which side?

i'm convinced the tracks by my house are the same ones that run behind my parents' house. i've basically just moved to the other side of them. time will show which side was the right side. ;)


so the other day lynn & i went down to shoot some photos of the train. turns out we're both a bit fascinated by them.


i'd really like to shoot a train coming from the north - so this would be the shot. fabulous clouds that day, eh?


okay, this would be more of the shot i would take. well ... without having my camera literally sitting on the tracks. i do have SOME boundaries.

sometimes.

pittsburgh - mystery photos

funny ... i have no memory of taking these photos. but here they are. :)


pnc park from the boat before the game.


pnc park from the boat after the game.


downtown from the boat before the game.


downtown from the boat after the game.

pittsburgh - the drive home

again, out the sunroof. pittsburgh is built along three (three?) rivers. basically that means there's a lot of bridges. i love bridges. so driving out of town, it just made sense to turn right & drive over this one.


magically enough, driving over that bridge led me straight to where i needed to get on the interstate (see the green sign cut off on the left side of the photo?). i was told i drove like i knew exactly where i was going. this is a trait i need to integrate more into my personality: doing things with confidence, regardless of whether i actually have that confidence or not. because in the end, the only one who knows i don't have a clue how to get to the interstate is me. :)


we exited the interstate at the first exit we came to in order to shoot photos of this church. it's st. boniface, and it's a historical landmark. it appears this is the old church.


and this is the new church. the two buildings are connected, though the older portion certainly doesn't look like it's used anymore.





and, as promised here are your three road-trip girls. :)


before leaving for the pittsburgh saturday morning.


having dinner at the pittsburgh hrc saturday night.

it occurred to me that i DO have photos of pnc park. they're from my last trip to pittsburgh, but i haven't shown them before. why? well, we can't really talk much about that last trip to pittsburgh. but i can show photos. in another post, though. i like dragging this out. :)

pittsburgh - the strip

saturday night we went to the cubs game. i didn't take photos. pnc is a nice park and they have good nachos. but no photos for you.


sunday morning we went to the strip district. it's an old warehouse district that's been turned into shops & restaurants. i love those types of areas.


so we had breakfast at de luca's - the self-proclaimed home of the best breakfast in town. actually, they've apparently won several awards for their breakfast. and it was tasty. i had these pumpkin hotcakes ... fabulous. small place with what i'm guessing are all the original fixtures. personally i thought it was a little pricey for breakfast, but it was worth it.


after breakfast we roamed along penn avenue for awhile. figured walking off the breakfast sounded better than sitting in a car for 8 hours on a belly full of pancakes (or in bethy's case, cinnamon french toast).


i love signs painted on sides of brick buildings.


this li'l awning was attached to an italian cafe with an upstairs patio. you can see it in the upper right corner. i want to eat on that patio. it was filled with round tables, alternating green & red umbrellas. nice.


i think enrico was the biscotti place. this fabulous sign was above this little walkway/alley between the buildings.


i don't know. the stoplight was on a short pole making it easy to photograph. so i did. it just seemed right.


aren't you glad i take photos of walkways? :) this was the doorway into a little shop where a local artist was selling earrings displayed on paint sample cards. yes, of all the things in the store, i remember the paint sample cards. it was a cute idea.


doesn't mr. graffiti man look pleasant?


i just noticed this photos says "fed up" down in the left corner. it's the building next to the one in the last photo.


this was an old milk ... factory? i'm not sure. the sign on the top (which i don't have a photo of) was something milk. otto milk, maybe? i don't remember. but it's the last of the "look at that!" photos we sought out while thinking about heading home. lynn has better photos of this building for sure. her father was a milk man.

but no, not for otto milk.

and, in classy 'becca style, the girls who made it all happen ...


bethy in the de luca's window.


lynn's "taking a photo" shadow.


me in the penn mac window. i do love reflective surfaces. :)


bethy & i by the car. i don't have one of all three of us on my camera. i'll get one from lynn & post it later. tomorrow you get photos from the ride home. seriously, you haven't seen enough pittsburgh yet, have you?

pittsburgh - from the hotel

we stayed at the sheraton station square. station square is basically a three or four block area filled with restaurants & shops. it's a fairly busy little area, right along the river with train tracks running along the water's edge. it's a nice place to stay, and the sheraton is the only hotel there. beth & i found station square on our last trip when we were hunting down the hard rock cafe. basically the sheraton is two blocks from hrc and one block (in the other direction) from the boat that takes you to the baseball game. perfect, right?


the view from the room. okay, so you see a lot of rooftops, but it's looking towards the hard rock cafe. see the tower in the center of the photo? looks like it might have a round clock face on it? that's part of hrc.


looking across the river to downtown.


and, of course, an obligatory shot of hrc as we waiting for our table. i do love hrc. and i love them even more for letting me swap out my french fries for mashed potatoes. A - the mashed potatoes were fabulous. and 2 - i still haven't eaten french fries this month. yay me!


and i know you're just so excited to see what the sidewalks look like, right? ;)

pittsburgh - back on track

we did, of course, eventually make it to the hotel. here are a few photos taken from inside the car once we figured out where we were going.


this was waiting at a stoplight. and while the photo was taken of the bridge - see the building smack in the middle of the shot? that's our hotel. yup, you can actually see our window.


just a decorative fence. something to look at while waiting for the light to turn green. that's right ... waiting for the light to turn green. i only ran one red light on this trip. and we were still in indiana.




i couldn't decide which of these building shots to give you - so you get both. :) they're taken through my sun roof. that thing does come in mighty handy sometimes.


after making a right turn at the stop light, you have mount washington to your left & station square to your right. i love driving next to rocky, craggy earth.


this one's just keeping me honest about shooting through the sun roof. it doesn't always work. :) especially when you're shooting the photo while you make a turn. but hey - it's worth a try, right? why use a digital camera if you're going to be afraid to take lots of photos?

pittsburgh - wrong exit

so i mentioned a wrong exit taken on our way into pittsburgh. finding the hotel should have been very easy. take an exit, turn left, turn left, cross the bridge and magic! i should be in familiar territory with the hotel on my right. instead we took the scenic route through a little neighborhood, around the carnegie mellon campus and about the university of pittsburgh. since we didn't know where to turn next, i parked & we all shot photos of this church & the surrounding buildings.













not a bad detour at all. while we were there we saw one wedding party leaving the back of the church as another wedding party was heading in the front doors to get prepped for the ceremony.

for dave

i had no intention of posting tonight. none at all. but then i read dave's little snotty comment on marlana's page about me not updating regularly. and while that might be TRUE ... well ...

okay, so it's true. i'm flighty on posting. big deal. :)

i'm in pittsburgh with lynn & bethy. we went to the cubs/pirates game tonight. got five innings of free baseball. the cubs lost. disappointing, i know. but we gave 'em a decent run for their money. funny point of the game: they gave out matt capps bobble head dolls. he's one of their pitchers. at one point during the game i made the comment that all the cubs fans in the stadium (and there were a LOT of us) were using the bobble heads as voodoo dolls, breaking off his fingers as he pitched. yeah, the gal in front of us didn't find that funny. she mumbled something about showing respect. i was humored.

i took photos today. i'll post them when i get home. we got slightly turned around on our way to the hotel (read: i took the wrong exit OR mapquest gave us the wrong directions. i'm really not sure which), but it gave us a great place to stop & take photos. plus i shot a few through the sun roof as we drove through the city.

we went to hard rock cafe for dinner. they were good enough to swap out my defective sweatshirt for a non-defective one. i'll be keeping the receipt for this one. just in case it breaks, too. :)

you rang?

dave: san francisco is NOT a "pretty neat place". it flippin' rocks hard core. i LOVE san francisco. love it, love it, love it. i mean, seriously ... i love it. et je pense que c'est "je sais". peut etre "je connais" est "i understand"? wow, that was poorly pasted together. :) and i would not do well with such a secretive work environment. nope. not at all.

jessica: you should totally come to a game with me! i'll let you know the next time i get free tickets. or we could just plan to buy tickets (buy tickets?!). the next few weeks are going to be busy ... but i say we definitely go to game this summer!

mel: i love you. okay, that wasn't a response to your comment ... but seriously. yes, i have memorial day off. we'll be back in town on sunday, so i don't know how i'll spend the happy no-work-monday, yet. and i'm not so much very "into" baseball ... as i like having things to do. so if i can go to pittsburgh - i'll go see a game, too. :) and the railcats games are just FUN. i do like baseball, don't get me wrong. it's my favorite sport to watch. but a lot of the time it's more about the adventure. we both know i like adventure. :)

in non-comment related news, we had a yard sale the past two days. i made $34 and got a fabulous sun burn. i convinced my niece that she DID want to go to chili's for lunch today (not wendy's) by hanging her upside down & tickling her armpits. her response was (i kid you not) "oh yeah! i forgot i wanted to go to chili's for lunch with you aunt 'becca!"

and i'm making chocolate chip cookies. wanna come over & enjoy one with us? :)

tuesdays rock!

hi. :)

anyone feel like talking? i feel like talking. kind of strange to have that happen two nights in a row, i know. i have a friend who usually indulges my need to talk incessantly when i'm online in the evenings. said friend currently has too much going on for that, however. so you're left to hear my ramblings. lucky you. ;)

i had pancakes for dinner tonight. i love breakfast food. i mean, i think i could eat breakfast food at any time of day. omelettes. pancakes. french toast. ooooo, the stuffed french toast at mimi's? i believe the server described it as "heavenly" ... oh yeah, smart server. and let's not forget the crispy bacon. breakfast food is good stuff.

i found myself with a randomly large amount of energy today at work. i cannot explain why. but it was enjoyable.

i had dessert at lunch today. that is not a normal thing. i generally only have dessert at lunch if someone else is paying the bill & even then i usually split it with someone else. but today i had this li'l apple tart thing with vanilla & caramel sauces. wow was it good. it also had these little fruits on it that i couldn't identify. figs, perhaps? i don't know. but they were also quite tasty. next time we go there i may just get a cucumber salad & that dessert.

would you believe the railcats - after being up 9-0 at the end of sixth, remember? - LOST last night? they lost again today, too. quite disheartening. on the heartening side of things, however, we may just get my friend bethy hooked up with their first baseman.

is heartening a word? i mean, it must be a word ... because there's no "hey! that's not a word!" red line under it when i type. i don't think it's commonly used though.

and speaking of those red lines. i just learned today that if i right-click on one of those underlined words - a menu pops up with correct-spelling suggestions. amazing.

anyone know anything good to do in pittsburgh? we may just decide to do more than go to dinner & the game saturday night ... so i'm taking suggestions.

it's been much too long since i've posted a survey on here. so here's the one i posted to myspace tonight. enjoy!

What's on your mind?
the three rules of question asking. the after taste of the heath ice cream. the price of tea in china. and the warmth & softness of my new sweatshirt.

Have you done something bad today?
that probably depends how you define "bad". i don't think so.

Do you want to see someone this very minute?
like have someone just randomly appear in front of me? no! that would be freaky! well ... okay, maybe. i mean, it'd be kinda cool, too. especially if they were just a floating head. can i see a floating head?

Are you an honest person?
yes. although i am pretty good at lying, it's more of a skill than a habit.

What are you sick of?
headaches. whining. lack of participation. and people's inability to see outside their own bubble.

Would you use family connections to get a job?
hmmm. i would use family connections to get a foot in the door, yes. but i'd like to think i could get the job on my own merit. although if i couldn't? sure, i'd take it by connection.

Have you ever made anyone cry?
probably.

Are you normally a happy person?
outside of the office, yes. inside the office ... i do my best.

What would you do if you walked in on your GF/BF with another person?
walk back out... maybe set his car on fire... (i'm leaving bethy's answer. i like it.)

If you can have one superpower what would it be?
healing.

If you could go back 3 years and change something what would it be?
i have no idea.

What time did you get home this past Friday and Saturday?
friday - around 11, i think. saturday - i didn't come home until sunday morning.

Are you wearing anything you borrowed from someone?
nope.

Can you sleep in jeans?
yes, but i'd prefer not to.

Are you under the influence right now?
of heath ice cream.

Have you ever been stuck in an elevator?
nope.

Do you sing in the shower?
nope.

What color is your shirt now?
the same color it was when i put it on. orange.

Spell your name without an A:
why? 'becc. or rebecc. or becky. ha! you think you're so smart, don't you, survey?

What's your middle name?
renee.

What's your favorite color?
chartreuse.

What are you eating or drinking at the moment?
nothing.

Do you speak any other languages?
je parle un peu de francais.


What is your natural hair color?
dark brown.

What's your favorite place in the world?
san francisco - down by the bay, on that bench. preferably with a waffle cone in my hand.

Are you taller than your mom?
yes.

Are you an emotional person?
yes.

Who did you last yell at?
probably someone who wasn't there. i tend to yell after people who frustrate me have walked away. or at my computer when they give me insufficient files. yeah ... i think that was the last time.

Are you confused?
no, not really.

What do you miss?
quiet phone calls.

When's the last time you studied?
senior year of college, probably.

What are you listening to right now?
the dryer tumbling my jeans.

What kind of books do you like to read?
memoirs.

Do you crack your knuckles?
yup.

What was the last thing to make you laugh?
something on tv.

What do you want?
quiet phone conversations (didn't i just say that?). brave loving. spontaneous adventures. a cabin in the mountains. and a fresh glass of ice water.

What is the background on your cell phone?
pittsburgh at night. :)

Can you say "I love you" in french?
oui.

What food are you craving right now?
french fries from three floyds. ugh.

What are your plans for the day/night?
tonight i will sleep, hoping for delicious dreams. do you ever go to bed hoping you have fabulous dreams? i mean, really really hoping for them? man, i wish that worked.

Have you ever broken your nose?
nope.

What are you excited for?
pittsburgh! taco salad. pittsburgh! hanging out with my mom for a couple of days. pittsburgh!

Has anyone ever spread a rumor about you?
yes

Do you have any trophies?
not anymore.

What was your favorite TV show as a kid?
the cosby show. or blossom ... i LOVED blossom!

What did you do yesterday?
went to work. giggled a lot. had a burger for lunch & a root beer float. sewed. had fish for dinner. sewed some more. updated my blog. slept.

Has anyone told you a secret lately that you aren't allowed to tell anyone?
i don't think so. the most recent secret was announced in a meeting today - so i'd say it's probably safe for me to talk about it.

Do you have any scars on your head, if you do, what are they from?
nope.

Have you ever punched a hole in the wall?
nope.

What's on your wish list for birthday/christmas (whichever comes first)?
i have no idea. i deny that i will begin to ask for practical gifts just because i have my own place. so my wish list will have fun things ... like ... umm ... yeah, i don't know. M*A*S*H dvds! and delicate fabulousities from monarch! yeah!

sew i'm random

happy monday. i know, it's a little late for that wish ... but happy monday all the same. the past few weeks have been busy. i like busy. staying occupied is good for 'becca. when i'm not occupied i do ridiculous things. but we can't talk about that. ;)

i've been to three of the railcats five games this season. the season opener was thursday - they lost. but they won in extra innings on friday. they lost again on saturday (the game i wasn't at), but they won again on sunday. i wonder how they're doing tonight ... i still highly recommend going to see them play. and don't give me that "but it's in GARY!" crap. it's a good time. you'll have fun. and if you do happen to die ... well, at least you were at a baseball game. and that's not a bad way to go.

speaking of baseball games - i'll be watching the cubs play this weekend. definitely going to the saturday evening game, possibly to the sunday afternoon game, too. depends on how we're feeling & what we decide about the drive home. oh, did i mention the cubs are playing in pittsburgh this weekend?

i'm working on a quilt for alicia's birthday. i can say that on here because ... well ... she's three & doesn't read. and holly already knows about because she had to approve the fabric (or at least, i thought she should), so it's not like i'm ruining a surprise. it's going well. lynn's been pressing my seams while i sew - so it's been going quite quickly. i'd guess we're about half done with the first set of seams. probably more than half done. *counts* yup. almost 75% done, actually. that's excellent. lynn's good to me.

i saw this really great crafty artwork idea today that involved strips of magazine pages. so i'm finally finding a great use for my stack of (if you're reading this joe, cover your eyes) shore magazines. i originally intended for them to sit on my bookcase to make me look cultured. but frankly, most people who will see my bookcase know better than to believe i'm cultured. :) so i'll use them for crafty artwork instead. i'm picturing something fabulous for my bedroom walls. and possibly something for the living room.

speaking of the living room ... have i told you my big plans for the west wall of the living? no? that's because i'm not telling anyone about it yet. okay, that's not completely true. there are about four people who know my big plans. but until i have a great method worked out for accomplishing the plans ... mum's the word.

the letter-of-the-day game will be coming to an end this week. we have three letters left to pull. after that we will be in need of a new morning pick-me-up.

speaking of morning pick-me-ups, i totally started my day with blueberry pancakes from sophia's today. yumm-o. don't get me wrong, they weren't any crunch cakes from lynn's paradise cafe ... but they were tasty & a lot closer to home.

and speaking of tasty (this is how my mind words when i'm a little bit tired, but really want to talk) ... i'm currently in LOVE with raw asparagus. i like asparagus cooked. i've liked it cooked for years. it's tasty stuff. but have you ever had it raw? especially the li'l tender baby pieces? fresh from the farm? absolutely fabulous. the "fresh from the farm" is an important part of the equation. A - fresh asparagus is sweeter than five-day-old asparagus. and 2 - when someone you know grows it, you know it doesn't have the pesticides & such on it that store-bought asparagus has. raw asparagus: one more thing i highly recommend.

oh man, raw asparagus at a railcats game? that would be amazing.

i know, call me a noodle-user, but i just said to myself "self, why not check the railcats web site for a score?" and sure enough, at the bottom of the sixth, the railcats are winning 9-0. don't you wish you were there?

we're having a yard sale at my parents' house this thursday & friday. so if you've been waiting for that perfect excuse to come say hi ... don't miss this great opportunity! ;)

let's see ... what else could i tell you? surely more has happened since the last time i blogged ...

i watched pirates of the caribbean two & three this past week. i watched most of an episode of house - my first time with that. i'm definitely not going to see every alan alda movie this month. however, i am more than halfway to my goal of not eating restaurant french fries this month. the worst part about that challenge is that i'll really want french fries when i'm at hard rock cafe this weekend. but i will be strong. oh yes. i will survive.

i'm going to try & exchange my hard rock cafe sweatshirt this weekend. would you believe the zipper on the silly thing broke just a couple of weeks after i bought it? of course, i have no receipt to take with me (i never keep receipts) ... but considering it's embroidered with "hard rock cafe pittsburgh", i'm thinking it's kinda obvious i bought it there. if they won't let me exchange it, i'll see what sophie will charge me to put a new zipper in. this is not a sewing task i'm willing to take on for myself. no, no. not with such a fabulous piece of souvenir apparel on the line. what do you think i am? crazy?

you really don't need to answer that question.

letter of the day

i may have explained this before, but bear with me. each morning at work, lynn, beth & i pick a letter of the day. we have little slips of paper in a cup - one for each letter of the alphabet - and we once a letter has been picked it gets put in a different cup to wait for us to start the alphabet all over again. we then spend the next ten minutes or so in deep concentration on coming up with letter-of-the-day appropriate words. then we go back to our general workload, continually spouting off words as they come to mind.

i kid you not, we do this all day.

we bring lists of words back from lunch. when one of us goes to the restroom, we come back with words. when we walk to the printer, we come back with words. it's fabulous. it might sound silly, but it's fun. and i think that's the point of silly.

everyday, however, towards the end of the day someone undoubtedly comes up with a word that makes us go "seriously? how did we not think of that already?" and for the letter b that prize goes to holly.

butterfly.

all day we thought of b words. we got behemoth, boisterous and boomerang. we got bursitis, benign and biopsy. we got baboon, bassoon and bison. we got booze, brandy and bottle. we undoubtedly came up with well over 150 words that start with the letter b. (including buerhle, mark - we went to the sox game yesterday.) but we did not get butterfly.

i love this game.

today is brought to you by ...

the letter b.

like how i told you early in the day so you can play along? :)

the four seasons

i watched the four seasons tonight. excellent movie. humorous. thought provoking. alan alda & carol burnett seem to be quite the natural couple. there were no teary outbursts in this one - just one scene of rage. and, frankly, alda does well with rage.

i have one extra ticket to the railcats home opener next thursday if anyone is interested. you'd be going with a group of my work people, but chances are they'll be more scared of you than you are of them. at some point i will probably learn to second-guess people before i buy the tickets. having the extra ticket doesn't surprise me, but it does frustrate me a little.

today was brought to you by the letter i. my favorite words were impeccable, incarcerate and imbecile.

i have consumed half a bag of cheddar-flavored chex mix tonight. truly the best pieces are the corn chex. they hold much more cheddar-flavored powder than the rest of the mix. although the actual cheese crackers aren't too shabby, either.

i purchased fabric online last night. generally it's something i stay away from ... however, the kit i bought several months ago doesn't have quite enough fabric to do what i want. generally i avoid online fabric because you can't ever tell what the true colors are. in the this case, however, i know they're from the same family of fabrics i've got sitting in front of me. so they will match perfectly. they were created to do so.

i have six weeks to create this quilt. good thing i work well under pressure.

i read today that many english-language grammatical "rules" are actually misapplied from latin-based (latinic?) languages. english is a germanic language. therefore our language is above the latin rules. just what we need, one more reason to be snooty. :)

same time, next year

so i'm going to dedicate my may movie watching to alan alda. why? because alan alda rocks. that's right. he rocks. we all loved him as hawkeye on m*a*s*h ... why aren't we all better versed in his film career? well, this month i'm fixing that problem for myself. i've changed my netflix subscription so that i should be able to watch all of his available movies (3 or 4 of them aren't available on netflix) during the next four weeks.

last night we watched "same time, next year". it's based on a play (which you know if you watched that li'l video up there), and stars alda & ellen burstyn. the movie has an interesting premise: married man, married woman meet and presumably fall in love. each has their own family at home, but they continue to meet each year at the same place for a weekend together. the movie takes you through 26 years of their affair. they have no contact with each other outside of that one weekend ... so each year they're falling in love all over again.

worst parts: alan alda in snug red undies (though they're quickly forgotten when he covers them with purple pants that have a butterfly patch on the bum) and watching alda cry. this isn't a character thing. it's always terrible watching alan alda cry. his face contorts in very strange ways when he cries. it's mildly disturbing.

best parts: the best/worst story exchanges (and the very idea of such an exchange) and the line "maybe i didn't think it through".