I crawled out of bed before Mark awoke and snuck off to Weirton for some quality time with my Kroger. It was cold as a witch’s tit outside and I actually even saw some snow on my windshield going over the hill, but it all pretty much ended by the time we REALLY ventured out into the world for breakast at Ritter’s. I love Ritter’s…

And I hate Giant Eagle. After a couple of visits, I’ve decided that it is one of the single worst supermarket chains I’ve ever patronized. And I’ve patronized a lot of grocery chains. The stores are a tacky merchandising mess and the employees range from incompetent to down righ surly. Of course, they have a virtual monopoly in Pittsburgh, and it shows. Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest…

Today, we toured Shadyside and some of the outlying areas on the way south to Charleroi, which is where Mark’s father and aunt were born. We saw the old family homestead and drove through the surprisingly large and active downtown, before stopping at the Sunoco and getting on the Turnpike. We got a price break because the toll collectors were in the last day of a strike…

Lunch was at a very sucktastic Bob’s Big Boy in a service plaza. And we actually made it to Baltimore at a reasonable enough hour to have dinner there, at a passable pizza place in Timonium, before touring the bridges and tunnels by night…

We’d grown better able to avoid the ghettos by this second visit to Baltimore, and we saw a fair amount of the city, although our time was a little limited. This time through, we did get to eat at the Overlea and we made it downtown as well. And then it was time to move on…

We took the old road, US 1, from Baltimore to Washington and I relived a little more of my childhood as we passed the Laurel Shopping Center, where my mom and I used to hang out while my did went to the horse races (and where George Wallace was shot in 1972). Hechts and the Hot Shoppes have moved on, but the Giant Food is still there, original sign in place…

We met Juan Felipe at a Colombian restaurant with amazing food on Glebe Road in Arlington. He gave us the tour of the town (which is more appealing than I’d remembered) and put up with us until rush hour subsided, while somehow managing to avoid being photographed…

And then there was a very long drive back to Greensboro, which seemed even longer since it didn’t start until 8:00 at night…

The best thing for me about our altered itinerary was the extra day with my mom and dad. On this last day we finally made it to Libby Hill and managed also to squeeze in both one more cafeteria visit and one more cousin…

It’s always a little sad going to bed the night before leaving…

Early (relatively) breakfast at Waffle House followed by goodbyes which tried with mixed success not to be tearful. Then Mark and I were off to Charlotte to take one more turn through town, drop off the car, and fly back to this place which we’ve both come to hate so very much…

Back to DFW, back to SFO, back to the Best Western El Rancho Inn in Millbrae, and then back to harsh reality of a smelly, undestocked, overpriced Bay Area supermarket where we stopped to get essentials on the way home. It’s only fitting that our first stop upon returning would be at Albertsons…

Our East Coast fate is pretty well sealed. It’s too hard to resist the more reasonable cost of living, the more rational population, the well-stocked supermarkets, the plentiful nearby road trip options, the better food, and so on and so on…

Details to follow…

Been back home in California about three hours now. Must keep reminding myself that my self-imposed sentence here will be over soon…

Pictures soon from Charlotte, Greensboro, Baltimore, Schenectady, Albany, Niagara Falls, Pittsburgh, Arlington, and assorted other locales where groceries are cheaper, homes can still be purchased by mere mortals, and Waffle Houses are plentiful…

The great thing about moving to Charlotte (yeah, that’s on again, it seems) is that Mark and I both found our ideal houses there. Mine’s the Craftsman on the left, his is the Tudor on the right, each is in Dilworth and neither is within our means. But we’ll be a helluva lot closer to our goal there than we ever will here…

Anyhow, as much as I’ve kidded the hubby about falling in the love with the exact same neighborhood in 27 different cities, we’re pretty much compatible with respect to this issue, and I could live quite comfortably in a Tudor if I had to, thanks…

Unrelated: much like a good deed, no two-week vacation ever goes unpunished either. Remind me to go into how much this week sucks, if I ever have a second. Or don’t…

John McCain is a man for whom I have immense respect, even when I occasionally disagree with him. But this time, he really should know better. Come on now. Is legislation really called for in this particular case? Ultimately, if any number of overpaid jocks want to commit steroid suicide, who the hell cares? It’s not like their jobs have any earth-shattering significance to the republic…

I’m still working on the text, but if you want to see pictures from the Great East Coast Tour of 2004, here they are…

For those of you who have been waiting patiently (all four of you), the commentary and full story of the Great East Coast Road Trip of 2004 is there for the reading. Enjoy…

Y’know, if it doesn’t involve another design change nor an additional 15 or 20 years of waiting for the damned thing to be built, I’m just as happy as a clam to have the Bay Bridge named in honor of Emperor Norton…

And while I’m still reading today’s paper, I feel compelled again to mention how Tim Goodman just gets it, completely and totally:

But I realized, as I bought a bunch of TV series on DVD that I’d already seen, that it’s not about the watching. It’s about the owning. Rare is the person who says, “I’m going to buy the first season of ‘The Simpsons’ out of curiosity. But not the next four years. And not the 12 to come.” Ours is not that culture. “I really loved the first two seasons of ‘The Sopranos,’ but I wouldn’t dare buy the next three seasons. Oh my, no. Who has the time?”

As consumers, most of us say, “I’ll take all four of these seasons and I’d like to be wait-listed for Season 5 and the yet-to-be-shot Season 6. Here’s my Visa with Uncle Junior and Bacala on the front.”

Americans are collectors. And worse, completists. Count me among you.

Me too…

Somewhere between 750,000 and 800,000 people live within the city limits of San Francisco. Approximately twenty-six of these residents were born and raised and have roots here. Thus, San Francisco is one of those cities that people leave in droves for the Christmas holiday. one happy result of this trend is that it often makes last minute Christmas shopping relatively painless…

On the other hand, buying groceries can be a rather monumental task, what with the supermarket-to-humans ration here being about a third of what it is anywhere else in the country. I headed to the Safeway about 6:30 and was horrified to find that they were out of butter. Not just out of the butter that was on sale, mind you, nor the butter of the type that I wanted, but completely 100% out. There wasn’t a stick of butter (or, this being California, a cake of butter) in the entire store…