After work Emily and I met Oskar at Yo Rita in the South Side for some farewell tacos, as he’s off home to Sweden on Monday. I tried the potato, braised chicken, and calamari tacos. All three were tasty with just the right amount of kick, but the chicken was definitely underwhelming compared to the other two. They went great with an East End Big Hop.
Home to pack for the trip to San Luis Obispo this weekend, and cleaned up my desk. It’s mostly in a usable state, just in time for me not to use it for a few days.
Emily made baked pasta with summer vegetables for dinner. I’m going to nom the hell out of those leftovers. Very tasty.
We took a walk to Rita’s on Forbes for some of their custard and Italian ice. It’s a bit cooler out than it’s been so the walk was mostly pleasant but the frozen treats really hit the spot.
When we got home I decided that I don’t have enough challenges at work so I’ve upgraded my work laptop to the development version of Ubuntu, which isn’t due to be released in October. The upgrade went well, and there’s lots of nice new bling in this version. Most of it even works! It’s nice to be keeping up with Ubuntu development again (my work is mostly with released versions).
Adjusted my work setup to accommodate the super seekret hardware. This is a work in progress.
After work headed out to Greg’s to hang out for a while. He managed to get me hooked on the relatively new Tales of Monkey Island games. Their controls are pretty clunky, but much of the magic of the old games is still there. I’ll probably pick them up when I’ve cleared out some of my video game backlog.
Home later than I should be, but time for bed nonetheless.
Being the nerds we are, we spent the afternoon at the Carnegie Museums looking at dinosaurs and art.
It was almost as hot as our wedding day so once the museums closed we went across the street to Kiva Han and cooled off with some smoothies, then we sat in the Cathedral lawn for a while watching some tiny kids play tee ball and some somewhat larger kids play cricket. I still have no idea how cricket works.
Dinner was at the Gypsy Cafe in the South Side, which is where we ate the night we got engaged. We followed that up with a ride on the incline up Mt. Washington where we could take in a nice view of the city.
We stopped for ice cream at the little shop on Shiloh Street then rode back down and headed home.
We finally unwrapped our cake topper and realized just how much cake we had to deal with. It held up pretty well and was still tasty, but there’s far too much of it.
We exchanged anniversary gifts. The traditional first anniversary gift is paper, and we both took that to mean books. I got Emily two books by Dave Eggers, who she’d mentioned an interest in a few weeks ago and she got me the third and fourth volumes of Absolute Sandman, which means now I need to read the whole thing again.
Met two each of my aunts and uncles in the Strip District for lunch at Primanti’s and some shopping for questionably-licensed Steelers memorabilia. My uncle Tom was just in town after winning his battle with leukemia and everyone was in a mood to celebrate. Emily and I showed my relatives the new Pittsburgh Public Market and we sort of lost each other in a party store.
This evening my aunt (A different aunt from the two mentioned above. I have lots of them.) threw a party for my uncle. There was way too much food and lots of toasts both happy and sentimental. It’s always nice to get the family together to celebrate a happy occasion like this.
Up early; collected my stuff and headed to the office for half a day’s work.
Said goodbyes to my coworkers and caught another shuttle to the airport.
Short flight back to Pittsburgh, where I was met by an approaching storm. Unlike last time this happened, they were able to get our bags off the plane and I got to my car ahead of the storm.
Driving home was a bit of a challenge, as I was arriving during rush hour and there was a Pirates game this evening. I had to take a roundabout route through McKees Rocks and the North Side to get home in any reasonable amount of time. I barely beat the storm which was stalking me all the way home.
Home. Very happy to see Emily and the cats again. We ordered some sushi and hibachi and settled in for the evening.
Having accomplished most of our goals, and the customers needing to catch a plane we bade them goodbye. It was a very productive sprint and the rest of the project will likely go much smoother for it.
With the evening to myself I decided to set out to finally find a book store. Google Maps, having failed me twice before actually came through for me. There is a Barnes and Noble about 2.4 miles from the hotel. Having been on the Sprint Diet™ (mostly pizza, sandwiches, and Fritos) all week I felt I had a duty to my body to walk there. Even at night it was 85°F with over 90% humidity so it was a challenge. Drenched in sweat and having skirted a few jaywalking ordinances I finally made it and collected my prize: a copy of A Clash of Kings, the sequel to A Game of Thrones, which I finished reading a few weeks ago.
Armed with something to read on the plane ride back I set off back to the hotel to take a cold shower and go to sleep.
After work we took the customers out for dinner and drinks at the Foundry on Elm in Somerville. On the way we drove through Cambridge and I got a good look at Harvard and MIT. Harvard looks exactly like Harvard looks in every movie you’ve ever seen about it. MIT has some really funky architecture. I wish we’d had more time to stop and walk around.
After much less revelry than a typical UDS night it was back to the hotel for more Daily Show and more sleep.
Up early; caught a shuttle to the office. Sprint with customer.
Accomplished quite a bit and also got my hands on the super seekret hardware for this project. This thing is going to be super sweet when it hits the market.
After work I went with some of the guys on my team for a steak dinner at the Capital Grille, which was both highly recommended and highly expensive. My steak was downright delicious and all of us ate in silence as we focused on savoring every bite.
After dinner it was back to the hotel to watch The Daily Show and go to sleep.
Flew to Boston for a developer sprint in the Canonical office. Flew to Boston in a tiny plane, then rode to the hotel in a swanky limo.
The sprint starts tomorrow, so I had some time to kill. I walked all over the neighborhood around my hotel looking for a decent restaurant or a book store. I found neither, and came back covered in sweat for my trouble. On the bright side, I felt justified in ordering a pizza from the brochure in my room. Turned out to be a good decision. Tasty pizza.
