come downstairs I went through my boxes. Among my long lost treasures I discovered my Irish sweater and my English coffee cup that I'd been missing since college, and my pewter mug from The Distillery (I drank over 100 beers from around the world to get that mug which used to hang over the bar).



I also found my old drill team practice uniforms and every letter, postcard, and note passed in class from my high school days.

My parents left before lunch, so we didn't get to show them any more of Pittsburgh, but I hope they'll be back soon so we can get out more.

Dust And Dad

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

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.

License And Registration (And Other Complaints)

Ack! I'm getting way behind in this blog, and Virg is now out-publishing me. No good. I'll attempt to speed through a whole bunch of boring stuff.

Saturday, June 28

Virg had already ditched me to see Sex And The City when it opened, but at long last she went to the theater to watch it with me. It was ok. The first hour was stupid, and then it got really stupid, but then if you were willing to buy all that stupidity, the final 90 minutes of this never-ending movie were actually fairly good. For dinner we tried a random Chinese place near us called Chopsticks. As the only customers that night, we were pretty unimpressed, but stayed for a long time anyway, to avoid another typically crazy Pittsburgh lightning storm outside.

Monday, June 30
We found a great random Chinese/Japanese place for lunch on Murray Ave. In the evening, we bought an air conditioning unit for our room, although it took us several days to bother installing it. With all these AC window units, we can't technically lower the temperature much, but it sure feels a lot cooler in here. (We're dreading our first electric bill.) Anyway, we celebrated by pigging out on the yummy Chocolate Raspberry Passion dessert at the Rock Bottom brewery.

Tuesday, July 1
I figured there was no immediate rush to deal with the DMV. Well, back when I was still living in California, I got a bill to re-register my car, and I thought, "Why would I pay money to register my car in California, when I'll already be in Pittsburgh by the time it kicks in?" And so we moved to Pittsburgh, and one day I realized I had let my CA registration run out, leaving us to drive an unregistered vehicle. Not good.

Well, it turns out you can't register a vehicle in Pennsylvania without (1) a Pennsylvania driver's license and (2) Pennsylvania auto insurance. And it also turns out you really need the driver's license in order to get the insurance. So what do you need to get a PA driver's license? Many things, but most importantly, you either need a birth certificate (don't have this) or a passport. No problem. I've got a passport--good for ten years. But a quick glance showed that the ten years were due to run out in two days. Holy crap! Time to run over to the DMV!

Ok. The DMV turns out to be called PennDOT here, probably because it fails to live up to the competent and friendly customer service you'd generally associate with a real DMV. The nearest PennDOT turned out to be all the way out in Monroeville, and it turns out they only do driver's licenses there--no registrations. So, Virg and I show up having no idea if we've got the right paperwork with us, just hoping to talk to someone and ask what we need. The take-a-number machine assigns us number 450. No problem. We're lucky enough to grab a couple of empty seats, and we look at the numbers lit up above the two desks in front of us, and we see that they're on number 390! About 10 minutes later, we look up and see that they're still on 390. Ugh.

And so we waited in those uncomfortable seats for over 2 hours.

Finally they reached 450. The employee who helped us was very friendly and professional, and it turns out that *phew* we actually have everything we need to get our licenses! The waiting was not in vain! Still, we must have been at that desk for over 10 minutes. The employee is very impressed that we've actually filled out the form to get a license. I guess most Pennsylvanians aren't as bright. At one point he starts scribbling a bunch of stuff on a piece of paper, and we wait silently for him to finish. A couple minutes later he gives us the paper, and on it he's written the names and locations of several restaurants he likes in the area (completely illegible, of course). No wonder it took forever for them to call our number! Considering half the people waiting there are new to the area, you'd think this guy might want to have pre-xeroxed a whole stack of illegible restaurant suggestions.

Anyway, now that that's done, it's time to take a number to wait to have our photos taken, thus immortalizing the haircut I'd gotten that morning. Thankfully, this goes pretty quickly, and they print off our new temporary Pennsylvania driver's licenses--good for 14 days. Our "official" driver's licenses would be arriving in the mail. But here's what doesn't make any sense. The temporary IDs aren't crudely-typed folded pieces of paper. They're full-fledged (I love fledging!) plasticky bar-coded cards, sporting two exhausted-looking photos of me (now in both medium and large sizes!), and covered in all sorts of intricate holograms. When our "official" driver's licenses finally arrived in the mail a week later, they were pretty much identical to the temporary ones--except these didn't have the word TEMPORARY stamped across them in red. So why bother with the temporaries if they have the facilities to issue the real things?

Wednesday, July 2

The painter arrived to paint our bedroom this cool light chocolate color that Virg picked out. (It took her all of 2 seconds to decide among the thousands of shades of brown at Lowe's, and it turned out to be a fantastic choice.) All the white paint in our bedroom and on all the moldings and doorways had dark smudges and fingerprints, etc., so thankfully our landlord agreed to have someone paint over it all. So, for a week we had a painter hanging out in our house during the day. He proved to be a nice guy and a pretty good painter who got through a lot of painting very quickly. Still, we were just a little uncomfortable having a stranger in our house, so I picked up a lot of takeout sandwiches for lunch. And we got to try out our guest room bed on the first night when our room was only half-painted.

our newly painted room, featuring new air conditioner unit

Also, we watched Futurama's next movie installment: "The Beast With A Billion Backs"--not nearly as clever as "Bender's Big Score".

Friday, July 4
Virg had the day off, so we spent lunchtime at the movies seeing The Incredible Hulk. It only proved to be incredible for the first half of the movie, in which the script took time to focus on Bruce Banner's struggle to lead a normal life (and Ed Norton was awesome). The second half was just stupid, with the characters making a series of implausible decisions just to pave the way for a contrived final big battle between the Hulk and another giant mutant.

In the evening, we went to the Monroeville Mall to watch fireworks. The fireworks were ok, but the audience was pretty trashy, and going home, it took us 30 minutes to get out of the mall traffic.

Saturday, July 5
Our first visitor arrived--Virg's friend Jen from Ohio! We spent the afternoon exploring Pittsburgh's exciting Strip District. And what's so exciting about it? Don't know. We were bored of this large seedy run-down area in just 10 minutes. Apparently they have cool farmer's-market-type things in the mornings, and then I guess it reverts back to being a dump.

Sunday, July 6
Virg tried out some fancy market called the Food Co-op, which I'm sure she'll want to write all about. Then she and Jen spent the day doing girly shopping. In the evening, we went out for a fancy dinner at an Italian place called Girasole in Shadyside. So yummy good...

Mr. M shows off for Jen by doing battle with his classic arch-nemesis: the DVD player.

Note the new WRISTSTRONG bracelet Virg is sporting to show her solidarity with her husband and Stephen Colbert and other heroic athletes suffering from wrist injuries.

Mr. Guy studies geography.

Ohio State alums know how to party!

The next morning, Jen left and the painter returned.

Wednesday, July 9
Finally, our driver's licenses had arrived in the mail, thereby letting me get the car insured. At last, enough pieces had fallen into place to solve the unregistered car problem. We were grateful to learn you can avoid the PennDOT beast by registering through AAA. On the PennDOT web site, we learned that you need "to bring the following items with you" to register your car:

• title
• proof of pennsylvania insurance
• completed form MV-1 [not availabe online. must be completed by authorized agent]
• tracing of the VIN [or verification by an inspection mechanic]

Tracing of the VIN? It took us a while to figure out this meant literally rubbing a pencil on tracing paper over the vehicle ID number just under the windshield. Problem is, there's just the tiniest space to get in there, and no way to get any leverage to rub a pencil over it. Crayons didn't help either. Clearly I had to get it verified by an inspection mechanic. Problem is, there's no way to find these mysterious people.

After a great deal of searching, I found a list online of all inspection mechanics in the state of Pennsylvania. Downloaded it. Put it into Excel. Sorted by zip code. For everything in our zip, I searched on google maps to find the closest one. Called them, and I got this very helpful guy on the phone, who said he could verify the VIN any time, but I'd need to get the MV-1 form for him. Ugh.

I call AAA to get one of these forms, and I get this horribly rude woman, who says they don't allow the form out of the building. Well, can they verify my VIN at AAA? Only the inspection mechanic can do that. Ok, how do I do this if I can't get the form to the mechanic? They tell me to get a different form, MV-41.

I find the form online, and the first two blanks call for my Pennsylvania title number and registration plate number. (If I had these, I wouldn't need to go through this stupid process in the first place!) To make matters worse, the back of the form states "This application can only be used to correct typographical error of one digit, transposition of two digits, or if the vehicle's engine number has been erroneously recorded as the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN)." This doesn't sound like the right form at all. I call AAA back. Same nasty woman, insisting again that I take this form to the mechanic.

So I do. The mechanic is kind and helpful, and takes care of me immediately. He doesn't balk at the form, so maybe it's the right one after all. He tells me, "I don't know why they tell you to get a tracing. I've never seen a car where it was possible to trace the VIN." Thanks, PennDOT.

Armed with everything but MV-1, I drive my unregistered vehicle over to AAA. I take a number. 26. Wait for a minute. Someone calls "25? 26?" And I'm being helped immediately by a refreshingly pleasant woman. Turns out I've got everything I need, since she fills out MV-1 for me without my ever seeing it. A couple minutes later and they hand me my new registration and license plate. I drive home, take off the CA plates, put on the PA plate (no front plate in PA), and my car is legal at last. Woo hoo!

Virg and I celebrated in the evening by going to a restaurant called Bravo's at the Waterfront. It was a lot like a Macaroni Grill, and we both really enjoyed what we ordered.