Going to Pittsburgh

We went to the Pittsburgh zoo last week. One thing I’ve learned about Pittsburgh is that anyone not from there can seriously benefit from using gps fleet tracking. We tried to follow the Google map directions, but ended up way south of Pittsburgh before we realized we’d missed a pretty important turn. So, we stopped at a rest area and luckily they had free maps (no free maps at Ohio rest stops, of course, so this was a welcome surprise). We realized we were almost twenty miles from where we needed to be. Well, when we got to the exit we needed to be at we found out that route was detoured. The detour took us another 30 minutes. I was ready to just throw in the towel and head home before we even got there.

When we did get there, it was raining. No surprise there. I think it’s been raining for about two weeks straight now. Anyway, a lot of the animals were inside or otherwise hiding from the weather. Still, Mags and Pee Wee seemed to really enjoy themselves. Pittsburgh has a small walkthrough that features white-tailed deer and kangaroos. The deer were happy to oblige us by walking up to us and letting us pet them. They didn’t seem to mind the weather a whole lot. One deer decided that Mags’ shoes were tasty, so it spent a couple of minutes licking her toes. Mags got a real kick out of that.

They have a pretty awesome aquarium there. I think everyone enjoyed that (and it was out of the rain). The big tank, which housed the sharks, some other tropical fish and a humongous grouper, had live coral and anemone in it, so it looked like a real reef. I’m comparing this zoo to Cleveland, by the way, which has a huge tank, but that tank is less than clean and has no decoration (very disappointing). So, we spent a lot of time just watching the various colorful fish swim by. There was also a fresh water tank with a lot of different fish and flora, but it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the salt water. What can I say? The pretty fish won the day.

Mags did get to pet a couple of stingrays, which were in a shallow tank all by themselves. There was a small tunnel for kids to crawl through and watch from under water, but Mags was too afraid to go all the way in. A little ways in we had to turn around and come back out. At any rate, even if she was afraid of being in the tunnel, she had no qualms about touching the rays (or a python or blue-tongued skink at another exhibit).

All told, the zoo was pretty nice. Except for the weather. We left soaked.

On our way home, we almost got lost again. We went over a bridge that was under another bridge and the road signs were attached to the beams. Well, we didn’t see the signs until we were right up on them and then had to dash over three lanes. I’m pretty sure the engineers that built the Pittsburgh roads were laughing their tails off knowing that the roads would drive travelers mad. Needless to say, we won’t be traveling to Pittsburgh again anytime soon. That ruined the whole thing for us (moreso than the weather, if you can believe that).

Back

I’m back. I’ve decided that limited Internet activity is probably the best medicine for me right now. I was completely surprised that my 5 days without Internet went by so well. I actually had a really nice time away. And the weather held up- mostly. That was a plus. Nice weather, happy kids, and lack of online interaction was amazing. I’m completely up for re-prioritizing right now. It feels good.

I have, unfortunately, gained some weight in the last week. I think it’s because of my medication, because I wasn’t eating more and swimming is supposed to be really good exercise. So I’m going to look at some diet pill reviews to see if I can find anything that won’t cause heart failure or something similar. I realized something was up when I could fit my swimsuit on Sunday, but on Wednesday the damned thing was almost too tight to put on. That alarmed me in a lot of ways. I don’t know what’s going on with that.

As I sit here writing this, my daughter- Pee Wee- is doing everything in her power to irritate me to the point of murder. She really, really wants to check her myspace. I told her “when I’m done!”, but that just makes her more determined to irritate me away from the PC¹. It might work to the point where I shut down the computer and refuse to let her on.

On a lighter note, I’m off to get myself a replacement cell-phone. For some reason the keypad on mine refuses to work and I’m eligible to have it replaced for free. I love it! I hate this phone with a passion and secretly wished to smash it with a hammer. No, I didn’t smash it. I think it knew it was hated and committed cellphone suicide. Hopefully, they’ll fix the ugly thing and find it a home with someone who loves a phone that turns itself off at the most inopportune times.

1. I refuse to buy a second PC so my teenage daughter who is a mother can spend more time on myspace. [↩]

Out of The House

I’m taking a few days away from the tubes for a while. I’m overdoing it and my health is really suffering. I’ve taken on too many projects on top of what’s going on in my offline life and it wasn’t a good idea. I’ve really got to learn to pace myself when it comes to jobs. I mentioned in my last post that I’m only able to keep two jobs right now and that’s all good for me. Neither one of those jobs is full time so I can get away for a few days to regroup.

I was walking around town today and noticed a lot of commercial real estate for sale. I thought that was really odd. But I asked a friend who’s a realtor if that there are more properties on sale than usual and she looked into it. Seems that it’s about steady for right now. I’m secretly wishing I had an office away from home so I could actually leave to go to work and still be self-employed. How nice would that be? I could leave all this craziness here while I did the “normal” thing and went out into the world to work. Ha!

I didn’t think that was my goal. But who knows? It’s possible. Not now, of course. Maybe some years down the line. At any rate, there’s a website production company setting up downtown and I was thinking of submitting my resume to them. Part-time out of the house work would probably do me some good too. Too much together time makes for a crazy Flynn household.