Facie’s Ramblings

When you have a baby, you are (usually) convinced it can never get more challenging than it seems at the beginning. The sleepless nights. The worries that something is wrong with your kid. The anxiety that she will stop breathing in the middle of the night. I certainly felt that way the first few months or even years with J. At some point, though, even when things continued to become challenging in different ways, somewhere deep down I knew things were going to get a lot harder. I knew that eventually my little kid would grow up and have bigger issues. After all, my mom was fond of saying, "Little kids, little problems; bigger kids, bigger problems." As my baby grew into a preteen, there was the stress of grades. Too much homework. Trouble with girls ignoring her. The disappointment of a boy not liking her. Now that she is entering 7th grade, I know that in addition to those challenges, all the "big" scary things are not too far away. Recently on FB, I wrote a...

I really could not decide on the better post title to aptly describe the blogger dinner I went to Saturday night, so I used them both, probably creating the world's longest blog post title! Considering this is going to be a long post, it kind of makes sense. So here is how it went, blow by blow (get your popcorn ready): Brian thought with the nearly always awful traffic on the Parkway East combined with a Pirates game and a closed exit that I should leave at 4:30 for the 6 p.m. dinner. I figured that 4:45 would be safe. In reality, even with a traffic backup at the North Shore, I was driving past the restaurant at 5:20. Unfortunately, the restaurant is BYOB and does not have a bar, so I had a dilemma. After driving around for six or seven minutes, I noticed a bar a block or two up the street, so I parked near it. As I was walking to the bar, I thought back to a time in '94 or '95 when I walked into a bar near the campus of IUP one weekday afternoon. I had hoped and ass...

So another Steeler is in trouble. Sheesh. Unfortunately, this time the offender happens to be my favorite player, Hines Ward. He whom I voted for on "Dancing with the Stars" many, many times. He of the only Steelers jersey I have ever owned. He whom I waited in line for an hour or so back in 2002 to have him sign said jersey. [Note: I generally disdain the whole autograph thing, but I made an exception because I owned his jersey, he was making an appearance 10 minutes from my house, and PSU was losing the football game I was watching at the time.] But back to issue at hand. A few nights (well, early mornings) ago, Hines was pulled over for driving erratically. When the story first came out, his agent/manager said Hines was not impaired while driving. But according to the police report, his eyes were bloodshot and glassy, he failed some field sobriety tests (alphabet, walking and turning, standing on one leg), and he registered a .128 on a portable breathing test (he refused...