Our Secret Desire

I can now explain, or at least justify, my love affair with Pittsburgh. Deb loves it, too!

So that was where we went last weekend for the Memorial Day holiday. We headed out on Friday afternoon and got in late that night. Ned and Margie were nice enough to wait up for us, greet us, and wait for me to settle down (I get really excitable on the road, I love road trips). Also, while on the way up there, Jake called wanting me and Deb to go to party with him, which validated my coolness. We couldn't go.

On Saturday, after an amazing breakfast by Ned, we took off on a tour of Pittsburgh with Jacob and Karissa. Margie told Deborah and I that Jake volunteered and was super excited to take us, but that was not the case. Jacob wanted a sandwhich, more on that later. So we headed into the city to Mount Washington. The first thing that struck Deb was the greenery. Most of us have been to Pitt, but Deb was really surprised that it was not a burnt out rust-town. Please, please do not take that as an insult to Pittsburgh. She was startled (pleasantly surprised) by all the bridges and loved the three rivers. So after we got sassed by the sad man runnning the cable car we were at the top of the mountain near where Ned and Margie had their reception and looked at the glory that is downtown Pittsburgh, which I like because it is clearly defined. From there we drove around and went to lunch. This sandwhich shop is famous (but the name escapes me, Primani's maybe?) for putting the fries IN the sandwhich. AWESOME is all I can say, but it made Deb's tummy hurt. Headed back to Margie's for a dip in the pool and a wonderful dinner. And wine. I thought about an entire post about my domination of dominoes, but let's just say I won handidly. One reason that I love having Deborah with me is that she loves games and got a big kick out of seeing the fam in action. Whenever someone made a play that he did not agree with, Jacob would say "bizarre". I found this really funny.

On Sunday, Deborah, Karissa, and Margie headed to an exhibit at the botanical garden, by Chohulie (sp?). I went to play golf with Matt and Jake. Jake hustled me, that is all I can say. Both he and Matt are really good, and my golf (front 9) was not so nice. Jake had not played in over a year and still beat me by ten strokes. The thing you have to remember about golf is that it is an athletic (stop laughing) game and some people are better athletes. Since I am clearly a better athlete, I will crush them the next time we play. From there, we headed back to the pool, which was so refreshing. We had another beautiful dinnner and then the werewolf cometh. It was a smaller group, but worked well. The games were shorter, so everyone got to be the narrator. Mandy always, always thought it was Jacob (Huggybear) after he drank her wine. Me, not so much, I made some ridiculous arguements and lost repeatedly. Let us just say that Sunday was not a good game day for me.

Monday we headed home with an enjoyable trip to Falling Water. That will be in my next post.

Some observations from the weekend: Jacob hates walking and will drive any distance over two blocks. Matt is really sad that Grandma took down his poster. I really don't know what he is talking about, but he feels really strong about this. He is also coaching a team again, and is really enjoying it. I can not say thank you enough for the weekend. Margie and Ned were incredible hosts. I wanted to cry when we left and I have not felt like that since I left Oklahoma. My love affair with Pittsburgh is justified simply because this family is there. My favorite quote from the weekend is from Deb. "I want to be Margie when I grow up."

There are many forms of art, and I enjoy it, but what I don't enjoy is when somebody tells me that I should like a piece just because. Art is subjective and it is educated. If you don't know, you just can't enjoy all of the intricacies involved in design. More on this in the next post about Falling Water.