My, doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun. Which leaves me no explanation for this week, but that’s OK. Not that it’s been a bad week, mind you, just…eh.

Monday found takaza and I having fun making dinner. While Dan experimented with slicing and frying techniques to make home fries, I fired up the grill and cooked up a couple of steaks, as well as some fresh pineapple. I learned a couple of things: 1.) Three chunks of hickory is too much. The steaks tasted a little too much of smoke. 2.) When grilling pineapple, add the cinnamon sugar after grilling, otherwise the cinnamon gets bitter. Ah well. It was a learning exercise all around, and in the end we still had steaks and yummy home fries. Yay!

Last night we were feeling minimally motivated. I sautéed up some peppers and onions, then Dan cooked some chicken and diced it up and we had tacos. We both love the whole wheat flour tortillas we’ve found, and the chihuahua cheese is delicious. A little salsa and some crema…yum. It was a quiet evening, as Dan was working on Anthrocon cash sheets and I engaged in a bit of transit geekery (see below). Afterwards we watched the latest episode of Deadliest Catch.

I’ve been reading up on how to get from the Pittsburgh Airport to the Westin in downtown Pittsburgh, and I found several interesting things. First off, apparently the Chicago Transit Authority isn’t the only transit agency in dire financial straits. The Pittsburgh Port Authority is in the midst of cutbacks as well, and while they were looking at eliminating the 28x Airport Flyer (PDF link) instead they wound up cutting the schedule back to approximately one bus every 30 minutes, seven days a week. At least they didn’t raise the fare, which I’d expected them to do.

Also, I found out something neat I didn’t know about Pittsburgh: busways. Sure, I’ve seen cities (like Seattle) with dedicated roads for buses, but Pittsburgh has some rather extensive busways that travel west, south, and east of the city. The South Busway even has its own dedicated tunnel through Mount Washington, which I find kind of nifty. Maybe it’s just that I’ve found Chicago’s bus system so lacking (since you’re at the mercy of the traffic around you, which is pretty crappy anyway), but I find the concept of busways cool and innovative. And yes, I’m actually looking forward to the ground-level view of the West Busway that we’ll have on the way into town.

I’ve been working on Anthrocon planning as well, revising and updating the artist and staff handouts explaining the Artists Alley and Con Store, and updating the necessary forms. While I’d hoped to maybe open signups a little later this year, I’ll be sticking with last year’s schedule if only because it allows the artists time to come sign up, then get a leisurely breakfast before they have to be back for seat assignment. Unfortunately, it means that I have to be there at 8 AM on Saturday and Sunday mornings. As long as I can get some coffee somewhere before heading over to the Convention Center, I’ll be OK. I need to touch base with linnaeus and see how much space he’s going to have in his car to carry stuff to Pittsburgh for us. Don’t worry, we’re going to cut it down to one box of booze, but there’s a few other things I’d like to see if you could take, Paul 🙂 Hmm, Italian sausage sandwiches for dinner tonight, yum! Oh, and laundry to be done once I get home. Isn’t my little world fun and exciting?