VaxCave

Congratulations to the Swishers. Their wedding was fantastic and a real testament to their personality as a couple.

The Godiva Chocolatier in the Pittsburgh Airport (or any airport for that matter) should certainly advertise its goods as a medical supplement. Who else could prevent horrific blood clots but the fine people at Godiva?

I’m currently writing from the 33rd terminal in the B wing. We are waiting for our flight after eating at a place called “O’Brien’s.” We figured we’d give it a shot since this week will include some of Bridget’s heritage. I would recommend avoiding this place. The food was not good. The service was slow. The check was high. I certainly am not impressed. Regardless, it was nice to sit down and have a quiet meal before our flight.

When we went to the check-in counter we were able top walk right up to the first available kiosk. We normally do the self check-in, but this time we wanted to make sure that our Dividend Miles were credited to our frequent flier accounts. While speaking with the attendant, we asked him why the place was so dead. He indicated that since the county doesn’t want to deal with US Air, they have pushed all their connecting flights to other cities, notably Philadelphia and Charlotte. He said that every person that comes through the PGH Airport requires US Air to pay the county ten dollars. He said in Philly and Charlotte it is between $3 and $6. So instead of 400 flights coming into Pittsburgh, there are now about 60 per day. The county believed that other airlines would fill the void. Apparently Southwest is the next biggest flight provider here and they only fly 12 times per day out of this hub.

It’s quite unfortunate that the county wouldn’t deal. It makes perfect business sense to me that US Air would simply route all their transfer flights through other (cheaper) cities. We had a clearly biased interpretation of the facts from the US Air guy, but it all made sense. Perhaps I’ll research more when I get back.

Anywho, the vacation is off to an interesting start. Tonight and tomorrow: Rhode Island! Stay tuned…

On most days, in the morning, Mojo tends to make noise. He meows and scratches and is generally a nuisance. He has even taking to jumping up on the bed, knocking Bridget’s glasses off the nightstand, and then moving over to my nightstand and knocking my glasses to the floor.

Our solution to this problem is the vacuum cleaner. We have the vacuum cleaner out in the hallway hooked up to an X-10 remote control system. This allows us to activate and deactivate the vacuum cleaner from a semi-conscious state. The cats are terrified of the vaccuum cleaner, so it normally shuts them up for about an hour.

Yesterday my mom needed to borrow the vacuum. I took it over to their place and on the way back I didn’t take it back to its previou spot. On the way out of the car Bridget asked me if I was going to take it and hook it back up to the X-10 unit. I said that I didn’t feel like it. She responded that it would be my responsibility to quell the antics of Mojo if he acted up. Her exact words were, “Tomorrow is my morning to sleep in, so you are the one that’s gonna take care of Mojey in the morning.“

Well, this morning Mojo was very quiet. It turns out we left his food down all night so he didn’t get stressed out in the morning. We were sleeping soundly with no need for the remote control. At 7:00AM I heard a rattling over the sound of the air conditioner. It was persistent and loud. Bridget was obviously getting restless since this was her day to sleep late. I stumbled to the window to see what was going on. I suppose you could say that there arose such a clatter, that I threw open the sash to see what was the matter.

Outside, on Bridget’s day to sleep late, sat four construction trucks and a guy operating a jackhammer. He was ripping the road apart. On a Sunday! At 7:00AM! After the jackhammer came the backhoe. It dug down and exposed a water pipe that had burst. The men made such a racket in fixing it that I’m sure that Bridget wasn’t happy. I just woke up and went out in the yard to put down some weed killer. I suppose something that important must be fixed, but that doesn’ change the early morning irritation.

I don’t think Bridget has had the chance to sleep late for upward of 2 months. Maybe our vacation to New England will change that.

When I bought Bridget’s engagement ring, I purchased it from a place called Kranich’s Jewelers in State College. So when we got married we went back there to get my wedding band. We picked out a white platinum ring (for durability) with a brushed center section.

With the warranty that our rings have, we are required to have them looked at once every six months by someone at a Kranich’s store. In 2002, the first time we had our rings inspected, we went to the store in Altoona since it was mildly convienent in our trip to my parent’s house. While there, the woman that inspected my ring mentioned how scratched up it had become in only 6 bmonths. I told her I was hard on rings and it was only going to get worse.

After inspecting the rings, she took them into the back to be polished. When she returned, she held out her hand and we took our rings. Mine had returned with a mirror finish. She had thought that the brushed center was scratches and proceeded to buff out the brushing. We politely freaked out and asked her to fix it. She stated that only the jeweler could fix it, but being a Sunday, he wasn’t in the store. We could leave the rings and pick them up tomorrow. Very useless if you live 2 hours away.

We decided to live with it and figured we’d get it fixed some other time. It was about 8 months ago that we finally got lucky enough that the jeweler was in the store when we were at the Johnstown location. The guy fixed the brushing in about 10 minutes, it looked like my original ring, and I was quite pleased. This is the best thing to happen in Johnstown in a long time.

This past weekend we went to a birthday party in Duncansville for a friend’s child. While there, we decided to skip over to Kranich’s to have the rings looked at again. Sure enough, another girl buffed out the brushing on my ring. We asked her why she did it and she exclaimed that it was scratched and that was the only way to get the scratches out. We proclaimed that my ring was significantly different now and this had happened before. When we said that she had buffed out the brushing she pointed at the ring and said, “you can still kind of see it.” We made it clear that we weren’t happy about it.

My main worry is concern for the integrity of the ring. If these toolbags keep buffing my ring down and then I have to have it rebrushed, it slowly wears the metal away, thereby making the ring weaker. I’m hard on jewelry so we got white platinum for a reason. I don’t want to break this thing.

They offered the standard jeweler fix, but of course he wasn’t there. The jeweler is there on Saturdays until 4:30 (we arrived at 4) but he had cut out around 2pm. They would glady have him fix it and mail the ring to us. I said that there was no way that my wedding ring was going in the U.S. Mail. We went back and forth asking why she had ruined my ring (again) and never came to any sort of resolution. We told them that we would never come back to the Altoona location and we left.

No one apologized for ruining my ring (again.) As far as I was concerned they didn’t offer a reasonable resolution to the problem. We won’t be going back there. We’ll head to Johnstown from now on. At least the jeweler there can fix the problems that the Altoona store creates.

Pittsburgh needs money. They are in a budgetary nightmare. I’ve decided that the best way for them to raise some easy extra cash is by fining people who litter. I recently read an article that said the fine for littering is being raised in Pittsburgh to $25. An easy way to jack up revenue for special projects and keep the city clean is to fine litterers. Specifically, smokers. Smokers (cigarettes specifically) discard tens of billions(!!) of cigarette butts yearly in the United States. Those filters aren’t very biodegradable, nor are they attractive lying all over the ground. Most people think that the filters are cotton and very biodegradable. Well, guess what? They aren’t. The filters are made of cellulose acetate tow. For those of you that smoke filterless cigs, more power to you. That’s some serious biodegradable material. Although it’s too bad you will most likely be dead in 15 years.

Quick math… Let’s assume that 25% of the people in Pittsburgh smoke cigarettes. Of those, let’s say that only 8% of those people are hardcore and smoke a pack a day. Let’s assume then that each of those 8% get busted (under the new “stop littering you ignorant moron” program) maybe twice a year. If there are 250,000 people in the greater Pittsburgh area (or visiting at any given time,) that amounts to an even one million dollars.

In my experience, there are very few smokers that actually put their used filters where they are supposed to go. I’d like to see Pittsburgh make them put their money where their butts are.