Of rain, my neighbor's lawn care, and bombs.

A large part of living in Pittsburgh means living in gray, overcast and/or rainy weather. Not quite sure what's so meteorilogically different about this area, but let me put it this way: A pharmacist friend encountered a patron who moved here from Phoenix. Naturally, he wondered why, and asked the patron. The person answered that she had a bout of skin cancer, and it was recommended she move to a more suitable climate and not tempt fate. Her doctor drew a triangle between Pittsburgh, Erie, PA, and Johnstown PA, saying, "Move anywhere inside that triangle and you'll be all set."
So, for a place where it rains so much, why is it that everyone feels the need to go 25 mph on the highways around the city when they're just a little wet? Seriously??? Snow and ice, I understand. We don't get much of those here, and it makes sense to be fearful of them. But water - well, in a city that has three major rivers (ok, technically, it's just the merge point of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers to form the Ohio) - we know a thing or two about water. It seems that the only thing we don;t know about water is how to drive in it. Yesterday's commute, for example, was a downpour. The car in front of me (with NO ONE in front of him, I might add) decided that it would be prudent on a FLAT section of HIGHWAY, to go 25 mph. Oh - an aside: "flat" in Pittsburgh means there's less than 3% grade. And the driver - I eventually was able to pass the schmuck - was NOT an old person, nor were they a kid! It was a regular, normal, working-age person, completely forgetting how to operate a vehicle!

New topic: my neighbor's lawn care habits. OK, I'll admit my own aren't the best. I cut the grass and try to make it look decently neat. I like to keep the grass to a nice level..2-4" is good. When you consider that 3" is the "rough" on a golf course, it's enough to say that it's "tidy". But my neighbor somehow or other feels it necessary to take a weed whacker to her lawn. No, NOT the edges, and not just where her mower can't reach...the WHOLE lawn. And she trims it down to about 1/2". It then becomes a sickly pale green color - until the sumemr sun starts heating up and turns it all brown by the middle of June. It looks like ass. I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if she could keep the weed whacker level, but no, there are streaks where she scalps the ground, eliminating all but the root of the grass. I am convinced the woman simply hates grass - and it makes me wonder why she bought a place with a yard to begin with. Or why she doesn't just put astroturf down. That is at least maintenance-free. And greener.

So - the Pittsburgh marathon was this last weekend. Some friends of ours came in to run the 1/2 marathon - that's 13.1 miles for those of you playing at home - and so we went down to the race to support our friends and enjoy the festivities. First, it rained. For explanation, please re-read the first paragraph. But the fun begins earlier than that!! On our way into the bus terminal for a pre-race potty break, we walk past a random microwave oven left on the sidewalk. Perhaps it was left by a random jitney who picked up someone and would not take the thing, we didn't know. We didn't care. Suffice it to say, we found it funny, but certainly not odd. Later that day, we discovered that said microwave was suspected to be a bomb. Police called in the bomb squad, they x-rayed the thing, found it contained circuitry (really? in a microwave?) and then used a robot to detonate the thing.....and ravioli went everywhere. Damned that suspicious ravioli! Still, it's kind of striking to realize that I walked within 18 inches of this device, and I THOUGHT NOTHING WAS WRONG. Proof positive that turning into a paranoid individual is a good thing!!!!!

Thanks for reading.

The Fat Kid