Crossing something off my bucket list (kind of)

Full disclosure: I don't have an actual bucket list, at least not something physical. And I don't have a lofty list of things I hope to accomplish partly because I am not that motivated but mostly because I am risk-averse. I would think people would have things like sky-diving or mountain-climbing on their lists.

For many years I wanted to travel to a few places, including New Orleans, California, and Hawaii. But since I hate flying, I have decided if I make it to Hawaii, that would be great. Beyond that, this homebody just does not have a travel wish or bucket list. I guess I should be glad I went to Europe when I was in high school (which also happened to be the first time I ever flew on an airplane).

I really don't know the kinds of things people even put on their bucket lists. I got married and had a kid. I own a house (though as I have said many times that is not all it is cracked up to be). When I was in high school, I did not even care if I went to college, but when both of your parents did and your older brother graduates at the top of his class, and you are a straight-A student, it is pretty much a given. (And I am very glad I did.)

Since then I have put getting a second degree on my not-really a bucket list, but, as I have clearly established on this blog and in my life in general, I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, so there is no way I would go back to school. Plus there is the time factor. Thankfully I can get a huge chunk of my next degree paid for if I stay at my current job, so hopefully I will be able to get more collegiate someday.

But back to the point of my post. There has been something I had wanted to do since probably I was in high school. In fact I am pretty sure I blogged about it before. I had always wanted to sing the National Anthem at Three Rivers Stadium. When that stadium was imploded in 2001 or whenever it was, so went that dream with it. But by that time, I figured the chances of my singing in the replacement stadiums, PNC Park or Heinz Field, were pretty slim; I am just not that good. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I have kept the thought of singing the NA at some significant event.

About a week ago, our choir director sent us an email about singing the National Anthem. I saw only the words "PNC Park," and thought my dream was coming true. When I read the email more closely, I discovered he actually was asking us to sing for the opening ceremonies for the Purplestride walk for pancreatic cancer, which happened to be near PNC Park. I decided this was about as close as I was going to get to my dream. But, as important, we would be doing this for a fellow choir member who lost her mom to this awful disease last year.

So yesterday morning, a small but mighty group of us set off for Purplestride. And at about 9:25 a.m., I sang my heart out, in between Heinz Field and PNC Park (pretty close to the site of Three Rivers Stadium, actually). I even got to hold one of the mics!

I might actually type up or hand-write a bucket list just to be able to cross off something that came pretty darn close to something I have wanted to do for so long.

:-)

Below is a view from the stage just before we sang. Unfortunately I am on my mom's iPad and I could not figure out how to save a picture from email, so ignore the extra iPad crap. If only someone had recorded it...

Let's build something together!

That is one of my favorite slogan's (Or is that a tagline? Over a year removed from a design firm, and I can no longer remember). It belongs to Lowe's, although I am more of a Home Depot gal. But suffice it to say if someone handed me a $5,000 gift card to Home Depot (or Lowe's), I would be ecstatic. If I had $10,000 to spend, you could hear my shouts of joy from miles away. The things I could do with that money. Well, the things I could have Brian do with that money anyway. I love walking around Home Depot and admiring the fancy bathroom sinks and tubs. I look at the lighting and think about where I would put each fixture. I touch textured and colorful tiles and wistfully look at the fancy kitchen cabinets. I admire the various carpet styles and blinds. I look at the fancy front-loading washer and wonder what it must be like to have a steam dryer. I even look longingly at the vacuum cleaners because I can no longer buy a replacement filter for my eight year old mo...

If only I had taken pictures of my detoured drive

When I moved to the Burgh just over 14 years ago, I had a lot of anxiety about getting from "here" to "there." I found the city, which is triangular, and even some of the suburbs quite confusing. On top of that, a lot of the signs were of little help. Clearly they were put up by either natives who had no need for directions or people with a sick sense of humor who thought it would be funny to put signs in random places, leaving off important roads. At some point, I got over that fear of driving to a new building downtown. I don't recall when it happened, but eventually I just figured most of the city out; and when I had to head to a new place, I just drove around, no longer with a feeling of dread, knowing I would eventually get there. But on Sunday morning, that awful, long-ago feeling returned, thanks to the closure of the outbound Fort Pitt Tunnels. I had to pick my mother up from the airport, so there was no avoiding it. (For some reason, my family think...

Summer in review

This summer I made it a point to try to take at least one pic of Jordan whenever we went somewhere, which most often was a park. I wanted to capture all the great, fun things we did this summer, knowing that it was probably going to be my last summer not working for quite some time. So here goes. I have expressed my love of Frick Park, particularly Blue Slide Park, in other posts ; it really is one of our favorites. And this summer marked the first one I did not feel the need to follow J around like a little puppy dog. I actually let her run around and explore, though, admittedly, I would panic if more than three minutes went by and I had not seen her. In the pics above, J is at the end of the blue slide, and then hanging several feet above concrete (which scared the crap out of me). We also visited another section of Frick Park, the area on the corner of Braddock and Forbes, a few times. There is not as much to do as Blue Slide, but we go there to mix things up a bit. In the p...

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