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Thanks to TwitPic, I can post these pics directly to twitter from my cell phone. Good times.
I think that Memories of the Sun would be a fitting name for a Pittsburgh blog. When I was younger, I loved dark, cloudy weather. I’ve never been a fan of the steel gray overcast that doesn’t change, but it didn’t bother me much. After experiencing it nearly nonstop for the past few months, it gets to you a bit. I didn’t fully realize that until I was standing outside today, in the park, with the sun out, and the sky deep blue beside swiftly moving cumulus clouds. I missed the sun.
My favorite Pittsburgh weather comes at the beginning of autumn, when the temperature begins to drop and the leaves are changing. It doesn’t seem to rain quite as much then and it can be quite beautiful.
I’ll be travelling south this week, to Oak Island, NC for my sister’s wedding. The North Kakalakee beach in early summer (which begins in April in the South) should be nice and refreshing. And just as summer begins there early, spring gets started late here. It has been less than 60 degrees out for most of the past week.
Suffice it to say, probably no blogging for the next week.
We went to a Pittsburgh Pirates game tonight. They got their asses handed to them by the Phillies. It was so sad. Donna’s brother and his wife were visiting and their husky has separation anxiety. In the 7th inning, we got a call from our neighbor that an old woman came around complaining and saying she was going to call the cops. Our dogs are normally pretty quiet, but the husky was in a new situation and away from her owners, so poor thing was going nuts.
Got a pic of the parrot mascot at the game. Proof that I occasionally watch sports.
I have no idea why, but four A-10 Warthogs made several circuits around the skies of Pittsburgh today. They are quite noisy, subsonic jets used by the military against armored vehicles and ground positions. The last time I had seen one outside of an air show or museum was when I was kid camping in Sumter National Forest in South Carolina. A couple A-10’s from a local air base were doing some target practice. Their tank-busting guns sound like a giant dumpster slamming from far off. At first, we had no idea what the sound was coming from, so we joked it was the lizard man.
Perhaps you’ve seen the “FAIL” meme that’s going around the tubes. If not, search on google images for “epic fail” and you’ll hit it soon enough (I won’t link to them). Basically it’s a bunch of pictures of people screwing up or things built wrong or whatever. In short: failures. So tonight when we parked outside of a restaurant and our parking meter said this, I had to get a shot.
Last night was the last total lunar eclipse for two years and it was quite good. Pittsburgh weather cleared long enough for me to snap a couple shots of the unobstructed moon with Regulus (the brightest star in the constellation Leo) bright above it and Saturn even brighter to the bottom left. There was still a light haze that I think made it difficult for me to get the focus right. I was able to capture the rich, red color while the moon was still exposing a sliver of sun-drenched rock. Then the clouds came in earnest and I was getting tired, so I went to bed, missing the full umbra. But at least I got to see some of it this time. Last time there was a lunar eclipse, I was completely out of luck.
It is about 11 degrees Fahrenheit (-11.7 Celsius) with a wind chill of -1 (-18.3) degrees here in Pittsburgh at the moment. As such, the dogs should get sweaters, right? Well, Willow doesn’t really need it. She loves the cold, but she’s cute in it anyway.
I took the dogs to a different dog park than usual today. Schenley Park is within walking distance of our apartment, and then it was relatively easy to find a stretch of grass far enough away from the road that I could feel safe letting Willow off leash to play ball. Daedalus and her both explored the woods a little bit, Daedalus still on his leash. I just can’t trust him to come when called if he gets on a scent. Their coloring was perfect for the partially snow-covered leaves.
The first (somewhat) serious snow came today. Well, not particularly serious, but compared to South Carolina where I’ve spent most of the last 22 or so winters, it would’ve shut down schools for two days at least. Daedalus acted a little prissy. He didn’t want to get his paws cold I guess. He got used to it quickly and went exploring. Willow had no problem with it. She loves the cold. The wind was gusting and that was more than the Bug could handle. I wish I could’ve taken a picture of his face. Normally getting him to come in is a hassle, but a quick “let’s go” and he was running for the door.
This weekend will be the peak time for the Leonid meteor shower. It is so-named because the meteors originate from the section of the sky corresponding to the constellation Leo. The most locateable star in Leo is Regulus, which rises these days just after midnight on the eastern horizon. A little while later, Saturn rises behind it. Saturn and Regulus are both fairly bright so they make an easy pair to spot. The sky map below is from a perspective of Pittsburgh, PA at 1:51 am tonight (November 17, 2007). Peak time for the shower will be around 4am tonight and tomorrow night. [source]
Of course, you don’t have to find the constellation Leo in order to enjoy the Leonids. The comet Tempel-Tuttle leaves a trail of dust as it orbits the sun and occasionally we stray right into it. In 1833, the event was so huge people from Europe and North America took note of it. Estimates of the storm activity put it at over 200,000 meteors per hour! I dream of such a thing. It even led to the song “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Another big storm occurred in 1866 and again in 1966. Unfortunately, it looks like this year will be a modest viewing year, which puts the Leonids lower on the totem pole than the Perseids, which occur back in early August.
Viewing conditions for Pittsburgh look grim, which is typical of this time of year. This morning we had our first real snow. It had snowed a week or two ago briefly, but that was more of a snowy drizzle/wintry mix. Today there was actually accumulation on the dead leaves in the yard and on some cars. Nothing major yet.
A recent journey through the Steel City. And yes I am a menace to public safety. This is downtown, which people from the ‘Burgh pronounce [dɑ:ntɑ:n] instead of the Standard American English [daʊn'taʊn]. If you’re not familiar with IPA, it’s more like donton. But not quite. It’s amusing.
Pittsburgh English is also sometimes called Pittsburghese, a term that I’m not especially fond of. But there is definitely a difference here. Two of the biggest things that people will notice are the use of a the word redd up, meaning to straighten up. That word is actually of Scots-Irish descent. My original suspicion was from the German aufraeumen, but that’s wrong. Pennsylvania Dutch has a strong influence in other parts of Pennsylvania, so it was the obvious starting point. Also, the verb need is used as the passive auxiliary so whereas in Standard American English (and most other dialects of English), you might say
The room needs to be vacuumed.
or
The room needs vacuuming.
Pittsburghers will say
The room needs vacuumed.
Most speakers reject this as ungrammatical. Interestingly, this Pittsburgh dialect also crops up all over Pennsylvania, but not so much in Philadelphia. My wife, who is from the York area (sort of East-South-Central PA), says these things also. They all sound perfectly grammatical to me now as I’ve grown accustomed to hearing them, but I don’t actually say them. (Yet?)
Wednesday night I had the rare opportunity to go out to a bar and try some Bell’s beer. There was a special event run by the distributor where they gave away a shaker, a coaster and a pin if you bought their beer. The shaker unfortunately featured the Oberon, my least favorite Bell’s, but I’ll take what I can get. The bar was a pretty cool little place call Fat Heads Saloon. They had a bunch of decent stuff on tap and I got to try the Lagunitas Sonoma Farmhouse Hop Stoopid, which was a massively floral hop monster. Fat Heads also has a custom Belgian Trippel made for them by some Belgian brewery I didn’t recognize. It was decent, but I’m always a little underwhelmed by Trippels.
Well, I’m not really into sports of any kind, but I don’t mind seeing games live. On July 4th, I got to see the Pittsburgh Pirates play the Milwaukee Brewers. And then a couple weeks ago, Donna (my wife) was offered tickets for a Steelers game from a friend at work, so we jumped on them. These tickets are very difficult to come by. Donna had no real interest in going, so I invited my friend Eric. The seats were expensive and in the nose-bleed section, but that didn’t really matter. The biggest problem was the fact that this game was pre-season. That didn’t really mean anything to me until it was explained that usually the starting players only make brief appearances and the rest of the game consists of the crappier players. Sure enough, once it was pretty much decided that Pittsburgh was going to win, the lower-ranked players jumped in and the sloppiness increased by an order of magnitude. No one was playing an especially great game. Pittsburgh made a lot of mistakes and really should’ve beaten the Eagles by another 14 points.
But it was great fun. If I get a chance to do it again, I’ll invite my dad, since he’s been a Steelers fan for as long as I’ve been alive.
There was a big thunderstorm this morning that totally drenched my feet. However, in the darkness I did see something that I thought was quite cool. The Cathedral of Learning at Pitt with its crown shrouded in clouds. Unfortunately my piece of crap cell phone doesn’t do it justice.
