My trip to Pittsburgh

Ignoring the tragedy that occurred in my life while I was in Pittsburgh, it was not very eventful.

My trip there took me through Minneapolis/St. Paul. Beyond seeing a woman who look Amish (and thus I wouldn't expect to be flying), there was also a Fox News Store. Funny thing about that was they probably had as many, if not more, adult magazines as the other shops in the airport. Having a couple shelves of black-covered magazines kind of stands out.

When I landed I realized that I knew someone on the flight also attending SOUPS 2008. He had looked up how to get to CMU by bus and I knew my hotel was near the campus, so I joined him for the hour-long ride (he also spotted me the bus fare since I had a dollar in US currency on me). Riding the bus in made it obvious that the town had been a round in a while, has already gone through a peak and a trough in its life, and that they like brick for their buildings.

The conference itself was fine, but I didn't see a lot of it. Wednesday was taken up by me dealing with what had happened with Meesh. Thursday was me just trying to focus. And Friday was me trying to get home, so I skipped the conference entirely that day.

I did go to the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History. I was surprisingly underwhelmed. While they did have some very funky modern art (typified by an installation that was as series of "caves" created out of packing tape), everything else was surprisingly small. And the antiquities was a real disappointment as they were all casts.

At least some of the architecture was interesting around town. You could tell the town sprang up during the 1800s when Greek/Roman colums were "in". A nice change of pace from what I am used to on the west coast where you just don't see as much early American architecture.

Overall, Pittsburgh is not a place I feel a burning desire to go back to in terms of vacation. Maybe if I had a car and was able to go downtown instead of sticking to Oakland (where CMU and the University of Pittsburgh are) there may have been more, but I didn't get that impression.