In PA, you can kill someone after you're dead

What happened to me this morning was one of the most bogus things I have seen in a while.

I was driving down Braddock and approaching Forbes. There was a car in front me and a car to the side. There were also cars in the other direction. As I approach the light, it turns to protected green. So I start making my left turn after the guy in front of me. The guy to my side also begins to proceed.

The cars coming down Forbes don't stop.

Brakes and honking ensue.

The cars coming down Forbes STILL don't stop.

I eventually follow the guy in front of me by hitting the gas and getting out of these jerks way.

Turns out, it was a funeral procession of about 30 or so cars. And PA law allows them to drive through a red light. (Refer to 75 Pa. Cons. Stat. 3107) Oddly, it NOT state that they have right-of-way, it just states that if the lead car went through legally, the others may follow during a red light. They have to have their lights on and a little "funeral" flag. If you have not seen said flags, they are about 4 inches across, purple, and say "Funeral". Michelle has noted that given how many people around here have Steelers flags, they aren't very obvious. Less so on a rainy day. I usually don't make a habit of checking every window of a car to see if it has a purple flag. Of course, it doesn't specify where the flag has to be, and at least one car (the one that nearly ran me over) did not have one. Presumably they ran out give that this was a large funeral procession.

Let's get this straight now. The only other vehicles allowed to run a read light are ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars. These are highly visibly marked vehicles with lots of flashing lights and loud sirens. And they are driven by professionals with training. Even still, an ambulance driver slows down when approaching a red just in case, and that's even when he's racing to the hospital.

Yet the geniuses of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have decided that an UNTRAINED driver with an UNMARKED car and NO lights or sirens can run a red light at normal speed.

Does this seem stupid to anyone else? Yes, you lost a loved one. But that person is dead, and they are not getting any deader. There is no need to run a red light and nearly kill other people in the process. Dying should not allow your family members to commit vehicular manslaughter.

My new favorite study cafe

I love Te Cafe. Best study cafe ever. Reasons:

• Wireless.
• A power strip running around the entire place. There are more outlets than there are seats.
• Smells yummy.
• Soft study music.
• Good acoustics. You can hear people talking, but not what they are saying.
• No espressos means no noisy machines. Tea is quiet.
• Healthy food from Mung Dynasty if I'm there at lunch.
  

I hesitate to write this, because I don't want the place to become packed. :) But it's a great little cafe.

Nine Mile Run Watershed

I've been spending a lot of time learning about the Nine-Mile Run watershed recently. The watershed association has lots of information on this, but here's the short version:

1. There's a creek that runs through Pittsburgh called Nine Mile Run. Most is underground, but the above ground section runs through Frick Park.
2. Pittsburgh, being an old city, has a combined sewer system. That means storm water and sweage run through the same pipes.
3. A lot of the watershed (the area that goes into the creek) is paved. That means the water can't seep into the ground, so it accumulates. In the combined sewer system...
4. ...which overflows into Nine Mile Run creek. (On a rainy day, it smells like sewage for a reason. This type of sewage system was discontinued in the 1930's.)
   
5. Swissvale, Edgewood, and Wilkinsburg have separate sewage and storm systems. However, a lot of homes accidentally have their storm water connected to the sewage pipes. Guess where overflow goes when you have a small sewage pipe that's not meant to handle rainwater?
6. To make matters worse, the amount of paved area on the watershed means that the water picks up a lot of pollutants, all of which are dumped into this small area. Additionally, the sheer volume of water coming in erodes the entire creek. Normally, a lot of the water would have soaked into a permeable surface.
   

So, residents in the watershed are encouraged to contain as much water on their property as possible in order to prevent the systems from overflowing. They actually do dye tests in our borough to make sure you are containing your storm water. Many years ago, the people who owned our house had to retrofit their drainage system in order to comply.

Their solution was to put 3 feet of solid pvc in the ground and put the down spout in it.

Obviously, this fills up and overflows.

Back to our foundation.

Ooops.

So, we are spending the next week digging a 10 foot trench, laying down gravel and a perforated PVC pipe, and re-routing the water to the big sycamore tree. We're also putting in a 100 gallon rain barrel to capture the rainwater and use it in the garden during dry spells.

Rain barrels are available, with installation, from the watershed association.

New Transportation Blog

Josh Sunshine (also of CMU) has started a blog on new forms of transportation, including mass transit and personal transit. The focus is on transportation that is safer, more economical, and more eco-friendly than our current forms of transit.

blog.newtransportation.org

The farmers market starts tomorrow!

Tomorrow is opening day of the Farmers Market in East Liberty. This is a good farmers market, too. They have local and organic food, and not just vegetables. There's also people selling meat, chickens, eggs, and canned and baked goods. Basically, everything except for dairy products. Saul and I went frequently last year, and for $10, we could get all the produce we needed for the week, and for another $10, we could get meat too. We spend most of summer eating salad or pasta with lots of vegetables, (oh, I long for zucchini orzo or balsamic tomatoes!) so it was a pretty good deal.

It's from 3-7 in a parking lot near Home Depot. Just take Penn Circle around past Home Depot, and it will be on your left. You can also get in the back way through Baum.

I might have overestimated

Unlike software engineering, where we usually underestimate projects, gardeners typically overestimate. This is bad. I have too many radishes, and I feel guilty about composting perfectly good food.

The problem is that in January, it's snowing out, and the seed companies send off catalogs of seeds and plants. I spent several evenings drawing and planning, and then I ordered way more seeds than I could ever hope to handle. I even ordered things I don't even like. Why radishes? Because they grow in 30 days, that's why! I won't eat them, but they are so satisfying to yank out of the ground. And 30 days! Yay! A fully green garden by May!

So I get all my seeds in February, and I start up baby tomatoes, cukes, flowers, herbs, and brocs in March. And I plant way to many seeds and end up with too many starts.

Oh, but I can't throw any away! It's cold out and I love the little green baby plants in my window. So I keep them all and plant them all.

But the garden is so baren still. So what do I do? Drop in ALL of the seeds in the lettuce, radish, and carrot packets. Stick 40 onion sets in the ground. Put up a trellis for 6 pea plants. Buy pansys, petunias, and marigolds and fill in the bare spots...

Yeah. It's been 30 days. Too many radishes.

Spring Cleaning!

I'll be honest, I never understood why it was "Spring" cleaning and not some other kind of cleaning. Why spring? Now I know. Spring is when the sun finally comes out, and you get to realize how much dirt accumulated on your house during the winter. There's trash in my backyard, leaves and mud is everywhere, and my windows are truly filthy.

So spring cleaning. :)

I've been reading about safe, non-toxic cleaners. We were using a cleaning company that uses only safe cleaners, but their prices went up, so I went with a traditional cleaning company and asked if they'd please use safe cleaners. They don't have any, so I am buying/making them.

So I bought a book called "Clean House, Clean Planet" that lists various recipes and commercial products, and they rate their effectiveness. Some tips I learned:

1) Bon Ami, the product my great-grandmother used to clean her stove, is still available, and is a safe cleaner.

2) The best home-made window cleaner is not vinegar and water, but club soda. Kid you not. I just put club soda in a spray bottle and added some blue food dye so I could tell what it was. Minimal streakage, too. For me, the true test of a window cleaner is how it cleans the aquariums, and they look great now.

3) Most wood furniture does not need furniture polish, since it's already finished. The recipe they provide for dusting is 2 t olive oil, 1/4 c white vinegar, 12 oz of water, and 20 drops of lemon oil to mask the vinegar. I also added a drop of yellow food dye. They have another recipe for furniture that actually needs oiling that has more oil and less of the other two. Like the above recipe, you can clean without gloves, and safe enough that you could drink some.

4) Put traps on the bathtub and sinks to catch hair. Most pipe clogs are from hair, and drain cleaner is extremely toxic and will ruin the pipes. Lowes has the mesh traps for a couple dollars for a set of 3.

Cleaning house this weekend, and cleaning outdoors next weekend!

My Map of Pittsburgh!

I have created a map to help new drivers to Pittsburgh navigate the perils of the Pittsburgh roadway! I've actually had it ready for a while, but there were some bugs in Google Maps which have since been fixed.


Ciera's map of Pittsburgh

Enjoy! I'll post here when I make an update to it.

Jerks

To the asswipe who last night rummaged through my unlocked car and stole my GPS (which was only used five times and had this hilarious aussie accent and cost me $400) and somehow was able to sneak quietly past my neighbor's dog even though he barks at me every time I step outside and yet did not steal the charger or anything else (including my cell phone, shows you how cheap it is) because my lovely GPS is probably just being sold for $100 crack rather than being loved for its hilarious was of saying "recaculating":

You suck, jerkwad.

~Ciera

Yummy food in Oakland

ELA (Engineers Lacking Alcohol) decided to try a new place last night. Saul suggested Spice Island Tea house, which he found by apparently using Google Maps to search for "food" in "Pittsburgh". Luckily, they did have alcohol too, thus satisfying the needs of ELA.

The food was a mix of Malaysian, Thai, and whatever other SE Asian dishes they could cook up. It was kind of a SE Asian shmorgasboard, but a good one. We declared the Pad Thai and the Thai Fried Rice to be the winners of the evening. The Malaysian chicken was ok, but the sauce on it was great. The wine list looked pretty good, and you can get champagne cocktails, which Tara and I both tried. It's also BYOB, but honestly, they had a good wine selection. You might want to bring your own beer, but the selection was adequate for our needs. Just don't try the Devil IPA. That was truly nasty.

It looks like they have lunches too, and it's walking distance to campus. It's a little bit of a long walk, but it should be fine when the whether warms up.

Not that I'm keeping track...

A few days ago, I got out of bed and went to take my shower. No water. Odd. I checked the sink. Also no water. Went downstairs, no water there either.

In most places, I would now go to the basement and check the water main, make sure there weren't burst pipes, etc. Not in Pittsburgh.

In Pittsburgh, I open my living room curtains.

Sure enough, in front of my neighbors house, there is a hole large enough to fit my Prius. Across the street, there is a truck from the water authority.

Thankfully, the head guy promised that his workers would have it fixed by the afternoon. Exact words were: "It's Friday. I can guarantee this will be done by 4:30." He was right.

For the record, that is number 1 for this calendar year, number 4 for this school year.