Tagged with yet another dreaded bullet update …

Oct 26 2011
7 Comments
Food and Drink, Pittsburgh, Social Media

22. meat.

Last Wednesday, we headed over to Scarehouse for the second-annual Crazy Scary VIP night, otherwise known as our best chance to hassle Michelle and Ginny on the one night a year when they can’t do anything about it.

Crazy Scary treated me very well last year — and it would do so again in 2011. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

We got to go through the haunt again, and it was even better than last year. The post-apocalyptic final section — definitely the creepiest for me a year ago — was replaced, but with something that was even better: A zombie-overrun Pittsburgh, with all kinds of local touches, like a Primanti’s-esque diner and one of the t-shirt stands on Penn in the Strip. I missed one crucial detail: Dudders, also known as the tallest zombie in Pittsburgh, who did her best to scare us towards the end of the haunt.

We didn’t have the same chance to torture Michelle and Ginny as we did last year, but they both got up close and personal with one of the Scarehouse’s zombies; that was scarier for Ginny than it was for Michelle — at least until the zombie hugged our favorite non-hugger.

Other good stuff:

  • We went through the haunt with Gina and Andy (hint: foreshadowing). If you want to laugh as much as you scream while you go through a haunted house, you’ll go through with Gina.
  • We had great food from Las Velas, but the baking orgy conducted by Mindy in advance of Crazy Scary was truly outstanding. Say it with me: Ancho-chili chocolate cupcakes.
  • Watching Scott Harbaugh eat squid chips was pretty funny.
  • We were part of an effort that raised $6,000 for Make Room for Kids and Christmas Crazy. Six. Thousand. Dollars.

And yes, there were prizes again this year. We bought raffle tickets, picked out a bunch of stuff we thought would be cool and went to town with our tickets.

And to our surprise, we did well. We won Andy’s Big Box of Meat for the second year in a row, and we also made off with Gina’s Pittsburgh basket, filled with stuff that will mostly end up on Mrs. Crappy’s desk. We were thrilled with both.

And there was one truly scary thing about this year’s Crazy Scary night. As we said goodnight to everyone we stopped to talk to Michelle.

Who was drunk or something.

Because she hugged me.

Parallel universe! Entered the Matrix! WHAT HAPPENED? AAAAHHHHHH!

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Oct 09 2011
3 Comments
Pittsburgh, Sports

9. not dead yet.

Things I’ve learned after a successful first week of Couch to 5K:

  • My street only looks flat.
  • The nice English lady who lives in the C25K app sounds awfully earnest when she tells me to run. I always feel like looking back over my shoulder to see if she’s noticed someone following me.
  • Strangers really want to talk to me while I’m running.
  • Or maybe they’re checking to see if I can still breathe.
  • So far, I can.
  • The crossing guards in my neighborhood are pretty cool. They cheer for me as I go by.
  • The people in my neighborhood apparently lose sunglasses with alarming frequency.
  • The little hooligans who watch deck hockey games in Marmaduke Park need to do a better job of keeping their balls to themselves.
  • If I ever have to vomit in someone’s front yard, I’ve already picked out a couple where it probably won’t matter.
  • I still love the iPod’s October Mix, but it’s not the best running music ever.
  • The Ballgame Tailgate mix might be, though.
  • When you announce you’re going to give something like this a try, you instantly get a ton of support from friends. If you have friends like mine, anyway.
  • No matter how hard I try, I haven’t yet come up with a reason to stop.
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Mar 26 2011
1 Comment
Social Media, Sports

25. ugly.

We’re not quite ready to officially award points in the Sixth Annual Uncle Crappy NCAA Final Four Challenge (Brought to you by Bocktown), but I have a few tidbits to tide yinz guys over until we have the actual Final Four set Sunday evening.

  • Of the 38 SAUCNFFC participants, just 14 of us still have our eventual champion still playing. Ouch.
  • We’ll go through everyone’s point totals on Sunday, but I would point out that 12 of us correctly picked UConn to make it to the Final Four and just one of us thought Butler would return this year. You each get two points for that pick.
  • If Kansas doesn’t make the Final Four on Sunday, a whole bunch of you are screwed.
  • The number of people who could possibly win this is larger than I might have thought; because of the scorched-earth upsets, it’s not inconceivable that someone could win this with just a couple of correct picks.
  • That means some of the people whom I might have written off previously could not only be in line for a few points but could also be contenders.
  • It also means that the tie-breakers — your best guess as to the final score of the championship game — will likely be very important when I’m trying to figure out who won this thing. I STILL NEED TIE-BREAKERS FROM THESE PEOPLE: AAA, KimLy, Fred and my mom. I’m not going to be a huge stickler here guys, but before the Final Four games next weekend, OK?
  • It is customary that I pick on the participants who might not have performed well as we get into the meat of AUCNFFC, and I started to do so last week. As pointed out previously, just about all of those folks could actually eke out a couple points in this thing. You know who will get exactly zero points in SAUCNFFC, because every one of his teams has already been eliminated? Yes. That would be me.
  • Thank you all for playing. If you need me, I’ll be twitching over in the corner over there, patiently waiting for the start of baseball season.

 

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Mar 21 2011
4 Comments
Pittsburgh, Social Media, Sports

21. reminder.

Let’s start there. Next year, when I start writing about college basketball, I need someone to remind me that I am not to pick Pitt to win a single game in the NCAA tournament ever. Ever. I don’t care if they playing the Washington Generals. Never, ever again.

I can take some solace in the fact that the vast majority of participants in the Sixth Annual Uncle Crappy NCAA Final Four Challenge (Brought to you by Bocktown) also had Pitt involved in their picks in one form or another, so most of us are kind of in the same boat as far as that goes.

We’re still a week away from the point where we start earning SAUCNFFC points for our picks, but as per our custom, let’s take a look and get a sense of how everyone’s doing. And clearly, some of us are doing better than the others.

In great shape (all picks still playing):

  • Mrs. Crappy
  • Andy
  • Doogle
  • Curl Girl Michelle
  • Yay Toast
  • Tim
  • Kewyson
  • Woody’s World

In slightly-less-but-still-great shape (lost one team but still has title game and champ playing):

  • Jaci
  • KimLy
  • Carla
  • Senor Jaime
  • Fred
  • The Jim
  • Ethel
  • My Mom
  • Calipanthergrl
  • Kim Z.
  • Enophiledude
  • Bitchdesk
  • Bloody but unbowed (lost two teams but still has title game and champ)
  • Large
  • Gina

Bloody, slightly bowed (lost one of their title game participants, still has champ playing):

  • Kelly
  • CrappyDad
  • Shadow
  • Mr. Burns

Reeling (lost two, one of which is a championship game participant):

  • Uncle Crappy
  • Adrienne
  • AAA
  • Grandpa
  • HP
  • Kim
  • Burgh Baby

Standing eight count (lost three, still has champion):

  • Casey

And that leaves us with the, uh, Special Group. These unfortunate folks have had varying degrees of success, but will be limited because they’ve lost their championship pick. I’m not saying they can’t win, but I am saying they pretty much can’t win.

  • Sarah: Lost two plus her champion. Will you come and drink in Pittsburgh anyway?
  • Susan: Lost two plus her champion. Picking Penn State wouldn’t have done her much good either.
  • Matlock: Lost three plus his entire championship game. Boldly picked an all-Mon Valley final; I hope he’ll jump on the Ohio State bandwagon from this point forward.

And then there’s Juan, undoubtedly the most special of the special group. The penny I used to make Juan’s picks looks like a genius for tabbing Virginia Commonwealth to do well; the rest of its picks, though — Northern Colorado, St. John’s and Xavier — all flamed out early.

Did I miss you? Did I screw something up? Lemme know and we’ll get it fixed right away.

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Jan 14 2011
Food and Drink, Home, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Social Media, Sports

back in the saddle bullets.

Since the last time:

  • Ohio State finally killed the SEC curse. The rest of the conference? Not so much.
  • With a win against a suddenly hot Penn State team on Saturday, Ohio State’s basketball team will likely take over the No. 1 spot in the polls. That’s not a huge deal in basketball, but it’s still pretty cool.
  • I have worked. A bunch.
  • I have a new blogging home. Don’t worry — I’m not leaving Uncle Crappy behind, but I’m pretty excited about the opportunity. And I’ll tell you about it in a day or two.
  • Because we’re hosting my parents this weekend, and I’m not spending a whole lot of time with the internets. We celebrated Christmas Eve Thursday — crabcakes and filets — Christmas this morning — presents and a pancake breakfast — and Mom’s birthday tonight.
  • Which meant we had dinner at Point Brugge. Two words:  Carbonnade Flamande. Two more words: Holy shit.
  • While we were putzing around Walnut Street this afternoon, Mrs. Crappy snuck in Prantl’s and picked up some birthday dessert — a bunch of little cupcake things that we stuck candles in and served in the place of cake.
  • The candles meant Mom just turned 14.
  • And then we thumped Mom and Dad playing Trivial Pursuit.
  • OK, maybe “thumped” isn’t the right word, but we’re on a two-game win streak here.
  • Miles is not happy about having visitors.
  • I’m waiting on the Grandhog to send me the proclamation so we can get this Groundhog thing rolling.
  • Keeping up with my folks is hard. I think I am going to bed.
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    Dec 06 2010
    Food and Drink, Home, Pittsburgh, Uncategorized

    65. vacation.

    On Sunday, I started what would have been my post-Christmas vacation, had I actually put in for the time off in time. But I think this is going to work out well; I’m going to get a ton of our holiday preparatory work done this week, and I think I’ll manage to have some fun along the way.

    Want to know how I’m doing so far?

    Sunday:

    • Sleep until 9:30.
    • Come down and discover we had everything we needed to make my dad’s roast beef hash for breakfast. I did it exactly as he did for the tailgate party we missed, with two exceptions: I used some Tater Tots instead of frozen hash browns, and I tossed some cheddar cheese on top of the hash just before I served it.
    • Take a nap.
    • Haul all the outdoor lights up from the basement.
    • Disturbed to find how many lights decided to die while they sat in the basement in the last 11 months.
    • Decide that re-stringing the garlands with lights will be easier than trying to figure out while bulbs are causing the problems.
    • Discover that I could have been wrong about that.
    • Head to Target for more lights.
    • Fix one strand. Start re-stringing the others.
    • Allow Mrs. Crappy to talk me out of finishing the re-stringing and hanging the lights, in favor of eating the delicious chicken/prosciutto/vodka/creamy pasta thing she made for dinner. And watching football.

    Monday:

    • Wake up at 8:30.
    • Hit up Angie’s List to find a repair guy to fix our dishwasher and look at our ancient oven, which also has decided to quit.
    • The guy I pick says he’ll be over in the afternoon.
    • Discover the definition of irony: having to hand-wash a stack of dishes so the guy who’s coming to fix the dishwasher won’t see a stack of dirty dishes when he arrives.
    • Spend the next two hours re-stringing the lights. They’re all working perfectly while they’re sitting on the dining room floor.
    • Hang the lights outside. Find that two strands have quit again.
    • Just as I’m about to start swearing at the lights, the repair guy arrives.
    • The repair guy’s verdict: The dishwasher is fix easy, cheap and he has the part in his truck. The oven, however, needs a part we won’t find because it’s 50 years old.
    • Resist the urge to cook a bunch of shit, just so I’d have some dishes to put in the dishwasher.
    • After dinner, head outside to check out the lights. While there, discover that my street is the one Jacob has chosen for a break while checking out Brighton Heights. Boggle at the coincidence.
    • Shower and head to Walnut Street for a little shopping and to meet Jackie and her new-t0-Pittsburgh boyfriend for a couple beers.
    • Sit on the couch with Miles, write a blog post (twice, because WordPress is cranky tonight).
    • Start researching new ovens.
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