A Saturday Night in the 'Burg - Sort of...

It is always interesting heading to downtown Pittsburgh to do something. I drove down with two friends on Saturday evening. We had planned to go to The Three Rivers Art Festival. We never got to it because there was no place to park. Every parking lot was filled. I know this will bring money into the Pittsburgh coffers but it was a pain trying to find a parking lot and driving around and having to wait for the pedestrians to cross with or against the light. It was nuts trying to drive or change lanes or make a turn because the drivers do whatever they want. Ever hear of driver’s training, or following the rules and the law…no, I guess not. No one follows the rules…and that goes for the drivers as well as the pedestrians.

We didn’t let all this dampen our spirits. We made our funny comments, which were only hilarious to us, and carried on as if we were the live comedic entertainment. Thank, God, we could still laugh. Finally, we decided to go to Station Square. We found empty spots in the $6.00 lot. Wow…instead of paying $20 for a downtown lot, we saved $14.00. That was a deal.

We ended up going to the Hard Rock Café to check out the new Hard Rock collector pins. We looked around at the other merchandise, picked out what we wanted, paid for it, and left as the loud music followed us out into the street.

We went over to Houlihan’s Restaurant for dinner. It was nice but dark in the restaurant…they really need to put in some better lighting. We passed by some Reserved Tables, along with a number of empty tables. We sat and waited as the waiters and waitresses kept walking by us. They never bothered to look at us. I guess they were busy but I’m not sure why because the restaurant was fairly empty. Finally, I asked one of my friends to touch my hand to see if I was invisible or dead. I wasn’t. Then I kind of made some dopey comments, along with , “Hello, anybody there?” I am sorry if I made my companions uncomfortable but really after a long wait, someone should have noticed three laughing women. Wouldn’t you think?

Finally, someone must have noticed my waving, stopped at the table and asked if we had been waited on. No was our polite response. The waitress seemed embarrassed, brought us a menu, asked for our drink order.  When she came back to take our order, she asked if we would like some complimentary salsa and chips. Of course we did. Both were tasty and really good. We got our order. Ate it and when they brought us our bill…I had half of my food left. Eventually, I had to flag someone down to get a take-out box.

Oh well…the next time, I will skip Houlihan’s and try to find an outdoor vendor who sells hot dogs from his cart.

All in all, we had fun and laughed our way silly to Pittsburgh and back. If you are planning on going downtown, I highly recommend the laughter and skip everything else.

Smile and Show those Braces!

      

Finally she cracked a smile and I saw them – braces on her top teeth with blue and orange colored bands. She was unimpressed with them basically because she just had them put on and was in pain. She couldn’t eat all the foods that she liked, only soft foods. I felt her pain, since I had recently gone through some minor mouth surgery and couldn’t eat solids for eight days.

Then she rattled on about Damon Braces, which are one of the newer ones with sliding doors, etc., and this only left my mind in the dust as I listened to her talk but didn’t understand a word she had said.

I never had braces. Oh, I probably could have used them since I was a big time thumb sucker. When I say big time…I mean Big Time. My mother could have written her own chapter as how to break a little kid from thumb sucking. They would have used that chapter in Gitmo prison in how to make a grown man cry instead of a little kid.

My mother would put Vaseline on my thumb. By morning the inside of my mouth was as smooth as a baby’s bottom along my thumb. Then it was the old Mercurochrome. She would use the small stick from the bottle and swab my thumb. I had four white fingers and a red thumb. (Sorry if I offended any Native American by using the word, red thumb. It was not my intention). After, she would put a white sock on my hand and tie it off with a nice little bow. By morning, I had done my best Houdini imitation. I awoke with no yarn, no sock, and my thumb now matched my other four flesh covered fingers.

Yet, it was my older brother that got the braces – not me. He always got things that I never got…like he was allowed to play a beautiful brass trumpet, while my desire to play a harp was ignored. Oh well, I guess not having braces didn’t hinder me, I thought as I watched my granddaughter take a few aspirins for the pain.

When it was dinner time, she did order a plate of delicious looking spaghetti with homemade sauce at Bella Luna’s Restaurant. Unfortunately, she ate her food gingerly and seemed to forget how to twirl the spaghetti on the fork. For a second I thought I had stepped into a scene from the movie Lady and the Tramp, where they gobbled the food in one long strand.

Oh well…in a year, I bet my granddaughter, Mika, will have beautiful teeth to go with her beautiful smile. But for now, I have a story to tell. She has some pain ahead of her and she’ll have doors in her mouth. How cool is that?

Smile - let’s see those cute braces, Mika!

Hot Dogs: As American as Apple Pie

When I think of a picnic, cookout, or a sports game, I immediately think Hot Dogs. I love hot dogs. I love hot dogs smeared with good old mustard; the more the better. Having a hot dog is an important part of the menu during a picnic or cook out. Besides the fact that kids love them, so do adults.

I know when I go to a stadium for a game, there is nothing I like more than the taste of a hot dog from the grill. There are a number of condiments to choose from but my choice is always to slather the stadium mustard on my hot dog.

Hot dogs were a big part of my kids’ life while growing up. We would have hot dogs, beans, and French fries at least once a week. If I was trying to be fancy, I would cut a slit down the hot dog; tuck a piece of cheese inside, then roll both into a crescent roll. My kids loved those crescent rolled up hot dogs with cheese. Those made a big hit during lunch or dinner time.

To me, hot dogs are part of the American landscape and they are a part of my life. Needless to say - that plain or simple - hot dogs are just taste simply delicious.

Finding Your Happy Place

As I was sitting next to my friend at a table in the library – she mentioned that this was her happy place. Being at the library, surrounded by books was where she loved to be. I realized that one of my happy places used to be at the old Border’s bookstore. I would go to the bookstore after my early morning gym workout. I would take my writing bag, stop at Borders in the mornings, buy a coffee, sit down in the café, and write for a few hours. That was my daily and happy ritual.

Borders or any bookstore made me happy, as long as I could write there. But was it my happy place? No. My happy place was wherever I found myself writing. It can be on my rocker in my bedroom or sitting Indian style on my bed, writing or even at my computer.

Yet, sometimes, my happy place is working in my garden or at the greenhouse. And while I was writing this, I pulled out a small clip board with some note paper on it and I did a double take…on the bottom of the paper was a potted, flowering plant and a saying, find your happy place. Now that was really weird and strange to have found that note paper, since that is the topic that I am writing about. So, maybe I have found my happy place which is in my writing.

I guess your happy place or places can be many places, doing many things, a few things or nothing at all. Where’s your happy place? Care to share it…

The Fault in our Stars

Friday night, I went to the show with two of my granddaughters. At the 6:30 showing, I found myself sitting in the show with every teenage girl in the North Hills area, maybe even every teenage girl in all of Pittsburgh!

The movie, The Fault in our Stars, is based on the book published by John Green. This is a young adult book and was an instant hit when it came out, receiving positive reviews. I read the book because my granddaughter had finished reading it and gave it to me to read. The book deals with teenagers with terminal cancer who meet at a support group, and become friends and more. Yes, the book made me cry. It made everyone who read it cry, including my granddaughter. The well written book is a tear jerker.

The movie stayed close to the book. It was a well done movie and the two leads were well cast. The two young people who played the lead were very attractive. I do have to add very attractive for two terminal young people with various forms of cancer. The end results of death were the same for the book and the movie.

I not only was surrounded by teenage girls but everyone took their turn crying, bawling, sobbing, and blowing their nose. I think that I was the only person at the show who didn’t cry. I cried after reading the book because the ending surprised me. I might add that the author was able to get the reviewers to keep the ending a secret. Kudos to John Green!

It took a lot not to turn around and tell everyone at the show to KEEP QUIET! But then besides not being a romantic, I’m not that heartless!

If you are looking for a good tear jerker to clean you’re bottled up tears…then go see The Fault in our Stars. Take your teenager and take a box of Kleenex!

Erin's Deli

Erin’s Deli is officially opened in downtown Pittsburgh. It is located at 210 6^th Avenue on the ground floor of the K & L Gates Building. The new deli is bright, and cheerful with vivid colors, but it boasts a comfortable atmosphere, and cheerful employees and friendly service.

The menu offers a variety of solid to gourmet offerings from its salads, sandwiches, and soups to its bread and pastries that are top notch. The details are not just in the deli’s atmosphere but in the foods. Everything is made from scratch from the individual key lime pies topped with a generous amount of meringue, the flourless chocolate tartlet to all the sandwich breads – loafs, focaccia ciabatta to the sweet rolls. All are made from scratch by Katie Schettler, pastry chef, for Erin’s Deli and Erin’s Fine Foods catering.

It’s not just the breads but what is in the sandwiches that makes all the difference and challenges your taste buds. Like the mouth-watering spicy meat loaf sandwich with pepper jack cheese, sundried tomatoes, chipotle aioli on white bread, or Bourbon marinated flank steak with provolone cheese, roasted red peppers, tarragon aioli on ciabatta or a bang bang chicken wrap with romaine, shredded cabbage, crushed cashews, red pepper strips, shredded carrots, cucumbers and bang bang dressing.

There are also freshly made soups, and salads are accompanied with homemade sweet rolls. The breakfast lover will find homemade and delicious selections like the pistachio muffins, vanilla bean muffins, blueberry or chocolate chip scones and a whole lot more to satisfy your selective palate.

If you are in town, stop by or make a trip downtown for lunch and see what everyone is talking about!

Smiles

In the old days, in some of the high school yearbooks, under the senior’s photo, there was always a sentence about that person or a quote. Under my brother’s photo, they quoted him, “It takes 13 muscles to frown and only two to smile…” To explain that sentiment, my brother, Jack, always had a smile on his face.

To me, a smile is a pleasant response to many things. A smile gives a person’s face a pleasing look. A smile makes a person seem more approachable, younger, and happier. As I looked through my photos that I took at our recent family cook out, I noticed all the smiles on my families’ faces. Those pictures made me smile and think how great that day was and how much fun we all had.

So, I decided to include these photos in my Blog. This is my salute to my brother and to my family: a smile says a million things.