Thoughts of the Day

1. I am not sure what is going on... but it is in the 60's today in the Burgh... and its October... not even early October... like post-Ides of October. It is supposed to be cool and crisp and sweater weather. I managed to pull off a Rugby shirt today, but i am wearing shorts with it. Grrr.

2. Being on the penultimate floor of the building has its downsides... or so it would appear.

see, when it started to not be 85 degrees everyday, all the old people in the building decided it was time to turn on their heaters and BLAST that stuff. Of course, since heat rises, our apartment is feeling the affects. I have never seen an air conditioner work so hard to acheive almost nothing at all. Last night I came in from a movie around midnight... and by midnight it has been dark for a while and the temperature outside should have fallen significantly. My roommate was wandering around in a t-shirt and a daze saying "its so hot... its so hot..."

being the attentive person i am, i immediately put my hand over the vent where the AC was supposed to be blasting... you'll never guess what was coming out...

WARM AIR.

groooooooooooooooooooooooss.

I next went to the thermostat to see where we actually were temperature-wise. The mercury had just passed the line marked "balls". That is right. Our apartment is officially hotter than balls. In October.

Now, i looooooooooooove fall. Love it love it love it. But if this is what fall is going to bring us I may actually have to move New England. Grosser than Gross.

Oh to ride the rails...

I've long been intrigued by locomotive travel. There is something so cool about a train with cars attached racing through the night with sleepy people inside, watching the dark horizon zip past.

When i was little I took every opportunity I got to ride a train, or play with an electric train set. When ours broke it was maybe the saddest Christmas in my memory... no little town scene and locomotive zipping around the Frazier Fir that year.

Even today I find this mode of travel enticing. I may or may not (on occasion) ride the subway in Pittsburgh for the short three stops that it is free... and i may or may not do this for the shear thrill of taking rail travel. A couple years ago my friends and i were celebrating the New Year at a friend's place in the city, so i ran a little experiment. I had my mother take me to Latrobe, and I took the train from there to Pittsburgh. (That trip ended up being free because the engineer didn't see me and blasted through the station, so the porter gave me a wink when i got on board, and thanked me for my ticket... a piece of paper i had yet to purchase.

The following year, i was invited to the wedding of my best friend's older brother in Washington D.C. I caught the train in The Burgh this time, and rode it right into downtown DC, where i walked to the other side of the station and caught the subway to the hotel where the wedding was being held. I'll write the story of that trip later (it was a fiasco mixed with pure joy).

All of this combined with my passion for film work has lead me to want to pursue a new project. This idea has been with me for a while, but now i'm thinking about really making it happen.

I want to board the train here with a rucksack, a camera, a microphone and tripod and ride the train to the West Coast and back. Along the way i'll interview passengers, and anyone i can get permission to talk to; engineers, food service personnel, porters, station attendants (did i just make those people up?), the corporate heads of Amtrak... whomever i can.

I want to explore the American Rail system, and do it from within. Not trying to take Amtrak down, but to explore why people don't use it, and what could make it a more viable means of transportation.

When i originally pitched this idea to a professor he suggested i "hobo it"... by that he meant hopping a freight train in the middle of the night. He then retracted his suggestion stating that he couldn't actually encourage me to do something dangerous on the record. But, he liked the idea. When i called Amtrak to ask permission to bring the equipment on board they said that all i needed to do was to have a letter signed by a professor delivered to a certain person at their head offices, and they would send me a letter of approval.

So, now all i have to do is really read up on the research end, get an accredited someone to write me the letter (since i'm out of school now) and scrape together the money... 500 dollars or so for the tickets... maybe that is one of the problems with train travel right there...

Going Home

There is an odd thing that happens to me every year: I go completely nutty over Fall.

I do. I honestly do. The leaves change, the air cools off, the sweaters come out\ and the hikes are not as sweaty as they once were. I love it. The brilliantly sunny afternoon and the cool, clear evenings... seeing your breath but not needing gloves.

Nothing can epitomize this feeling for me quite like Fort Ligonier Days. And, for me, this is going Home.

As one drives through the Loyalhanna Gorge from Latrobe he is surrounded by bright and full foliage, a sweeping, winding stream, (the remnants of the hollow... sad face) and the smell of wood and leaves finally burning again.

This place is a dream-town. It is like Maybury... very little crime, a picturesque downtown area, steepled churches, a Gazebo in a roundabout, a red-brick Town Hall with large white columns in front... just everything small-town America once was, and should forever be. I have a feeling in another 50 or 60 years people will purposely stop through here on road-trips to show their children "the way Grandpa and Great Grandpa grew up." Priceless.

Every Fall, there is a festival in town, that totally incapacitates any attempt by the average resident to have a normal weekend. You cannot get to the grocery store by car (unless you want to sit in traffic for half an hour... only going one mile in total)... it is impossible to be anywhere in town on Saturday between the hours of 830AM and 1200 noon without hearing marching drums... 100,000 people show up to a 1 square mile of land usually occupied by 1600... The fire station is blocked by the Oscar Meyer Weiner-mobile (you think i'm kidding)... a north-south highway has to be rerouted from the middle of town to side-streets because the middle of town is full of food stands and people selling crocheted Kleenex Box Holders with Steelers logos beadazzled on the sides. All of this, shuts down our town for the weekend, and somehow it is best economic boom each year. Somehow that seems odd to me... the "shut down" our town... THEN we make more money.

There is something more, though, about coming home to this. Something intangible. I live in Pittsburgh now, and I spent the last four years of my life mostly in Meadville. When I leave a friend's house in Pittsburgh and head back to my apartment i say "i'm going home"... and when I would leave the bar at school it was to "walk home"... but this is different. This is "Home".

There is a sense of magic about this place. Maybe that is how it is for many people with the place they grew up... but i have to wonder. This is a town with that "Cheers!" syndrome where "Everybody knows you're name" (i'm dating myself)... it is a place where kids are raised by thier parents... and thier aunts, uncles, cousing, friend's parents, neighbors, teachers and siblings, and i mean that in a good way... not as if "well... my sister basically had to raise me".

Coming home feels good because people here care. They know who you are. These people watched you grow up. They watched you fall (literally and figuratively), and they watched you succeed. That is why i don't get annoyed when a thousand people ask me "what are you doing now?" and "how is work" or "what are you planning on doing next"... they genuinely want to know.

So, I'm Home. Maybe someday when i come here i'll be home too... but for now its just Home.

A random post

so... It turns out that being unemployed isn't a blasty blast. Whoda thought? I don't want to talk about it.

Working freelance, however, is a blasty blast... When you have work that is.


I don't really know why I haven't blogged in so long... Maybe it is the whole spending time looking for a job... Maybe it is fighting with cocast over their totally awful sales people and severely lacking Internet... Maybe it is because the roomate and I are totally kicking buttock in our season of madden... Or maybe it is because not driving downtown every morning for a month has left me with little to gripe about when I sit down at Compy ever morning. The most annoyin that has usuall happened to me by the time she a up and surfing is that the water pressure I the shower dropped And the cold... Nay... Lukewarm water from the cold tap has cut out scalding me.

I do have some rants saved... Or rather bottled... Up about the busses in our burgh, but I'll wait on those. But for now, for both of you read this blog and don't talk to me on a daily basis just know I'm alive and still annoyed and amuse by the small things in life. For my sanity's sake I should release that stuff here. I'll try. I'll try.