My blog n'at

It’s 1:22am and I have no idea why I’m wide awake. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately with my birthday coming up this month (woohoo), how I consume media and what I’m doing next.

Take for instance this post. I’m writing it on my DROID from my bed when I should be sleeping. Should I keep up a blog or use my Tumblr feed more?

Every day there is a new hot service that pops up and since I work in social media for a living I need to decide if its worth my time or that of my employer to have a presence on it. Not as easy as it may sound.

Keeping up with what we do have is already very tedious and exhausting but hopefully new tools I’m pushing to have in place will take some of that burden off.

Oh yeah February. Almost forgot about ya for a second fella. o O (Fella? How do we know Feb isn’t a lady? Why do I even care? Focus spoon!)

So this month will be an interesting one. Weather should be incredibly nice, taxes need done, county should bend me over and shove a new assessment up my rear soon and a certain utensil turns 3. Mix in pgh beer week duties, that podcast thing I do, write and get merchant ideas together the shortest month could be a pain.

Life moves pretty fast. If you stop and take a look,  you’re probably blocking traffic. Get the hell out of the way.

or El Nino or whatever it is in heaven above that has given this as our 15 day (and month of Feb) forecast:

Now if this holds true it will pose a few problems:

1. Hobos living under the bridges wont know wtf us going on. This will totally screw with their hibernation.
2. The Occupy people just caught a huge break if they’re still camping out. damn.
3. The Mayans probably did predict this & we’re all goners in December.
4. PennDOT will find some reason not to patch holes.
5. If I have to cut my grass I’m cutting someone.
6. I think it’s God’s way of telling me to get outside and exercise or else.
7. I can’t throw any more snowballs at Teaspoon

Plus side if this holds up:

1. I’m wearing shorts to Pens games
2. I don’t have to buy any more salt
3. I can brew outside
4. It buys me time to get the house properly insulated and fix more of whatever Capt. Obvious did.
5. My birthday is going to be very comfortable

This week seems to be the last great week for warm weather before Fall finally kicks in. Personally I’m a fan of the cool weather and welcome it. First of all that means hockey season is here (woohoo) and secondly I love to wear hoodies and sweatshirts, jeans and sneakers. Those would be my comfy/do everything attire.

Most people down here in Pittsburgh bitch about every season but when you say you like it cool everyone gangs up and try to understand why someone… how someone… could not be into summer only. May have something to do with living for 22 years in a climate where it snows from October until May and every day seems cool.

I like that I can be a bum, go to campfires, watch hockey outside, go pumpkin farming and drink cider to my heart’s content. I will miss the summer and I am VERY thankful for a great weekend coming up to finish project but I’m also ready to get those hoodies out.

Yesterday I spent 4.5 hours doing yard work. I’m incredibly anal sometimes on how my yard looks and I can thank my father for that.

Wondering why it seemed like a sauna I came in to see it was in the 90′s. I chill in the AC (no pun intended) to cool off and get cleaned up before heading to the mall.

The kids were in the house all day and they, plus the wife, were going stir crazy. On our way to Robinson is when we saw triple digits… 102F. As luck would have it the mall parking lot had fresh blacktop also.

After an exhausting day the unthinkable happened. Everyone went to bed at 9pm on a Saturday and for the first time in 3 years I slept 8 hours.

As I sit here in bed typing this (wooooo buddy!) I realized something, even though my 25 yr old self would kick my ass for going to bed at 9p especially on saturday during a holiday weekend, my 35 yr old self is telling him to stfu

Renegades mount up!

Pittsburgh was bitchslapped by a winter blast yesterday and into the morning. Unlike previous storms roads were… who am I kidding. Roads sucked, people drove like jagoffs and it was mass hysteria. Its 12:30am and few of us have seen a plow even thought it started snowing 10 hours ago. Took me 2 hours to get home tonight and mmmm yeah the city is in a state of suck right now.

Things I saw that lead to some of the chaos

• if you drive a sports car keep it home. You don’t have snow tires and spinning out up a hill is inevitable
• because you drive and SUV or truck doesn’t mean you can do 60 in a 35. Well it does but you’re sliding as much as us
• if you stay in your lane traffic would be a lot faster
• stop racing plows
• stop honking. no one is moving for you and the sound interrupts my Pearl Jam. this makes me stabby.

We’ll be melted out within 24 hours so sit tight tomorrow if you’re lucky enough for a delay. Be smart people, you’re not that important where your need to be somewhere trumps safety.

I left work on December 23rd at 1:45pm and haven’t been back since. That’s 25 days and amazingly I only used 9 days of PTO. Honestly we couldn’t have planned out this pregnancy any better to be off. Having kiddo #2 in the house has been a challenge and I don’t think we would have been able to do it during any other season.

Baby O is doing great! He’s now 20 days old and pushing 7 pounds. Teaspoon has been an absolute monster with jealousy and confused because I’ve been home for so long. The house must be upset with me because we’ve had an electrician and a furnace guy out here for repairs and not the toilet is leaking.  I can never say that its boring around here or nothing is going on.

There is a weird parallel with Teaspoon’s birth here also. I was also off (laid off) for 5 days before he was born. In both instances I had big dreams of work around the house I wanted to get done. In both cases that never happened.

That may actually change today.

Lushie spent 2 hours working on our basement yesterday to start cleaning up Christmas decorations and going through moving boxes. For 2 hours I plan on tackling that also so we can make room for the outdoor toys that are in boxes and start consolidating moving crap. Like my father I threw out nothing but now I have to for my own sanity. My dad passed 4 years ago and my mom is still going through his mess. I need to streamline my junk so a) I know where everything is b) let go of the junk that doesn’t work. I could SO be a hoarder but an organized one.

We’re starting to get a sleep schedule down now which really doesn’t involve much sleep but at least we have a plan in place. I’m also a snow shoveling addict, as apparent last year, so I’m sore in a lot of places but it was worth it to get outside for an hour to spend to myself with Pandora blasting in my ears.

I’m actually anxious to get back to work. I need to be around people who don’t know who Dino Dan is for a bit and also get going on a shit ton of social media ideas I came up with.

*yawn* but first maybe I’ll take just ONE more nap.

Winter Classic Game album | Alumni Game album

The Winter Classic is quickly becoming the Super Bowl of the hockey world. I couldn’t make it to Buffalo for the first Classic game and the last couple years I would watch the game but I was never “into” it. This year with Pittsburgh hosting all of that changed. I’ve been to a lot of high profile hockey events in my days and will say that this was the most incredible ever.

I walked over from town on a night filled with a mystifying fog lingering over the rivers. With the lights of the bridges and city glowing it was a scene reminding me of a Crow movie. As I passed PNC Park the tailgating began and what a party these people were having! The amount of hockey love was amazing! Still the vibe didn’t hit me until I reached Heinz Field and walked through Spectator Plaza. Knowing this is a growing event I appreciated what was there but could see how the NHL could have dominated a lot more floor space.

Signature Sandwich Face-off
In a first for the Classic, Aramark pitted the signature sandwiches from the Washington Capitals (The Fury) against the Pittsburgh Penguins (Kielbasa Grinder). Its no secret that I am obsessed with the sandwich but I was severely disappointed with the offering at the Classic. The meat was dry, the cheese was hard and there was barely any sauce. Somehow it won though so kudos for that.

The Game

I went to the game with my nephew Ben. We have started making it a tradition going to important Pens games together and this was another one to chalk up. Our seats were in 147 which if you go there for any other event don’t exist. If you’re watching the Steelers game its the open end section of the south end zone. Seats were incredibly tight (dude next to me was 180lbs and barely fit) but the view was absolutely amazing.

Besides the Caps winning 3-1 the game was hard hitting and amazingly fast given the poor ice conditions. Officiating was mediocre which we’re use to and probably to the disappointment of HBO/NBC you didn’t see much from Crosby or Ovechkin. At the end of the game neither team shook hands, they just left the ice. I have a severe hatred for the Philadelphia Flyers but the joy I see in defeating the Caps grows every game. Pens fans hate Philly because that’s history. Its just what you do. Caps players and their fan base hate anything Pittsburgh and I LOVE it. It makes for a healthy obsession with my team.

In between periods were short sets performed by Hinder, The Clarks and Styx. Styx? yeah I guess they thought it was a Steelers game. The bands sounded great but that happens when everyone does the lip sync.

What I wasn’t crazy about
You take the good, you take the bad and… that song is now in your head. You’re welcome.

1. Heinz Field needs upgraded. It was great 10 years ago but I’m still pissing in a trough, your concession stands don’t take credit/debit cards and your Nacho Grande is 2 cups of cheese? Your sound system crackles and the video was 3-5 seconds off of the audio. It was worse than watching TV and listening to the radio. Lame.
2. Alyonka Larionov – who hired this girl? The most basic video segments and she fumbled over all of them. You called the band “The Styx”? Were the cards in Pittsburghese and you couldn’t read them? You’re not that cute. What a joke
3. The Franco Harris/Jerome Bettis shootout – Who’s idea was THAT debacle?
4. rain – mother nature you were a pain in the 3rd.
5. Cell coverage – my phone showed 4 bars and 3G coverage but I couldn’t upload anything and twitter was impossible. Its worse than Consol Energy Center. Verizon should spend more money on coverage than on advertising being a top sponsor.

The weekend was absolutely amazing and I will never forget the hockey love that took over the north shore.

I have a vagina in my ceiling. That is what it has been aptly named by quite a few of you so we’re going with that. In fact twitter has named it “Paris Hilton” or “Tila Tequila”.

That’s the latest damage in our house. I’m working on the splash screen for videos so you can see first hand how we got to where we are today. Needless to say I’ll be staying home today.

I’m beside myself. Rational thoughts at this point is amusing to me. If you follow me on Twitter there’s no doubt that you know of the destruction that the Pittsburgh snow storm last week laid on us. In case you missed it it went something like this: it snowed, it snowed more, kept snowing, started to melt, massive water damage.

I had to get on my blog tonight for a few minutes just so I could forget about the water world around me.  I will do a full recap this week to get everyone caught up. First of all you guys rock! I have some of the greatest friends in the world! The outpouring of support has been incredible and while ppl want to dog Pittsburgh I have to say yinz have the biggest hearts and I thank you.

I appreciate all of the help with tips and legal support and as great as it would be to “sue the fckers”, as I was told many times, there is a process for everything and as always we have a plan. I can’t go into details just yet but when the time is right I’ll flash the bat signal. The dining room (you know it as the pregnant wall) is starting to have issues where the window pictured above won’t open or close. We are safe for now and just hope the rest of the ceiling doesn’t come down.

Pictures and more video coming soon.

Hey didnt we do this last year and in 2008? Oh yeah and 2007…