Category: Pittsburgh

So, about Pittsburgh

A couple of email messages and a post I found on another site recently have clued me in to the fact that a lot of people seem to think I’ve moved to Pittsburgh. I guess I can see how the casual observer might come to this conclusion, what with my (relatively) new job, the fact that  we own a house in Da Burgh,  the fact that we’re trying to sell the house in Winston, the hubby‘s recent abandonement of San Francisco, etc. But the reality is that I still very much live in the Triad. Full-time, even. The reason we’re selling the house is to eliminate the thirty-mile commute to Greensboro that we both now face on a daily basis.

Again, we do still have a house in Pittsburgh. Mark has done wonderful things with it. And I visited it this weekend for the first time in almost five months. It’s a nice house in a nice city. It’s just not where I live.

I wanted to make that clear, since geography is inordinately important to me.

Sleepy

The whole insomnia thing has been getting much better of late, but last night was a big exception. A combination of factors kept me up most of the night, the aforementioned factors ranging from a really exhausting quick weekend trip to Pittsburgh to multiple work deadlines to some personal stuff. I’d prefer to have skipped the whole sleepless night, but since I was up anyway, I went ahead and drove into work really early and found that (1) the traffic was quite light at that predawn hour and (2) I was surprisingly productive once I got to work.

But it’s only 11:30 now and I’m already beat. Plus I have two more meetings to go today. I’ll update you if I care enough to bother by the end of the day.

Don’t hold your breath.

I won’t be in Pittsburgh this weekend

I have a Giant Eagle Advantage Card because I’m in Pittsburgh a few times a year. Like most of my other supermarket cards from around the country (yes, I have a lot of them), it’s registered under my Winston-Salem address. There’s not a Giant Eagle within about four hundred miles of here. You’d think their mailing list database software would recognize that based on my zip code and that I probably wouldn’t get postcards in the mail inviting me a to a one-day seafood sale on Saturday. You’d be wrong.

This isn’t really what I wanted to write about today but, hey, whatever…

I Love Pair

No, really. Pair Networks (based in Pittsburgh, by the way) may be the only company I’ve dealt with in the past decade that has never disappointed me. They are so incredibly amazing that I’m ticked pink to pay a (relatively small) premium to use their web hosting service rather than suffer through the nightmare of some others I’ve dealt with. I’ve been using Pair for more than ten years and the difference between them and other hosts is unbelievable.

Why? Because their service is scalable and user-friendly for techies and non-techies alike. And because they have kick-ass tech support that (a) is completely based in Pittsburgh, (b) is staffed by people who speak English, and (c) exudes competence and is inclined to actually do something when you have a problem rather than just read from a fucking script.

We love yinz guys…

Traveling

It’s a traveling sort of week.

On Saturday, I flew up to Pittsburgh to meet Mark. I usually drive, but the weather was iffy, and I found a really cheap flight. All went well until the second half of my trip home on Tuesday. That was the part where my plane left LaGuardia but came back a half hour later due to mechanical issues. I got home very late after spending way too long in Queens. Which sucked because I needed those few hours to get ready for this morning’s trip.

Plus it snowed. In Pittsburgh. And in North Carolina. I’m tired of snow.

But now I’m in Pinehurst for the SNCA meeting. Which is nice, except for the fact that (a) it’s in Pinehurst and (b) I’m half asleep from last night’s sleep deficit. At least there’s a Smithfield’s here, though. And the trip’s a work freebie.

But I kind of miss home. I only got to spend about nine hours there between trips, and I was asleep for a lot (but not nearly enough) of those hours.

I don’t think I’ll go anywhere this weekend.

Randomly Thursday

Thoughts and links for a Thursday morning in February:

  • It’s nice to read good news about a mid-century building once in a while, although it’s sad that the good news in LA is not universal. Too many preservationists believe that all history ended about 1920 and that any urban context from any subsequent era is useless (and probably just plain evil) and thus not worthy of our attention. Fortunately, more people are now coming to the realization that we pretty much said the same thing about turn of the century buildings in the 1950s that we’re saying about mid-century buildings now, and that mid-century buildings (particularly those constructed as infill) are an important part of urban texture.
  • No major commentary on this one. It’s just cool.
  • I really hope there’s still a roof there when we get back to Pittsburgh.
  • Just what the world needs: a “My Harris Teeter” ringtone.
  • I haven’t digested all of this article on the decline of the Washington Post (too depressing for work), but as Rebuilding Place notes, it’s impossible not to notice. In fact, it’s probably even more pronounced for me since I have irregular access to the print edition, so it’s seemed even less gradual to me. Of course, the same could be said for the LA Times, the SF Chronicle, and the Chicago Tribune, which I was horrified last year to realize is now a tabloid.
  • I’ve come to the recent realization that I like Echo & the Bunnymen more now than I did twenty years ago.

Randomly Saturday

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May I suggest (respectfully, of course) that if your mall‘s parking lot looks like this on the Friday after Thanksgiving, your mall is probably going to be showing up here very soon?

Speaking of malls, this article on one of Toronto’s first big ones in the Toronto area is really interesting and has many cool vintage photos and illustrations.

Baby, if we skip Christmas presents entirely, can we? Please?

I couldn’t care less about the beer, but wow. Who knew Donnie Iris was from Pittsburgh?

Randomly Friday

Company asleep at home  in the guest room, me sitting in my new office (I love my job), and I’ve just awakened my husband at 6AM PST because I got distracted and wasn’t paying attention to the fact that I was in “Recent Calls” rather than “Voicemail.” I think that all sends a pretty mixed message about how my Friday will play out.

So do my links: