I'll warn you now that this is kind of a long one (for me), but it comes with multiple photos.
____________________________
Home from Pittsburgh.
Whoever designed the roads in that town was bat-shit insane.
It seems that the initial structure of the roadways was based on wagon trails & cow paths. Once the colonial village began to expand into an actual city the planning of the new roads continued this tradition. Downtown Pittsburgh is based around the confluence of three rivers, and buffered by high mountains. This is a brilliant place for an early military installation. However, when you evolve from an installation into a metropolis certain concessions must be made & certain changes effected. But no. The city is innavigable without the use of at least three different tunnel systems (and a glove-box full of rabbit feet & prayer beads).
Taking this all into account, let's just say, hypothetically, that when you get off the plane you immediately learn that your mother-in-law (one of the people you're in town to meet, and have been looking forward to getting to know) is in the hospital with a gall bladder infection, and no surgery can be performed for another four days, because the infection & swelling are so bad. Then let's say that the three main tunnel systems are shut down due to a bomb threat. Hell, let's not stop there, let's say that once all of this is known you discover that the traffic you're stuck in is not due to the tunnel closing, but because of a three car wreck (with no visible damage to any of the cars involved), and the three cars haven't even bothered to pull off to the shoulder; they're just stopped in the left lane of the two lane freeway...
Yeah, we were off to a rough start.
However, we had a bit of fortune in that the tunnels were all re-opened when we'd made it to just about two miles before the exit we were going to take for the only feasable detour, which would put us as much as two hours out of our way. Yeah, big shock, the bomb threat was a hoax, pulled by some asshole the day before the Three Rivers Arts Festival was to begin, and there was to be a Pirates game.
Bitches. I'm sorry if your dad didn't give you enough attention (or too much of the wrong kind), but don't take that shit out on the rest of us. Spray-paint your name on a bridge, or tattoo your face, but not this. This is bullshit. I hope you get ass-raped by a guy with a champagne-bottle cock when you're sent to prison.
But enough of my grousing. We were in town for my sister-in-law's baby shower (I hate to use such an impersonal term as "sister-in-law," but I've never had a sister before -not in any legal sense, anyway- and I try to avoid confusing people when I can... unless confusing them would be really, really funny, which it often is). She'll be having a baby boy in a matter of weeks:
And here we have all of the siblings, and all of their husbands & wives:
(none of the shots from my camera managed to make all ten of us look our best, but this one ain't half bad)
And, of course, a photo I took upon meeting my absolutely wonderful niece & nephews for the first time.
I had an unbelieveable amount of fun with these three (though my nuts may never be the same after playing the "Flip Me Over" game with them).
In the end, it was a long, exhausting trip (this is very much the short version... I'm sure I'll get around to more trip tales later), but my wife's kin (and the surrogates that come with them) are some of the most wonderful people I've had the honour to meet, and I am proud to call them "Family."
