A couple weeks ago, I was wondering what to do about Mrs. Crappy’s approaching birthday. And I saw someone mention on Twitter they had just taken a short course there, one that took you though making a blown-glass Christmas ornament.

I couldn’t find open slots a few days within her birthday — which is Dec. 15, for all those keeping track — so we went last night.

How was it?

It was a great night. Our instructors were personable, and took time to answer all the questions we had. The class was hands on; we picked our colors and did our own twisting and blowing. We even lucked out with our fellow students, who were all interested and engaging.

And this weekend, we’ll stop by the center and pick up our one-of-a-kind ornaments. Made by us. For Mrs. Crappy’s birthday.

I don’t follow this person, so I was watching the discussion through comments and re-tweets of those who do. I was curious about a couple of those — all marked with the #thiscityneeds hash tag — and took a look at his (?) stream.

And that was probably a mistake.

I found a long line of comments; some were funny, but most just came off as griping. And there was this one:

#thiscityneeds something to do after 6pm.

I hoping this guy was kidding (a possiblity, because he later tweeted that #thiscityneeds a better sense of humor. He also said #thiscityneeds fewer douchebags, which probably means I’m not getting Burgh Verified anytime soon). If he’s not, he couldn’t be more wrong.

You guys all know by now that Mrs. Crappy and I tend to travel a bunch during football season. We wouldn’t change our football weekends for anything, but without fail, there are always things here we’re missing because we’re in Columbus.

And now that the football travel is over for the year, we’re faced with dilemmas of a different kind — there’s too much stuff to do. If I had unlimited time, money and energy — and that last one is probably the biggest factor; my 44-year-old self needs more sleep than my 34-year-old self did — I would have gone to movie-slash-wing night last night and Bocktown’s birthday tonight. I would have figured out something — Dinner? Drinks with friends? — for Wednesday and Thursday. Friday?Brewfest. Saturday? Christmas beer tweetup and Girl Talk.

Don’t have time? I understand. Money’s tight? Believe me, I get it. But nothing to do? My friend, you’re not trying.

I’ve said this before — we love it here. One of the big reasons we bought a house in the city was to live in the city, close to everything we love to do and the people we love to spend time with. There are plenty of nights when we’re the ones going home early or maybe staying in — the old folks know their limitations — I can promise you one thing: We’re never bored.

This post wraps up two months of daily Uncle Crappy. If you look back, you’ll see that a pretty good number of the October and November posts were about the stuff we’ve done and the people that have made those experiences a pleasure. I’m going to keep going through December, because there will be no shortage of Pittsburgh things to write about.

And if at any point in the next four weeks you’re in danger of becoming bored, try asking someone what’s going on. You’ll get more suggestions than you know what to do with.

Our hostess with the mostest. This was right before she smacked me upside the head for asking about the progress on B2.

Lew Bryson, our guest of honor. Lew spoke in between courses, reminding us again and again how thankful we should be to be living, drinking and eating in Pennsylvania.

Sweet Ricci's sausage stuffed inside a beautiful heirloom pepper. The beer is the most recent Four Season IPA from Voodoo. Perfect pairing.

The credit for the IPA goes to Matt Allyn, Voodoo's owner. He's telling us about the impending return of Black Magick, and I am drooling.

This might have been my favorite course of the night, a surprise for a guy who's not a big fan of fish -- chipotle pesto blackened trout, with apple and asparagus rice. The trout was fabulous; the fish itself was mild and the smoky flavors of the chipotle were an unexpected compliment to the pesto. The beer? East End's Weisse This Beer So Sour?

And there's East End's Scott Smith, telling us about the Festival of Darkness. Homewood Reserve!

That's Andy Rich, the brewmaster at Penn. They have some fabulous stuff coming out; I had a glass of a very good rye IPA at the brewery on Thursday, and it's almost time for St. Nicholas Bock...

I didn't take pictures of a couple courses, but I couldn't miss this one: a pecan waffle with a cranberry sweet cream and a reduction of Erie's Ol' Red Cease and Desist. Which also happens to be what's in the glass. A perfect finish.

Yeah, that was a good night. (Photo stolen from Becky's Facebook album.)

Once again — thanks to Mrs. Crappy for surprising me with the ticket. I had a great night, honey!

2) We had a great time today, while working hard at the Redd Up Thread Up.

3) Beer and sammiches for dinner at Fat Head’s.

4) We’re getting up early to go running and walking with a group of friends whom we hope will be understanding when we’re not keeping up.

Sum:  I’m going to be awfully happy to set those clocks back an hour just before we go to bed tonight. Which isn’t going to be long from now.

I love this. And as an obsessive apostrophe corrector, I am also properly chastened.

I got to the Cabaret at Theater Square a little after 5 Tuesday — or about an hour before we were to start our Craft Beer School session. I was relieved to see familiar faces immediately — Father Spoon honked at me as he drove by in the parking garage, and Andrea was looking at the taps in the Backstage Bar when I walked in.

They were followed by others — Sickpuppy, Michelle, Norm, AAA, Dr. Yohe, Abby, AJ, Jenn, Christian and, just before showtime, Mrs. Crappy — enough friends that I was able to feel a little more comfortable than I did on the way downtown.

I was excited for the night, but I nervous about it as well. Talking in front of a room full of people generally isn’t a problem for me — if we’re talking about a couple dozen people. Two hundred and fifty is something else, and I could see every last one of them from the stage.

But Susan, one of the managers for the Cultural Trust and the other host of the series, really put me at ease as the room was filling up. And then BANG we got started, and I actually don’t recall a whole lot about what we did. I know I made a couple of decent jokes, and helped to answer a couple of questions — including one about beer at Penn, which might not be Tony’s favorite subject. I could have spoken up more than I did, but Tony said he was well prepared for this show, and it was a little hard to find a place to jump in.

And then we were done. We had a great crowd, good food, good beer — actually ranging from great (the Kulmbacher and the Small Craft Warning) to kinda just OK (the Schell’s) — and it seemed like everyone had a great time.

And then I had to drive back to work and type election results. Hanging out at the Backstage Bar for a little while would have been good, but I’m happy no one had a problem with me working a split shift on Tuesday.

Thanks to Tony, to everyone at the Trust and to everyone who came out to see me. It made the night much better.

—

A click on the pic will take you to a WPXI slideshow of the session. There are a lot of familiar faces in there…

I’ll write more on Wednesday, because I’m pretty beat now — working a shift during the afternoon, co-hosting Craft Beer School and then going back to work for an election night shift will do that.

But I had a great time at Beer School, and I hope you did too. If you were there, I really appreciated it.

By this time tomorrow, I will be basking in the glow of a successfully completed Craft Beer School.

(Actually, at this time tomorrow, I’ll be back in the newsroom, typing in election results. Small newsroom, election night — there’s pretty much no way around it…)

I’ve done a lot of bitching about being nervous about tomorrow night; that’s because I’m actually nervous about tomorrow night. But I’m also a little more confident about how things will go than I’m letting on.

I talked with Tony, the host of the Craft Beer School series, about how things will go. I also did my own tasting session tonight at our kitchen table; I found three of the four beers we’re sampling tomorrow and wrote up some notes, so I know what to expect. Pilsners are tough, in the sense that the flavor differences are subtle; it’s not like trying to suss out the differences between a couple of IPAs, so I think the little preview I set up for myself is going to be helpful.

As I said — I’m a little nervous about this. But you guys have been very encouraging, and I appreciate that. There are a shit-ton of you coming to watch, and I appreciate that even more. Knowing that there are a bunch of you in the audience — even if I can’t actually see you past the stage lights — is going to help me enjoy myself. I hope you guys will too.

See y’all tomorrow.

If you skipped class last night, you missed a good time.

Mrs. Crappy and I attended this fall first session of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Craft Beer School on Tuesday, mostly because of the co-host: our own Father Spoon, of the infamous Should I Drink That? podcast. Spoon and our mutual friend Tony Knipling of Vecenie Distributing in Millvale had some winners picked out for us, and were pretty entertaining along the way.

The beers and my Twittered notes from last night (along with some additional comments):

• Victory Festbier: Hoppier than expected at the start. Crisp finish. Very good. (The folks at Victory love their hops, and it’s unusual for the style to have them so prominent. But it’s not over the top, and it’s a nice changeup from some of the malty beasts we usually see this time of year.)
• Dogfishhead Punkin Ale; Mild, balanced flavor. Real pumpkin ale, not just spiced. (That sounds like a slam on the nutmeg-y beers that start showing up in the fall; it’s not. I love most of ‘em, but Punkin is near the top of my list.)
• BrewDog Punk IPA: This one is a challenge; thump of hops, rich underneath. I like; I am in the minority. (Seriously. I was the only one at our table who liked this. It’s an unusual flavor for an IPA, and it’s not dry at all — I’d like to have another taste of this one.)
• Troegs JavaHead Stout (debuted in our backyard): It kicks ass, but you knew that already. (This is the one that Dahcheet brought from Harrisburg for us to sample at the Pizza-Off, a couple weeks before it had it’s first official appearance in the Burgh. The coffee flavor is enormous, but, surprisingly, not out of balance. If you like the coffee-flavored stuff, you need to give this a try.)

We also had good food, a taste of another — very different — pumpkin beer afterwards, a little time with two of our favorite Jens (Jenn and Jenda) before they had to split for Stomp’s opening show. Can’t beat a night like that.

If you missed it last night, you have another opportunity in a month. Spoon may not be the host — unless the trust asks him back later — but you’ll still get good beer, good beer knowledge and an excellent night. My advice? Don’t skip class ever again.

On Saturday, I was able to check a couple significant things off my list of stuff to see — along with my parents, we toured Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob, the two Frank Lloyd Wright houses in the mountains east of Pittsburgh.

Wright built a stairway to a small deck at the creek, so the Kaufmanns could be that much closer to the spot they chose for the home. You can hear the waterfall in every room of the house.

Fallingwater was first, and I may be the only one in our group who felt fortunate to be in the house while a thunderstorm rolled by. Our guide explained that FLW tried to blur the barriers between the structure and the cliffs, forest and water that surrounds it. With the rain falling as we looked out the corner bedrooms on the second and third floors, that line disintigrated further. I’ve never been in a structure that would have put its residents so close to their surroundings; turn nearly any corner and you’re faced with a wall of windows or a doorway to one of the terraces that jut out over the gorge.

The entrance to Kentuck Knob. The orange tile to the right of the door is Wright's signature, a practice he started late in his career. Our guide said he didn't leave a similar signature at Fallingwater.

As beautiful as Fallingwater is, I might have liked Kentuck Knob better, at least in once sense — I have an easier time imagining that I could live there. The proportions are more traditional, thanks to the occasional insistence of the Hagans, the Uniontown family that commissioned the home, that some of the original plans be altered to better suit their needs.

The design of Kentuck Knob is based on hexagons and triangles, and they are everywhere. This is a drain spout in the carport there.

Guides in both homes referred to Wright’s practice of “client-proofing” his structures, or building them in a manner that they could not be easily altered down the road. And although he acquiesced to several of the changes the Hagans requested, he was notoriously cranky about doing so.

More hexagons at Kentuck Knob, this time in the form of skylights along the rear porch.

He was equally notorious about underestimating the cost of his projects; according to our Kentuck Knob guide, the Kaufmanns, for whom Fallingwater was built, advised the Hagans to tell Wright they were willing to spend about half of what they could actually afford when they asked him to build the house.

Both homes are worth the trip, and the money you’re asked to pay to see them. Both are breathtaking, and if you haven’t seen them already, you should go.

The trip also generated two grumbles; neither were a big enough deal to spoil the day, but both, I think, are significant enough to address.

Fallingwater carport. The last stop on the Fallingwater tour is the former guest house carport, which has been enclosed and fitted with Wright-style sofas that patrons are encouraged to sit on. There’s also a large television in the room and a staff member who greets you and chats a little bit while everyone gets settled.

What I expected: A final chance to ask questions about the property and maybe a short video about the home’s recent restoration or other ongoing projects. What we got: A 10-minute commercial for the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy — the group that owns Fallingwater — including a pretty heavy-handed pitch to leave some money in a donation box at the front of the room. I understand that the conservancy is a non-profit. I realize that the upkeep of that property must come at an astronomical cost. And while I’m familiar with the conservancy and what it does because I live here, I know that many visitors won’t have the same knowledge. So take 60 seconds and explain that the conservancy is a non-profit and that donations would be appreciated. Have someone available to answer questions about the conservancy and its mission. But when you force patrons to sit though that pitch at the end of the tour, you risk turning happy customers into grumpy people. I know we weren’t the only ones griping.

Photo policy. First: no interior photographs, at either home. No problem; these are museums, and few museums allow patrons to shoot their stuff. But then, there is this, on the back of each and every ticket at Fallingwater:

Through purchase of an admission ticket to Fallingwater, visitors agree that photographs, paintings and sketches of Fallingwater are not to be offered for sale or exploited for any commercial purpose or in any way made available for any third-party use.  All photographs, paintings and sketches generated during your visit are for personal use only, and cannot be sold, published or posted on a website without permission of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Original works may be exhibited, but reproductions or prints may not be produced. This includes, but is not limited to all photographs, paintings, sketches and drawings generated during your visit.

OK. The non-commercial part is fine; that, in fact, is perfectly in-line with the Creative Commons license I’ve chosen for this site. But, I still have questions for the folks at Fallingwater. You tell me my photographs cannot be displayed on a website. You tell me they can be exhibited. What if I choose to exhibit them here? Does that constitute a violation of your policy?

Hm. I guess we’ll find out.