Pittsburgh Tuesday...
The first thing I did today was to carry a flat-rate priority box to the post office, which I mailed to myself in Seattle. The box was 16 pounds and all books that I had with me on this trip and wasn't using/reading in the next week. That should take my big bag down from 51 pounds to 35 pounds, making it less likely to be an overweight bag, plus making my back hurt a tiny bit less when I walk a mile or so down to the 28X tomorrow, hopefully.
I walked down to "Willie's BBQ", which is a new place in Squirrel Hill that we'd walked by the other day, and I met up with![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
popejeremy and ohhim, and we had lunch. Alan and I had ribs and stuff and Jeremy had macaroni and stuff, and it was good fun to talk to them about random countries and sports and whatever. After Alan had to go back to work, I hung out talking to Jeremy for a while, and eventually we walked up the hill to Dozen Cupcakes, since martygreene works there, so we bought cupcakes from her. I had some wacky one called a Derby Pie, and Jeremy had one called Red Velvet... I have to admit I still don't understand why cupcakes are so trendy recently, but it's a neat change from other bakeries I suppose.
After hanging out there for a while I eventually made it to campus in the kinda-late afternoon. Tried on some shirts at the store in the UC, bought one, not delighted with it but I can never find perfect CMU shirts. At least this one is women's cut so it should look a bit better than usual. I walked to Wean and stopped by to see Catherine Copetas again, and she gave me a ton of random SCS stuff (pens, a smiley t-shirt, a keychain, two buttons, a notebook, etc). Apparently in a few months she'll have to move everything into The New Building, which is going to be pretty nuts. While in her office, all these random CS professors/etc kept coming by and she was like "do you remember Deanna?" and they're just like "No."
:)
One wacky thing, the last two days it's been really weird that I can walk across campus and NOT RUN INTO ANYONE I KNOW. WTF.
After that I gavegwillen a call and I wandered into the CIC and saw the Google office! It turns out a whole bunch of my former coworkers from Whizbang work there, among other random people I know, so I ended up there for a while, saying hi to old coworkers/friends, and then hanging out talking to Gwillen about puzzle hunts and things like that (he's apparently going up for the MIT hunt this weekend), until rmitz came and picked me up and whisked me off to Fat Heads.
We had 7 for dinner -- I got there just afterag5j, and apparently mistergrumpy and gwenix had been at the bar for quite some time -- judging by how totally sloshed Derrick already seemed, at least. ohhim showed up around then and we got a table for "6, maybe 7" -- mj2q was late but did come after all, yay. We were in the "outdoor patio", which is to say the "heated area with a tarp wall", which was quite warm and you couldn't even really tell you were outside. I split two orders of wings with Alan,
AND I DRANK HALF OF A YUENGLING BEER,
(the previous line is capitalized forcaptain_squid who should be proud of me if he is still out there)
and then everyone hung out for a while, before dispersing. Aiton and Alan and Roman and I ended up back here and played Rock Band. I sang a bunch of songs, but there was a surprising LACK of female vocals that I actually knew. The most fun song for me was signing Limelight, by Rush, after Roman downloaded the Moving Pictures album. Oddly, I know that song BETTER than Tom Sawyer, which I suppose is kind of odd. Then I switched to guitar for one song and drums for a few, and I'm still not into Rock Band, though if it had Japanese songs I'm sure I'd be happier to do karaoke on it ;)
Ugh, it's 2am and I need to pack and sleep and write some emails back to people in Japan... and get up and be out the door by like 10:30am to walk to campus for the 28X and all. Ugh, ugh.
I walked down to "Willie's BBQ", which is a new place in Squirrel Hill that we'd walked by the other day, and I met up with
popejeremy and ohhim, and we had lunch. Alan and I had ribs and stuff and Jeremy had macaroni and stuff, and it was good fun to talk to them about random countries and sports and whatever. After Alan had to go back to work, I hung out talking to Jeremy for a while, and eventually we walked up the hill to Dozen Cupcakes, since martygreene works there, so we bought cupcakes from her. I had some wacky one called a Derby Pie, and Jeremy had one called Red Velvet... I have to admit I still don't understand why cupcakes are so trendy recently, but it's a neat change from other bakeries I suppose.After hanging out there for a while I eventually made it to campus in the kinda-late afternoon. Tried on some shirts at the store in the UC, bought one, not delighted with it but I can never find perfect CMU shirts. At least this one is women's cut so it should look a bit better than usual. I walked to Wean and stopped by to see Catherine Copetas again, and she gave me a ton of random SCS stuff (pens, a smiley t-shirt, a keychain, two buttons, a notebook, etc). Apparently in a few months she'll have to move everything into The New Building, which is going to be pretty nuts. While in her office, all these random CS professors/etc kept coming by and she was like "do you remember Deanna?" and they're just like "No."
:)
One wacky thing, the last two days it's been really weird that I can walk across campus and NOT RUN INTO ANYONE I KNOW. WTF.
After that I gave
gwillen a call and I wandered into the CIC and saw the Google office! It turns out a whole bunch of my former coworkers from Whizbang work there, among other random people I know, so I ended up there for a while, saying hi to old coworkers/friends, and then hanging out talking to Gwillen about puzzle hunts and things like that (he's apparently going up for the MIT hunt this weekend), until rmitz came and picked me up and whisked me off to Fat Heads.We had 7 for dinner -- I got there just after
ag5j, and apparently mistergrumpy and gwenix had been at the bar for quite some time -- judging by how totally sloshed Derrick already seemed, at least. ohhim showed up around then and we got a table for "6, maybe 7" -- mj2q was late but did come after all, yay. We were in the "outdoor patio", which is to say the "heated area with a tarp wall", which was quite warm and you couldn't even really tell you were outside. I split two orders of wings with Alan, AND I DRANK HALF OF A YUENGLING BEER,
(the previous line is capitalized for
captain_squid who should be proud of me if he is still out there)and then everyone hung out for a while, before dispersing. Aiton and Alan and Roman and I ended up back here and played Rock Band. I sang a bunch of songs, but there was a surprising LACK of female vocals that I actually knew. The most fun song for me was signing Limelight, by Rush, after Roman downloaded the Moving Pictures album. Oddly, I know that song BETTER than Tom Sawyer, which I suppose is kind of odd. Then I switched to guitar for one song and drums for a few, and I'm still not into Rock Band, though if it had Japanese songs I'm sure I'd be happier to do karaoke on it ;)
Ugh, it's 2am and I need to pack and sleep and write some emails back to people in Japan... and get up and be out the door by like 10:30am to walk to campus for the 28X and all. Ugh, ugh.
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On a related note, my father-in-law, who's from China, said that Yuengling reminds him very much of some Chinese-style beers. I'm still not entirely sure how to parse that, but I think he meant it as a compliment.
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