Tis the season to celebrate! As I write this post in early March in the year two-thousand sixteen of our Lord, Amen; it is truly something to celebrate. But what are we toasting to?
On the twelfth day of this month, my home of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania will celebrate its two-hundredth anniversary of becoming a city. While the Steel City celebrates its bicentennial, this will officially become the fiftieth (or half-centennial to use a phrase I just made-up) post to my little blog here. A personal milestone that has been eclipsed in my life with the fact that I recently, just last week, in fact, welcomed my third child into this world. To honor these for years to come, and to utilize
my superpower of finding misery in the most joyous of occasions, I will take these three subjects one at a time and break down the pros and cons of each.
Pittsburgh: the greatest city in the country
I hold very few things dear that are outside the sphere of what I have personally chosen or created, but my home city of Pittsburgh is one of the few exceptions. I've been to New York and Los Angeles and hated every second of my time spent there. Big, noisy, crowded, and overpopulated, for a recluse like me with self-diagnosed social anxiety I have two words... no thanks. Pittsburgh hits my perfect balance of being big enough to matter, but small enough that's it's not so overwhelming. A terrific history in culture, stories, and sports. Pittsburghers are passionate about their city, their teams, and their own be they born and raised like Andy Warhol or Dan Marino; or adopted like Andrew Carnegie or George Romero. We have our own amusement park, one of the greatest museum and library systems in the world, restaurants, clubs, music, or whatever else you're looking for. Not to mention, our own language. The birthplace of the Big Mac, the banana split, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, and the almost famous Primanti's Sandwich, there is no shortage of things for Yinzers to be proud of.
Stupid yinzers!
Despite all the good, there are certain things that my fellow Pittsburghers do that just make my skin crawl. Now while I speak fluent yinzer, the one phrase I just can't get behind is "red up"; as in "company is coming over so red up the room". Another "Pittsburgh thing" I hate is the use of the "parking chair". Pittsburgh gets a good amount of snow, it's one of my favorite things about this city. And when that snow hits, you need to shovel your car out of the parking spot. Now common courtesy would be to only park in a shoveled spot that you helped clean out. However, despite the previously mentioned annual snowfall (and the fact that this city's already questionable driving skills drops to a near zero, but I digress...), the need for a parking chair
should be unnecessary and can easily be forgiven by the supposed "victim". I have often wanted to drive around with a truck and collect the curbside seats since their presence is illegal anyway it wouldn't be stealing. Finally, the most annoying yinzer trait is
too much passion as it pertains to sports. God forbid a national announcer ever say a call against a Pittsburgh team is good officiating, for they shall be written off for life as someone that is biased against the Steel City, and should be fired. Unfortunately, there are many who take this personally for some odd reason and feel justified in making personal threats against said announcers and their families. And that kind of reaction is almost, ALMOST, enough to make me want to leave.
THE Blog
This blog. My blog. We've had our ups and downs. We've had popular posts, and posts that were barely read by anyone besides me. We've had good posts, ok posts, and great posts. This blog has become my sounding board to release my previously contained opinions to an unsuspecting world. Politics, death, movies, TV, technology, professional wrestling, as well as my views on a few other subjects, we've covered, and continue to cover, everything that matters. At least from my point-of-view, we do. My posts have sparked debates between myself and readers the world over thanks to the power of the internet and social media, and thus far I have been lucky enough that those debates remained civil and ended with both sides politely agreeing to disagree.
That *&#$ Blog
This blog. Whose idea was it? What the heck am I supposed to write? And when exactly am I supposed to have the time to write it?! I've mentioned it
before, the whole reason I started this blog has now become a burden. But I refuse to quit. I will not delete it. There are too many idiots out there that need to hear the outside opinions from someone like me to help keep the balance. Otherwise, you get a mob mentality, the wave of stupidity comes crashing down, and Donald Trump is suddenly in contention for the presidency. So I must continue. For the children. For humanity. Or else all hope is lost... that's not putting too much pressure on myself, is it?
The only job I'm good at.
It's not any of the ones I got paid for. Not working in a restaurant, or call center, or making web pages and mobile apps. No, the only job I feel that I can do well is being a dad. I would drop anything for my kids. I've all but given up on being able to watch the movies I want to watch before 10:30pm, and now watch a constant stream of Disney and Nickelodeon cartoons. At least for another 3 or 4 years before the oldest can start watching a full dialogue driven movie without it losing his attention. But I'm ok with that, especially since everything old is new again. They're into Ninja Turtles right now, which is what I watched when I was growing up. They love the old, original Peanuts cartoons that I watched, so we can all sing along with A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy Come Home. And hopefully soon, they will learn to love pro wrestling just like I did.
No time off...
The one thing everyone will tell you about kids (at least any good parent) is that you will lose your personal time when having kids. I didn't see this as a problem as, before the kids, I didn't really have a life. So there was nothing to lose and everything to gain, or so I thought. Sure, I had almost no life before the kids. Keyword, almost. As it turns out, that one night every 3 to 6 months that I would wander out of the domicile and interact with humanity is something that I miss. Yes, I can still go out, but there's a lot more planning that needs to happen first now. Babysitters, diaper bags, the inability to sleep off a long night the next day... these are all things that must be thought of ahead of time, which usually results in me not wanting to go out at all as I'm much more of a spontaneous person. If I have to think about and plan going out, chance are I'll lose interest and just stay in to avoid working for a relaxing night.
In conclusion
So what have we learned after 50 posts of this blog, 3 kids, and 200 years of Pittsburgh being an official city? Well we learned that those are all unrelated, I'll probably never be a Hollywood scriptwriter, my grammar is so poor I shouldn't really have a blog either, and that for better or worse my kids will probably be the first ones in their class to watch a Freddy Kruger film. We have also learned that I am just stalling here as I don't have a proper closing to this post, so I'll just say goodbye, good luck, and keep on reading. Thank you and good night!!
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