Recap (Super Big Picture Post!)

So, here's everything that's happened over the last month or so that I haven't covered on this blog. Because, let's face it. You want to know what I am doing every single second. Seriously.

Robbo and I celebrated an anniversary--he took me out on the town, nothing but the finest for me.
See also: Dee's has the cheapest PBR pitchers in town.


Then, we got dinner. I mean, it was a big night.
MMMM Vesuvio's!



Then we went to three other bars, and then we somehow made it home. This is us in the kitchen. The picture isn't out of focus, that's just really how we look. Please also note Mr. Poopies having a 2AM snack behind us.



A few weeks later, we were lucky enough to get to go to the Steelers/Eagles preseason game.
Sometimes I'm not sure how I live with him. BOO EAGLES! GO STILLERS!



One of the amazing things about this town is our obsessive love for the Pittsburgh Steelers, a phenomenon I've talked a lot about on this blog. The tailgates for this preseason game looked like a playoff game. The excitement was almost tangible:



We are also lucky enough to have wonderful friends. RJ & Nicole:



Steelers won, of course.


Mama's a drunk.

Then, over Labor Day weekend, I made my first camping excursion.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't mind sleeping on the ground, dirt, bugs, things like that. It just seemed silly to me to load up two vehicles to the point that we couldn't possibly fit another object in order to 'get back to nature.'

To be fair, it was beautiful along the Youghiogheny River:



Meet your new neighbors!



We got there, and the Lizzard and I sat down to...um...well, let's not lie, we were having a drink:



...while our boyfriends did the rugged, outdoorsy thing:




Things at the homefront are good, too. The kitties are well:



And my hibiscus is still blooming:




So. Life ain't so bad, huh?

WHAT TIME IS IT? GAME TIME!

Okay, so. I know you've all been worried about me, what with the Buccos dropping all six games since the All-Star break and you know what? I'm okay. Not great, but okay. There's still plenty of season left to hit the .500 mark. I wasn't hoping for playoffs or anything. We shall see.

More importantly, just this morning I got crazy-excited for football season. I mean, really, really excited. I forgot how much fun it is to wake up early on Sunday morning with the anticipation of the game, and then you waste time until 12, when you can put on the pre-game coverage while you get dressed (and drink beer) and then put on all your Steelers gear and head out to your local watering hole (for us, Excuses at 26th and Carson, home of THE IKE TAYLOR MAFIA) where everyone else is similarly dressed and as pumped as you are.

I'll spare you my intricate analyses of the Steelers' upcoming season for a few weeks. For now, I'll just say...HEY YO STILLEEEEEEEEERS!!!

Viva la Pittsburgh Fans! (or Hero of the Day, Vol. 4)

This morning, I was waiting for the bus to work. It was freezing. It was snowing those annoying tiny snowflakes that pop you right in the eyeball and kind of burn, and that sucks. The wind was blowing like 59 miles an hour and I was miserable, huddled in the doorway of some bar for respite. I really need to buy a winter coat. But I digress.

I heard a male voice yell, “It’s coming!” I thought he was talking about the bus, and I craned my neck down the street. No 54C. Whaaat?

I looked for the source of the sound— it was a grizzled, middle-aged man wearing a Steelers hoodie, his hands jammed into the front pocket. He pulled one hand out and pointed to the sky. “Three inches!” he shouted at me.

“Yeaaaaah,” I said. Because really, what else do you say when some creepy guy is yelling about snow at 8AM?

“BUT THE STEELERS ARE STILL GONNA KICK SOME FUCKING ASS TONIGHT!”

Huh.

Seriously, there’s something about the resilience of this town that gets me every time. This game really means nothing. The Steelers pretty much done for. What’s to get excited about? Nothing.
But this man, he’s still excited. He still believes.
I mean, it may just be naïveté, but I want to believe otherwise. I want to believe in the perseverance (instead of the stupidity) of the Pittsburgher. There's something to be said for wholeheartedly believing in something, regardless of the circumstance. Granted, he was probably drunk, and probably heading for the White Eagle to keep up the boozing, but it still touched me a little.

So today, Grizzled Steelers Fan, you are my HERO OF THE DAY! Keep on keeping on!

For reference, when you do a Google Image search for the phrase "Steelers Fan," this is the first hit:


The funny thing is, it was originally in the Post-Gazette, but was reprinted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in January 06, right before the Super Bowl. I don't think anyone else in the country gets it. The city of Pittsburgh truly IS the guy in that comic, and we're proud. What else can you say?

And one last thing! If you're looking for a place to watch tonight's game, I propose the 31st Street Pub in the Strip...where The Maxipads just happen to be playing.

Ouch.

It stings, Pittsburgh. It burns.
It stings and burns like it did the morning after you went home with that girl from Mckees Rocks that you met dahn at Donzi’s, and you knew you probably shouldn’t, but you couldn’t help yourself. It stings and burns like that. Ouch. That stinging and burning required a trip to the clinic, and a shot of penicillin. This stinging and burning requires a little optimism and a shot of Southern Comfort.

So, the Steelers’ season is over, barring a miracle. Such as Jesus Christ himself returning to play QB. Or receiver. Or better yet, to return kicks. Or best of all, Jesus serve as our entire offensive squad. But, since that probably will not happen, we've got to move on.

We’ve got to move on, and we’ve been through worse than this. Besides, we still have this guy:


And this guy!

(in one of the lamest photo shoots, ever.)

And this guy!

(for the time being, until we get rid of him like we do with all our good players.)

And let’s not forget THIS GUY!

(the filename of that picture, from Carnegie Mellon University’s student newspaper The Tartan, is “mayor-mcdreamy.jpg.” Classic.)

AND SWEET JESUS, WE'VE GOT THIS GUY:

(if you don't know Tommy Amoeba, you should. Check out his band, Amoeba Knievel.)

All I’m saying, Pittsburgh, is that yeah, this sucks. This is awful. This is the worst way to go out in a season. I know it’d be preferable to make it to the playoffs and lose than to lose all damn season, but there’s nothing we can do now but look to the bright side, and pray to the gods of pigskin and Primanti's that we turn it around in 2007.

As for my blog, I guess it’s going to have to go back to my daily missteps and failures as a human being. Up next, how Robbo’s cat is totally gay, and tried to have butt sex with my cat. Not. Cool.

I love you, collective city of Pittsburgh.

We’re gonna make it after all!

I'm Lost.

I'm lost. I feel empty. I wake up feeling sad. I go to sleep feeling sad, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on the reason. Nothing in my life is particularly wrong. Work is okay. Robbo is great. My friends are great. The Maxipads are starting to gain a following, which is really, incredibly awesome (and bizarre. Have you heard us? Geez.) But despite all that, deep down somewhere, down in the very depths of my soul, I’m sad.

Then yesterday, the source of my sadness became very clear to me, via an email from RJ (whom you may remember from the Jesus Marriage Cult post.) The email read:
“It's the beginning of November and I couldn’t care less about football. This is so wrong.
What do we talk about now, feelings???? Feelings are gay.”


And he’s right! Feelings are gay!
What the hell am I supposed to talk about in my blog now that the Steelers have essentially ended their season? How I made Robbo mad by forgetting to change the kitty litter (er…more like, always forgetting to change the kitty litter and then the cats get mad and protest-poop on the floor?) That’s not funny. Especially not to Robbo.

We can talk about how my high school reunion is in two weeks and instead of trying to get pretty, or thin, or something, I’m eating M&Ms at 9AM. Is that funny? I don’t know! I just don’t know!

Or we can talk about how I’m such a weak drinker anymore that I have three beers and then fall over. Is that funny? Yes, to everyone but me!

Furthermore, I think I've pasted the dead mayor's head on every possible thing I can. The joke is dead. Dead like Bob O'Connor. (whap!) And let's face it, pasting the new mayor’s head to things isn’t as funny.

Or wait…is it?

Naw. It’s just not the same. It just doesn't feel right.

The point is, I’m in a rut. I need to get run over by a car or something so I have a good topic to blog about. I could chart my progress. You know, “Today, I wiggled my toes. Eureka!”

Kind of like when I got fired and just drank beer and watched Maury all day. I hope I don’t get fired again, but it would make for some interesting writing.

I kind of like this job, though. I think I shall opt for Plan B of the "Get My Blog Back On Track" mission... lots of hallucinogenics.

I Really Hate Being Right ALL THE TIME!

So. Ben Roethlisberger shit the bed. Again. Hmm…I wonder if that’s a side effect from HAVING YOUR BRAIN ROCKED AROUND INSIDE YOUR SKULL AND BRUISING IT AND THEN INSISTING ON PLAYING FOOTBALL AND PRETTY MUCH RUINING THE SEASON? Yeah…I’m gonna go with…yeah.

The whole time I was watching that game, I kept thinking, how must Charlie Batch feel right now? We have so little faith in his playing ability that we’d rather put out our half-retarded starter than him? Granted, this is a city that is resistant to change. But still. When it’s not working, it’s not working.

This brings me to my next point. Bill Cowher. Do you even still want to be doing this? Are you even trying? Or are you just picturing that big house in South Carolina? And warm beaches instead of hail and rivers? I mean, if you are, that’s okay. But go. And believe me, this is an incredibly hard thing for me to say. You’ve been the coach of the Steelers since I was a little girl. I vaguely remember Chuck Noll, but most of my Steelers life has been based around you. I’ll be so, so sorry to see you go, but what’s more important, I want a coach that wants to be coaching this team.

I mean, look at this. Every other line in today’s Post-Gazette references “shambles,” “crumbling,” or my personal favorite, “Super Bowl talk is no longer on the table. The playoffs remain a mathematical possibility, nothing more.” When will Cowher bench Ben? I don’t know that he will. I don’t think it’ll happen.

I’m not stupid. I know not to expect a Super Bowl every year. I’m a Pittsburgh fan. My life has been a series of disappointments, one after the other. We’re conditioned for it. It’s just sad to see potential go to waste.

That being said, let’s cheer up. There are other things to talk about. Like the fact that this year’s Bloomfield Halloween Parade, an event I look forward to every year, is being called (I kid you not…) “The Spirit of Bob O’Connor Parade.”

Aw snap. I love, love, LOVE the fact that we’re naming a Halloween parade after our dead mayor. I wish I had a dead mayor mask. I’d totally go as The Spirit of Bob O’Connor. Maybe the reason the Steelers have been losing is because The Spirit of Bob O’Connor has not been playing.

But I digress. We have to keep our heads up, people of Pittsburgh. Do it for Bob.



I’m taking this too far, aren’t I?

Oh Geez, Ben.

I started an entry about Jesus being in a band, but it turned out to be yet another shameless promotion of The Maxipads, who, by the way, got some love in this week’s Pittsburgh City Paper. So that’s pretty cool.

Then I started an entry about how being in your 20’s is depressing, especially when you go to a training session at work for new hires and realize that the other two people in the room are your age, went to schools equivalent to yours, and are definitely no smarter than you, and they make more money with higher-level jobs, and you start to wonder where you went wrong. Then I got depressed. And nobody likes sad kids.

Instead, I must fall back on one of my old standbys: 1) pooping at work; 2) the Steelers; or 3) Hero of the Day.

So, while pooping at work, I thought this up: another open letter to Ben Roethlisberger. Without further ado…

Dear Ben:

Hi. It’s me again. You may remember me from such events as openly, public weeping when you guys won the Super Bowl, and this letter.

Ben, Ben, Ben. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? No, I’m not talking about your on-field performance, although it has been very hit-or-miss and let’s face it, hit-or-miss teams do not win championships. I’m talking about your ridiculous I’m-Gonna-Save-Pittsburgh-Football-and-I'm-the-Only-Guy-Who-Can-Do-It mentality.

Remember when you were in that motorcycle accident in which you claimed you were seconds from death (which I should mention, I’m still not buying, but that’s neither here nor there) and came back in time for the preseason?

That was probably not the smartest thing to do, Ben. And I hope you know that.

But alas! You were waylaid from the opening game because your appendix went ahead and ruptured itself and you had emergency surgery. But no worries, you came back the next week.
Seriously Ben? Is that necessary? No. Did it hurt the team? Yeah, probably.

And now this. Ben! Remember this?:


Followed by this?


And then this?


And now this headline:
Roethlisberger Looks Okay; May Play Sunday
WHAT?!
Ben, what?!

We’re playing the Oakland Raiders. With the way they’ve been playing this season, I could probably rush for over 100 yards against them, so Willie Parker (and Najeh Davenport, for Christ's sake, play Najeh!) should have no trouble at all on the rushing offense. I mean, seriously Ben, your continuous attempts to come back too early from injuries and illnesses is clearly hurting this team.

And oh yeah- Ben? Remember this guy?


That’s right. The Homestead Kid, Charlie Batch.
Let him play. Our season is already in the shitter, we’re playing one of the worst teams in the league, and Charlie has proven himself to be more than adequate as a quarterback.

Seriously, Ben. I know your intentions are good, but we don’t need you to save us. Take a break.

You fucking turd.

Love,
kT