Country v. Crosby

Here we go.  The showdown I figured was coming.  Team USA v. Team Canada (or, as I refer to them, Team-Crosby-and-Kunitz-plus-some-other-people).  With USA's win today over the Czech Republic and Canada's slim win over Latvia, they advance to face one another on Friday, and I'll have to decide where I stand:  with my country or my favorite player.

Maybe that seems like it should be easy.  And maybe it should be.  But, it's not as easy as you think.  I really respect the men who play for my home team, which is not Team USA, it's the Penguins. And those are international faces. Therefore, while I am very happy for Jussi Jokinen and Olli Maata, my heart broke a little today for Evgeni Malkin (but, truthfully, that was offset by some evil-spirited glee to contemplate that Alexander Ovechkin is currently unhappy).  Yet, I hold in the highest esteem of all:  Sidney Crosby (cue fanfare).  He's devastatingly handsome, there is that.  But, that's not really what it is for me (not that I don't notice it on a regular basis).   It's just such a privilege to watch him play the sport.  And I truly mean that.  I've said it out loud a few times during a game, "Wow, I feel privileged to have just seen that."

I've seen him control the puck down the ice, almost as if he and it are one, gliding with the skill of a dancer through a throng of defenders.  His puck management is artistry, as is Malkin's, but where Geno makes interesting passes (as in bad) sometimes in my opinion, Sidney is a master at it.  And, of course, can the man shoot the puck?  That can leave me speechless!  How many times have you seen Sid get his team the win in a clutch moment?  Surely sometimes he hasn't, but really - with everything riding on the line - can you tell me whom you'd rather have on the ice wearing your uniform right then?  And, think about it, he plays for my city's team.  I get to see him live several times a year.  I am so fortunate.

So, to return that favor, I want Sidney Crosby to do well in all things and be happy in all things.  He makes me happy, so he deserves it.  To my mind anyway.  Chris Kunitz, while maybe not quite as high on my hockey altar, also makes me happy, and I tend to think people underestimate him as a player - which makes me a little protectively mad.

And I like Canada.  There is so much beauty there.  And they gave us Rush after all.  Bless them.  Anyway, driven by player loyalty and no reason to wish the country as a whole ill, there was no question four years ago what team I was rooting for in that thrilling gold medal match-up.  I even learned the Canadian National Anthem.

This year, however, I'm torn.  For one thing, my nose got out of joint when James Neal got snubbed for the team.  I know all the reasons why, but whatever, I felt he was snubbed.  Then, I was livid when I heard the buzz circulating about whether or not Crosby was hurting the team, and whether Kuni actually even deserved to be on it, that he was only chosen to make Sidney comfortable.  For one thing, has anyone saying any of that watched any Olympic hockey?  All the teams have struggled to find some chemistry.  Passes weren't sharp in the preliminary round, turnovers were sometimes making me wince.  Players who usually play against one another have to learn to play together in a matter of days.

And, let's not forget, with all those challenges, Canada wasn't losing.  Maybe they weren't burying their opponents, but it seemed awfully petty for a fan base with no losses to be whining about not enough star power out of Sidney Crosby - the very man who gave them a gold medal last time.  You know what, fine, send Crosby and Kunitz back to us in Pittsburgh where we'll appreciate them.  Maybe you do not deserve them.

Now add to that the fact that two Pens will be playing on the American side, plus Coaches Bylsma and Granato and our general manager Ray Shero being all part of the team.  The Red, White and Blue is pretty populated with some Black and Gold this year.  Makes them hard to root against without feeling like a total traitor on all levels.

Yet, I do not want to see any of the Penguins players sad at the end of the day.  I don't want second guesses and whispers to follow them back to us - their truly loyal and adoring fans.  Yet, the game demands it:  there must be a winner.  Therefore, there must be a loser, and I must watch someone whom I respect deeply wrestle with the emotions of deep disappointment.  So what do I do?

Finally, after some deep soul searching, I have decided that I will remain true to my country and just hope they all come home to Pittsburgh healthy and work together to win all of us a Stanley Cup.

Go Team USA!

ABC News

State of Mind

With the flu finally deciding it's had enough of me, I tried to spend this weekend getting my little house ready for company next weekend.  My husband is coming to visit.  He's actually coming mainly to dog sit for us so my daughter and I can go to Chicago to see the Penguins in the Stadium Series, but he'll come a few days early so we can all spend a little time together.  He lives in Texas the rest of the time.  For now anyway.

It's a complicated situation with a complicated history, but one of the things I've noticed lately is how out of place he always seems when I talk to him.  He went back to help care for a family member.  It's supposed to be a temporary situation.  As in a couple-to-three-years temporary.  But originally when he pulled out, two days before my birthday, I felt like he was ready to be back "home" because he seemed a little too eager to leave.  Now, I'm not so sure he knows where home is.  I never sensed he felt it was Pittsburgh.  He always felt a little outside of the Pittsburgh crowd.  And he wore that "otherness" as proudly as I had when I lived in Texas.  His moniker in a football column I wrote for a while was "Cowboy Fan Hubby".  He knew that's what I called him, and he liked it.  He wore a Super Bowl XXX t-shirt to Steelers training camp.  No one said anything, but they sure did stare, and I noticed the reception we got was unusually cold.  And I was SO sure he was going to get us at least assaulted if not worse at the Steelers-Browns game the season before last (the one where James Harrison knocked Colt McCoy into another time zone) when he got a little too vocal about being unreservedly not a Steelers fan.

Despite that, he liked it here, but like one tends to like their favorite vacation spot.  It was new and unique (he had never lived outside of Texas).  He became, rather quickly, both a Pens fan and a Pirates fan.  But never, ever a Steelers fan.  If anything, his dislike of them worsened once he landed here.  I always thought it was because the rest of us are so immersed in the team that it tends to be smothering.  Early on, I met a young man who explained he was a Packers fan even though he was born and raised here just as a rebellion to having the Steelers jammed down his throat growing up.  I think my husband felt the same way.  But a city is far more than the sum of its sports teams, and there is a lot to love about Pittsburgh.  I tried to introduce him to all of it that I had discovered myself.  We discovered still more together.  And he would seem to like a lot of it, yet there was always something...  He used "they" and "you" a lot when talking about the city.  Like he was apart from us.  Particularly when discussing something he didn't like - usually either political or Steelers-related.

I understood it.  I had literally spent decades in the same mind-set after all.  And he was naturally torn.  For one thing, the rest of his family was back in Texas.  Now he's back with them, but he's left a big part of his family here.  So he's conflicted yet again - or, rather, still.  He can't win no matter what he does or where he goes.  That's hard.

I confess that I worried when he made the decision to go back that people would think we should have pulled up stakes and gone with him.  There were a lot of practical reasons why it wasn't a consideration, but the truth of the matter is that I never seriously considered moving for any reason.  This is my home now.

But that's the question I've pondered since summer when he left:  how does one define "home"?  Is it a place?  Or is the people who populate that place?  When I lived in Texas people always used to tell me it was the latter.  When it came down to it, I chose the former and let my poor husband go back by himself.  And I left him in some sort of "state" where he's not really belonging to either Texas or Pennsylvania.  He's living, for now, in the State of Flux.

Does this define home...

...or does this?

The Winter of Our Discontent

There is a party going on over at my house.  A pity party that is.  For one thing, I have the flu.  Or something.  I confess it's self-diagnosed.  But it's been hanging around making me miserable for days now.  I missed Rocco's funeral.  And, my dogs will be the first to tell you, I've also missed my obligations as a pet owner for days now.  They're fed and have water, but they're missing most of their walks, and I'm getting these sorrowful looks and whines from Cheyenne like I just beat her.  She does love her walk.  Maybe more than she loves me.  She lives for that twice a day event and has a built in clock that's uncanny.  Six in the morning and 6:30 at night - boom, she's ready!  But, with a head that's pounding, a back that's aching and a nose that's running, the LAST thing I'm going to do is walk around in single digit temperatures - I haven't even gone to get today's mail.  So, I'm sitting here watching the Westminster Dog Show (which I don't think Cheyenne really likes that I do either - I genuinely think she gets a little jealous when I coo over all these purebred beauties), thinking back to fall longingly.  In my other blog I wrote an article toward the end of August where I finished up with a picture of my little house in snow and captioned that I was dreaming of the time it looked like that again.  Good Lord!  Be very careful what you wish for!  Because this has been a long, brutal winter.  What was I thinking?!

I grew up loving winter, but I had a child's love of snow.  Which comes from playing in it and then going inside to hot cocoa with marshmallows by the fire.  It didn't take into account shoveling the stuff, driving on it and trying to mollify active dogs while not allowing them to succumb to hypothermia.  That's what parents are for!  And it sure didn't involve paying the heating bill!  My Texas friends are having a little fun at my expense and reminding me I chose to live here.  And I did.  And I'm glad I did, despite all of it.  But, I'll confess I now understand why so many Pennsylvanians winter in Florida.

Since most of us who work don't have that luxury, here are a former southerner's tips for surviving a northern cold snap:

• Flannel sheets.  Get some.  I understand electric blankets are making a comeback, but I don't really want to worry about my covers shorting out and shocking me in the middle of the night.  And with good quality flannel sheets, I'm telling you, you don't need one.
• To live here, you'll need boots.  And I mean the functional kind. I moved here with these killer boots - several pairs.  I can put your eye out with the heel on one pair of black beauties I own.  They are shoved way in the back of my closet gathering dust.  I haven't worn them since the first year I lived here.  I have a nifty pair of riding boots now that have a minimal heel and good tread for when I want to look fashionable, but not slip on the muck that are downtown Pittsburgh sidewalks.  I am also on my second pair of rain boots and just replaced my snow boots.  The first pair of rain boots I got from a leading discount chain and wore out in literally weeks.   Now I would say to just go for the better quality.  When it comes to reliable cold weather footwear, you probably get what you pay for.
• They salt their streets here.  It works for the reason they do it: it melts snow.  It does other things too. It's corrosive for one.  It's not just the weather eating away at the Pittsburgh infrastructure here, it's all the stuff we use to combat it.  That means that salt-ridden snow that's coating your car?  Yeah, it's eating away at your car too.  But, when it's sub-zero for days on end, it's hard to do much about it.  If you look closely at the cars that have been on the road for several years here, you'll see it - the corrosion and rust.  Many Pittsburghers seem more or less resigned to that fact.  Not me.  I love my car.  So, when we had a warming trend a couple of weeks ago I sat in a very long line at the car wash to clean it off.  I'll do it again as soon as I can.  On the in between days, I'll vaguely fret over what all that salt is doing to my baby.  I opted for a special coating on my car when I bought it.  Time will tell if it helps.  But my best advice to anyone who is like me is don't let your car sit unwashed any longer than you have to.  It's murder on your dogs paws too, by the way.  Since booties was an epic fail, I'm looking at other options.
• Slow and steady wins the race.  As wonderful as people in this city tend to be, there is something that happens to people when they get behind the wheel of a car.  They morph like evil transformers and try to destroy all others in their path.  In bad weather, most of them tend to calm down.  They don't have a death wish anymore than you do after all.  But for some, the tendency to cut someone off from their exit or to swerve quickly in front of them is just too deeply ingrained, I guess, so be very careful and keep a big distance between the car in front of you.  There may not be atheists in fox holes, but I can tell you, there aren't many on Route 28 in a snow storm either!
• Interior pipes do freeze.  Hopefully your exterior faucets are long since shut off.  But I was caught by surprise during our first arctic blast when my upstairs shower stopped draining and the cold water wouldn't turn on.  The exposure to the cold and the wind on that exterior wall had frozen the water in the pipes.  Now I can tell you what to do to avoid that.  And what not to do.  Panic does not help, I can tell you from experience.  Epsom salts down the drain did.  
• There is beauty in all seasons.  Don't get so freaked out that you miss out on that fact.  If you're from a warmer climate, all this snow, ice, salt, freezing pipes and dogs who are making you insane with their cabin fever can make you both fearful to go out unless you have to and hate it when you do.   But, stop for a moment when the snow is falling and look around.  Let some fall softly on your face.  Look around on a winter morning and try not to see the ice-crusted streets or the dirty mounds of snow the plows have made.  See the soft virgin snow in your neighbor's backyard instead.  Go sledding.  Go skating.  Enjoy winter.  Unless you've got the flu, but even that shall pass.  I hope anyway.

Climate Change

As we prepare as a city to lay Rocco to rest, I'm not at all sure I'm done with that heavy hearted topic, but how could I ignore what we all woke up to this morning!  I looked out my window and realized I couldn't really see my driveway or sidewalks under a heavy coating of snow, but I was leery that it was true snow.  I figured there was a layer of ice under there somewhere.  So, I pulled on my winter woolies, hooked the dogs up to their leashes and headed out as we always do into the pre-dawn morning.  Holy crap!  Layer of ice, my eye!  That wasn't snow.  It was something way more evil (not that snow is evil - I like snow).  It was this white ice-snow stuff that I have never seen the like of.  Never.  Seriously, I've spent some time thinking about it.  I had an hour and a half while I was trying to chisel out my two sweet neighbor ladies' walkways from under a foot of this stuff to think it over.  Growing up in Montana, we had these chinooks that would blow down from Canada and start to thaw out the layers of snow, then freeze back over and leave us with these horrible, deep ruts of ice.  That was bad.  But this came straight out of the sky like that.

Anyway, I tried to walk the dogs - they absolutely live for their walks - but my older girl was slipping all over the place and clearly not happy with this unusual development, while the young one was having the time of her life, leaping forward so she could crack through the ice, which seemed to be the very definition of fun for her, but only served to drag Cheyenne off her already shaky feet.  For my part, I could barely pay attention to them, trying just to keep my own footing on a total sheet of ice.  The three of us gingerly made our way about 3/4's the length of the street before I just called it and tried to turn around.  I couldn't make it across the road.  Seriously couldn't.  So we gingerly just walked back the same way we came, and Cheyenne promptly showed me what she thought of the whole thing by taking care of her morning business on the downstairs bathroom floor (at least she made it to the bathroom) while I went off to try and help dig out my neighbors.

This was just one more crazy winter morning in what has been the oddest winter I can remember.  The thermometer has been like a yo-yo. Up and down, and then back up again and then repeat.  We've had snow, then thaws and rain, then snow again and this infernal ice crap.  Every swing has caused both my daughter and I to have a sinus headache at least one day after the arc takes place (and, pray tell me somebody, what is living to trouble my sinuses in -9 degrees!)  Is it because of climate change?  Of course I have to believe it is.  Even my dad, who died in 1992, believed in global warming all the way back when.  But, you know, I'm like everybody else when faced with freezing pipes, iced in driveways and cabin-fevered dogs; I'm not thinking so much about that on days like these.  I'm just trying to get through them in one piece.  And that can be a bit of a challenge in the Steel City.

One of the things you learn right away is that not all townships are created equal.  I live in a township that is obviously better funded than others, so I saw the plows come up and down my street three times while I was laboring to chip away at heavy ice so my two neighbors had a fighting chance of making it to their mailboxes at some point today.  But that's not uniform.  If I have to travel to a neighboring township, which may only be a mile or so away from me depending upon which way I'm going, that could potentially be a whole different story.  And that's not even discussing the city proper, which is not a shining example of street maintenance under any circumstance.

Now, consider that I live in the North HILLS.  Hills being the operative word here.  If I'm downtown, which I was one Saturday night during the deep arctic blast we had in January, no matter how I try to come back home, at some point I'm going to have to work my way up hill.  I drive a Subaru, so I can handle most situations.  It's the other cars on the road that I have to worry over.  But even my darling, wonderful, amazing Subaru slid around a little on the way home that night because, again, not all townships are created equal.  She stayed tucked safely away in her garage today, and I forbade my daughter from trying to come home from her boyfriend's in Greenfield.  I'm learning the best course of action is just not to interact with a bad winter day from behind a wheel here.

And that's the other thing I've had to accept.  If Montanans cried "snow day" every time the weather is bad, they'd be shut down half the time, so they just don't.  Whatever Mother Nature throws at you, you go about your day like it's any other.  Pittsburghers delay school openings, shut down services and generally fold in on themselves on a regular basis.  Honestly, I used to scoff at that.  Now I get it.   Winter is a real thing here, but they are not set up to deal with it in the serious, take-no-prisoners manner in which Montanans do.  Way better to be safe than sorry.

Bottom line is this:  spring, I will be ever so happy to see you!

Admittedly from last year, but she's so cute...I had to use it.

RIP Rocco

http://www.pittsburghurbanmedia.com/Hero-Dog-Pittsburgh-Police-K-9-Rocco-Dies/

I woke up Friday morning both sad and mad.  I sat down to try and read the article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette about the topic that was causing my distress.  I didn't make it past the first line, "Office Lerza sobbed."  I joined him.  And that was that for reading further.  Why were we both crying, along with many in the city?  Because his partner, a K-9 Officer, Rocco, had died the night before after being stabbed on Tuesday by a mentally disturbed young man they were trying to apprehend.

This is a personal one for me.  It spans across a few topics I feel strongly about:  animal welfare, the state of mental health care in Pennsylvania, and protecting those who work to protect us.  The night before, when I read that Rocco had taken a turn for the worse, I was trying to figure out how my dogs could help, most likely to donate blood.  A woman who was trying to help get me information on where to go and how to do that also told me that the assailant could only be charged with a misdemeanor, whether Rocco survived or not.  Turns out he was charged with a felony, but a third degree felony, and the fact that he actually did end up murdering the animal doesn't up the charge.  I was initially enraged at the thought that the charge would be no worse than stealing candy from the local Get-Go.  Now I'm just incensed, but it still isn't right or sufficient.  To put it in perspective, consider that, if convicted, the assailant would face 3 1/2 to 7 years in prison on the third degree felony charge he faces.  If he was arrested, nice and calmly with no knife slashing involved, on straight burglary charges, he could be charged with a first degree felony and face up to 20 years.

Now why should you care about that?  Particularly if you, as I saw one person comment, believe this is JUST a DOG and can't see what all the fuss is about. Well, consider that a trained dog costs about $15,000, based on various sources I looked at.  It's harder to get a bead on what the ongoing maintenance expenses are, but the Pittsburgh Police Department reimburses the handlers for the dogs' care, and they are allowed by budget to have up to 24 dogs.  According to their website, if you subtract Rocco now from the list, they have 17 dogs on the force currently, split into a few different specialties.  If you're a dog owner, you can do some rough math.  Also, if you're a dog owner and have ever had to pay for trauma care, you can definitely do that math.  Personally, I've used the clinic where Rocco was being cared for just once.  The night one of my oldest dogs died.  She was there less than an hour because there was just nothing that could be done for her and the bill was $400.  So, as taxpayers, every Pittsburgher has a stake in what happened to Rocco.

Additionally, if you lose a trained K-9, it's not like you can just go down to the local shelter and pick up another one.  Most of them come from Europe, as did Rocco, and share certain personality traits that make them ideal for police work.  I've reached out to the Ben Roethlisberger Foundation for some more information on how dogs are chosen, trained and their uses, but if you're wondering about the value of having a dog on patrol with an officer, call me and I'll tell you the story of how I once saw an Sheriff's deputy in Texas single handedly apprehend and subdue three suspects who had broken into property I was responsible for by just showing them his dog when they tried to run and explaining that he'd send the dog after them if they didn't stop.  They did.

But, more than that,  I believe that we have a higher duty to the animals we chose to domesticate and then place in our service.  No one asked Rocco if he wanted to be a police officer.  He was drafted into the position and put his life on the line every shift.  He may have done it willingly out of love and respect for his handler, but that does not diminish my argument, it just enhances it.

A natural question is whether the department does enough to protect the dogs, and I think it is a fair question.  I've been reading about what is available for dogs, such as protective vests, and why or why not their handlers use them.  But one thing that you read is that a vest still leaves a dog exposed on parts of his body.  At close range, Rocco would likely still have been exposed to the injury he sustained from everything I can piece together.  So, no, this one is all on Mr. Rush and maybe those of us who failed to recognize his condition and help him before it came to this, not the Pittsburgh PD and Officer Lerzo, in my opinion.

But, I'm not alone in my frustration at what the law can currently allow to protect these noble animals who work hard to protect us, and there is already legislation being proposed, "Rocco's Law", which will raise the level of offense to a second degree felony.  Every indication is that it has strong bi-partisan support, but I would encourage all of us not to forget about this tragedy as days go by and encourage our elected representatives to support the legislation.

Now the next step is how to prevent more people like John Rush from falling so far down a rabbit hole that he has to commit a violent crime before any of us pay attention to him.  That's a harder task.

For now, all I can say is: rest in peace, dear Rocco. Thank you for your service.

The One Word Answer

Whenever I meet someone and they find out I'm not from around here, the question inevitably comes up, "So, what brought you to Pittsburgh?"  Of course, the true and comprehensive answer to that question would keep them there for hours and is way more information than they want to know.  After all, they are trying to make polite conversation, not learn my life's secrets while standing in the grocery store checkout line. That being understood, the conundrum is to take the complicated reasoning why anyone makes a move like I did, uprooting my entire family from our home, all our friends and our jobs to a place none of us knew all that very much about really (trust me, what we see as tourists is a mere surface scratch to what any city is about), and boiling it down to a succinct yet sincere answer.  I've managed to do it.  I reply:

SPORTS

Many of you who are reading this migrated from my original blog and have heard this story ad nauseam.  I apologize to all of you in advance, and I'll try and keep it brief, but I was raised to be a football fan.  My father, before he joined the Army Air Corps (yes, that long ago), coached football to intermediate aged kids (think junior high).  He loved the sport, even though he would never coach it again, and it was an integral part of our lives.  My parents had season tickets to the Montana State University Bobcats, he watched television all Saturday and Sunday afternoons, they threw parties where friendly betting on games was an expected part of the festivities.  He didn't raise me to be a Steelers fan per se, even though my parents were both from Pennsylvania.  I came to that on my own. But he did desperately want me to feel that same passion, and it was hard not to fall in step.  That one stuck.  The hunting and fishing, which was the big reason they lived in Montana, did not.  Not for his lack of trying with those two things as well.

Not only did it stick, I took it to a whole other level.  I think, if I'm honest with myself, I might not have been such an obsessive Steelers fan if I hadn't lived in Texas.  I wore it like a badge of "otherness" that I was always proud of.  I have to confess, it was devilish fun walking down the ramps of the Astrodome after beating the Oilers, watching all those dejected faces of the home crowd while shouting "Here We Go Steelers, Here We Go!"  Beating the Cowboys was twice as euphoric.

My daughter is excited to show you the joys of personal hygiene articles being transported in clear bags

But I'm not one dimensional.  I love hockey too.  I came to it much later though.  Ironically, Montana when I was growing up was not a big hockey state.  Skiing is the winter sport that reigns there.  Maybe because they're both expensive sports and Montana is sparsely populated, so having to travel to find competition wasn't in the cards for most schools, already doing it for football and basketball, I don't know.  All I know is almost everyone skied.  Hardly anyone played hockey more than a pick up game on a frozen pond.  Once I got to Texas, forget about it, the game has no real traction there.  Try going to a Stars game.  I did a few times when the Pens were in town.  There were more of us in the stands than Dallas fans.  Which is too bad really.  It's such a beautiful arena.   So, I was a confessed band-wagoner until one night a few years ago when, already in Pittsburgh for a Steelers game, I went to a Pens game the next night.  I've told this story so very many times that I'll spare you the details once more, but thanks to both the Penguins and the legendary Martin Brodeur, who stopped everything the home team threw at him for a 5-0 shut out, his 104th, and caused my jaw to literally drop in awe, I jumped off the wagon and was fully invested in the band.

Ironically, this man played a huge part in my becoming an avid Penguins fan.  Thanks Marty!

But the boys in Black and Gold (tannish) keep me as one.

At any rate, the time came to decide what to do with the rest of my life.  I had always thought I'd go back home to Montana some day.  But Bozeman was out and had been for a long time.  Land prices, thanks to a lot of celebrities coming in and buying land in and around the area, are Big Sky high, but wages and job opportunities are not.  Missoula was on the radar as a next-best alternative.  College town, large enough to actually have a symphony, built right up against the mountains.  With modern technology, you can be any kind of sports fan any where these days.  Then one day I read an article about cities to avoid due to jobs lost.  Missoula was listed in the top five!  In the country. And it's not that big of a place to begin with.  So, that was the end of that.  If I moved there, I wouldn't be able to find work there.  Then it hit me!  Like a bullet.  Of course!  Pittsburgh.  Why watch sports on satellite or an iPad when I could be in the stands?  Maybe bump into a player at Walmart or Home Depot (as it happens, I've never done that - we don't exactly live in the same zip codes).

Now who wouldn't want to sit in the stands for a game like this?

And so, if you meet me and ask me what I'm doing here, that's the answer you'll get.  It's overly simplistic to be sure.  But it is true.

Greetings from the Sub-Burgh

I am celebrating my third anniversary of living in my quaint little post-war red brick house in the North Hills just outside of Pittsburgh, PA.  Ironically, I rolled into town from Texas just two days before the Steelers left for Texas to play the Packers in the Super Bowl.  I also drove east in the dead of winter after having lived in the south for all of my driving life.  Looking back on it, I have to wonder what madness took hold of me that I had to move here when I did.  I am quite sure the poor crew of three young movers who had to haul my mountain of stuff in for me in a driving snow storm wondered the same thing in less polite terms.  But it had actually been a long, complicated affair to plan a relocation of this magnitude.  I was nothing if not determined. Yet, really, I had no idea what I was getting myself, and later my family, into:  I had never lived here before.  I had visited many times.  I had loved the Steelers all my life and come to love the Penguins just as deeply.  But knowing and appreciating how Sidney Crosby controls the puck while flying down the ice does not mean you know anything about the city he plays for.  I would find that out.

But, three years on, here I am and here I shall remain, looking out on a scene of snow not unlike the one I saw the day I first pulled into my driveway.  I am one of the newcomers on the block.  There are a few of us, sadly in most cases replacing prior residents who were simply too old and frail to live on their own any longer.  But, they gave it their all, like the two ladies who live in little post war red brick homes next to me (not together, they both have their own home, mind you).  I always get mixed up which is which, but one of them has lived in her home 56 years now, and the other one 55.  Sometimes I marvel at that; they have both lived right where they live now for longer than I have been alive.  And, for the record, I am no spring chicken.  Those ladies are my idols.  I want to be just like them if I ever grow up, fiercely independent and refusing to let their age and aches and pains defeat them.  But that's Pittsburgh for you.  People here, I have found, are endowed with a steel spine, and it seems to be bolted firmly into the ground, rooting them here.  I am considered a bit of a novelty among many of the small circle of people I actually know because I was born in New Mexico, grew up in Montana, moved to Texas (much more on that subject to come), and then chose to move here.  For many people around here, just moving from one of the 91 little neighborhoods to another one is a Pretty Big Deal.  I hired a contractor last year who had never been to my township even though he had been born and raised in the city (if you ask the natives where they are from, by the way, they'll list the name of their particular neighborhood, not the larger city).  I liked him.  A lot.  He did great work, was super cheap, but clean and orderly and friendly.  But he was clearly not comfortable in my Irish Catholic suburban neighborhood.  He never came back.  He liked working where he knew the area and the people better.  It's one of the many things I've had to come to know and accept about this place.  And that's the journey I've been on the last three years...learning this new and unique world, which is so very different from where I've ever lived before.  I thought it might be fun to take you along with me on that ride, whether you are from here or have never had the pleasure of seeing this place I drove blindly to.

Make no mistake about it:  I love this city.  This is my home, both by virtue of my address, and by the space it occupies in my heart.  But, like any relationship, there is a learning curve and some bumps along the way.  Pittsburgh and me, well, we're no different.

What brought me here, you ask?  That's a long story.  I'll enjoy telling you about it.  I hope you enjoy reading it.

In closing, I want to dedicate this inaugural post to the person you'll come to know as My Lovely Philly Friend and her husband who just welcomed their first child, Future Pirates Fan, a few days ago in the middle of this arctic blast, which is much, much worse in Philadelphia.  If not for them, I'd probably still be getting lost on a regular basis.  They shared their own love for this wonderful place and really opened it up for me.  Many of the stories I will tell are stories I couldn't have experienced without their help.  Congratulations, and I can't wait to get my hands on that beautiful baby of yours!