The long-awaited Steve visit finally happened! He hasn't been to Pittsburgh since he helped us move in three years ago, ack. There was one weekend that almost happened, but then he couldn't do it; I got him back when we planned to do it in March and then I ended up in Las Vegas. Oops. Anyway, it worked well this time.
Steve arrived in time for a very special wine & cheese departmental happy hour, done for grad student appreciation week. It went a little long and was pretty rowdy, but we finally escaped to BRGR to have delicious burgers and yet another vanilla bourbon shake (man I love those things). A good first start to the weekend: booze & more booze... you'll see that it's kind of a theme.
The nest morning we were pretty productive, though, and got out a few job applications for Steve. I can't believe he's almost graduated, yikes. Anyway then we hit the first of my various plans on his time: the indoor climbing gym! Steve was, of course, a natural at it. After a while we ended up at Church Brew Works for lunch, which included a ten-glass 4oz/ea pour of their special beers. He wasn't too excited about most of them, but it was impressive. And as a non-beer person, I gotta let other places make me look good...
That was just a prelude to stopping by the Wigle Whiskey distillery for a tour. My friend Sharon and I had organized one such tour for SWE, and grabbed a separate date for just our friends. You can see lots of my photos of the SWE tour at
this site - the second time around I didn't take so many, but I did heartily enjoy the educational lesson about whiskey making (and, of course, the samples they gave us). Although Steve is only yet a beer connoisseur, I think he enjoyed it too...
But of course I had to teach him about the weird beer laws in this state, and we stopped by the Save-Mor beer warehouse, where Steve bought a Founders variety case. Apparently it's good beer one can't get that in Delaware, who knew. We also got a six-pack of Iron ("ahrn") City from another store for fun. Then it was time to show him Carson Street, or at least that had been the plan. The weather was rainy and not cooperating, so we drove down it instead. Of course we ended up at the incline so we had to do that as well, which was good as always. By that time it was pretty late to get a normal dinner so we hit Pizza Sola for dependably huge and delicious pizza slices, which we then ate with Steve's fancy Dogfishhead white & red and a viewing of Exit Through the Gift Shop, a film about street art by Banksy which we'd planned to watch for forever and now finally have!
Sunday was more job searching plus a Giant Eagle sub before he left. A good visit!
