Oranges and olives

Today I did something I’ve avoided doing for years: I shopped at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company

Yes, it’s a famous Pittsburgh-area foodie destination; yes, they have all kinds of delicious things like amazing cheese and orgeat syrup and amazing olive oil and real Italian imported everything. It is indeed hard to fathom that one might not want to go there.

Here’s the thing: I really don’t like crowds. And the other thing I know about Penn Mac is that, on a Saturday, the crowd there is fierce. Continue reading

Treeless

On Friday we moved furniture from my house to the new loft. It turned out that I own almost enough furniture to furnish both a small house and an apartment — if you needed an example of overconsumption in the modern age, I think that’s a fine one to use.

Max and Sammie in their cat treeMy cats will be spending time in Pittsburgh with me, so I took their lovely cat tree down to the loft. The cat tree is a nice piece of furniture: It’s made of hardwood, finished with an espresso stain, with segments of carpet on the surfaces for the cats to sit on and scratch.

Here are Max and Sammie on the tree, before we moved it.

The cats are up here in Butler with me this weekend, and they have mostly adjusted to having their world turned topsy-turvy, all the places that they normally sit having been moved or removed.

But Max is little lost without his tree. He keeps looking to where it should be, as though it might reappear any moment. 

Max misses his tree

Think how excited he will be to reunite with the tree in the new place!

The Weekend Dress, circa 1986

In the late 1980s, I was a big fan of Banana Republic. Actually, I’ve bought items from Banana Republic many times since then, but the Banana Republic of today is very different from the Banana Republic of then. 

It used to be that Banana Republic was more of a catalog experience, where the catalogs were printed on cream colored, heavy stock paper. The items were not photographed but illustrated, and they were described in expansive, worldly prose. Continue reading

Lofty ambitions

This is a loft in the Strip District of Pittsburgh:

Window side of loft

I’ve long wanted to live in a place like that. And as of today, I do.

In addition to my lovely house in Butler, I now have a loft apartment dahntahn. It will make it much easier to meet clients in Pittsburgh and south while staying connected with my clients in Butler and north. 

I signed the lease a few weeks ago, but today I got the keys. I’ve been humming the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” theme all day. No word on whether I can turn the world on with my smile, but I do know that love is all around.

Cause. Effect.

Aside

The upper eyelid of my left eye has has been twitching for a few days. I googled to find out why this started suddenly, and whether I need to worry about it. Here’s what I found:

Called myokymia in doctor lingo, these rippling muscle contractions in an eyelid can be triggered by:

  • Stress
  • Tiredness
  • Eye strain
  • Caffeine
  • Alcohol
  • Dry eyes
  • Nutritional imbalances
  • Allergies

OK, one question answered, and now I have a new one: Given the potential causes, why have my eyelids not twitched every day of my adult life?