Fun & Funding (not mutually exclusive!)

So in our mad efforts to make the most of our summer financial opportunities since wrapping up J-term classes, we spent a couple weeks mid-July dogsitting in the town ten minutes up the river. It’s a good thing that Noel already knows this dog up close and personally from my acquaintance with his family, because he’s named Mozart, which might have led me to expect a dog that weighed less than my husband. It would have taken a name like Wagner or Tchaikovsky to start giving me a sense of the ginormity of this dog. As it was, we fortunately knew ahead of time that Moe is a hefty guy. His tongue is as long as my arm and runs like a faucet, and he overheats pretty quickly, so much of our quality time was confined to the kitchen where the drool puddles could be easily mopped up. He’s been trained to keep his, um, messes, in one small part of the yard, a worthwhile investment of training time and expense, for sure. Indeed, he’s been well-trained overall and can’t help that his front and his back don’t always coordinate.

This picture does not do Mozart's magnitude justice.

Our other work time is spent barista-ing at Starbucks and lifeguarding at the YMCA outdoor pool (under the cloud of the nuclear power plant!). (Noel is now known throughout western PA for her water-treading skills, an event she won at the YMCA lifeguarding competition - woooo, that's my wife! -G.) Even though we’re working a lot, we get some fun in the neighborhood with our peeps here and there:

Scott plays tennis. Which means he plays badminton too. Look out, Greg!

Our agent has asked us to make an appearance via Skype in the Chicagoland area on Wednesday, August 31 at 7 pm in Wheaton. Thanks to those of you setting this prayer time up as we launch into Year 2. If you want more info on that gathering, email us.

March Madness!

Sorry if that just manipulated you into looking at this post!  It's not so much about basketball as it is some of our meanderings during Reading Week where we were able to visit some of the folks in Chi-town.  We were bummed not to get to see all of you but we hope to be able to visit again soon and to pick up with some of you whom we were unable to see!  We miss the area where we spent so much of our lives.  But I'm glad that we are still going back and we pray we will continue to get to do so.

Maybe you don't all want see photos of yourselves but it is our pensieve (please see Harry Potter references if you are looking at this dumbfoundedly or just take our nerdy words for it) as well and we cherish these memories and want to be able to withdraw the watery, ethereal substance of anamnesis into the forefronts of our reflections, so here we go:

anticipating a good SAGA run!

Best College Salad Bar in the U.S. 8 years and counting!

nothing reminds me of the good ol' days in SAGA like their abundant gourmet mayonnaise section.
yes, it made all of those days in the ugly BGC worth it (not that I disliked the job, just the building!)

SAGA group date!

Amigos Locos, more like it...

The LOVE!!!!!

Worst...and yet best celebration of Pi Day ever

Dinner with our hospitable hosts!  We miss you all dearly.  Except Scott, we see him all the time.

Because there must always be a goofy portrait to accompany a serious one.
It is pointed out that Noel's presence is represented here by the Guinness bottle.

Fellowship of the Cheese

The Dolly Sods area was first explored by the Fellowship of the Cheese during a brief period of Seminary angst in 1746 to find the limits of West Virginian lore from the British Crown. The area was generally avoided as too impenetrable until the late 1800’s. Charlie Treichler wrote an early description of the area, published in Gmail in 2010:

"In West Virginia, via Maryland en route from Ambridge, Pennsylvania, is a tract of country containing from seven to nine hundred square miles, fairly well frequented , yet so savage and inaccessible that it has rarely been penetrated even by the most adventurous, like Geoff Mackey, who has yet to explore any place via backpack and camping tent. The settlers on its borders speak of it with a sort of dread, and regard it as an ill-omened region, filled with inbreds, panthers, impassable (except to Noel who decided to tumble on into them despite the dangers) laurel-brakes, and dangerous precipices ie big rocks. Stories are told of hunters having ventured too far, becoming entangled, and perishing in its intricate labyrinths...or stolen by the hillbillies, verdict's still out. The desire of daring the unknown dangers of this mysterious region, stimulated a party of  [handsome] gentlemen and two gentlewomen . . . to undertake it in October, 2010. They did actually penetrate the 'disgusting' country as far as the landmines allowed, and returned with marvelous accounts of its savage grandeur, massive quantities of pulled muscles and troop bonding to be found there.  All was recounted at Piper's Pub in the urban Pittsburgh, any embellishments likely owed to Irish Car Bomb ingestion."

Sometimes, Noel leaves for urban backpacking adventures...

which makes Greg look like this

Noel had never been to West Virginia before and she was terrified, her only experience with WV is the movie Wrong Turn. And as you can tell from the title, WV was the wrong turn.  So, I take back my bias of West Virginia as the incest bred terrifying hillbilly state...at least for now. After all, it was really beautiful.

I hope you can read this sign. If not, here it is: WARNING: Highly Explosive LIVE BOMBS from WWII training can still be found in Dolly Sods.  Do not touch!  Happy Trails.

The Fellowship--sorry, Wes!  My backpack was too tall.

 

The Survivors! Thanks for looking, hope you enjoyed the journey.

And now for the rest of the story...

And now...the moment you've all been waiting for!

The view from our front porch to our street...that truck is a staple of Melrose Avenue

it belongs to our neighbors across the street, I totally could have sworn that it had a "charleton heston is my president" sticker on it, but I checked again the other day but nope, wasn't there.

maybe i'll get Denny (our neighbor who owns it) one...i guess my imagination thinks it would fit!

This was out first real meal in Ambridge.

Lemon dill salmon and salad...yum!

FYI, our camping chairs are still in the front and seem to have become permanent lawn fixtures.

Our quaint little porch and awning area.  To the left you can see St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Orthodox church.

They're our landlords and currently, our pirohy dealers of choice. 

Lesson #1 in Ambridge:  Fridays are Pirohy Fridays at the churches...pretty much ALL the churches.  That means on Friday, you can go over to the basement at St. Vlad's and find several folks ready to serve you hot, cold or frozen potato or sauerkraut pirohies with or without butter and onions.  Fr. Michael says that people don't understand the concept of tithing and they expect a little extra, so they do the pirohies :) 

If you come visit, you're sure to find us with some of these on hand or we'll take you over to St. Vlad's for some pirohy goodness.

Woo hoo!  One of the first things we noticed in Ambridge is how much they like to party...not in the classical sense but rather churches like to hold festivals and our first week in town, Good Samaritan Parish, one of five churches on our street, was having their annual festival.  As you can see below, it was an event sponsored by Miller Lite...okay, we're not actually sure that's true but it was really funny that they had a beer tent with different cover bands and lots of two-steppin'.  

Our particular vice took the form of BINGO!!!!

  We figured the house always wins but in this case, we didn't feel too bad givin' to the house :)

And then....Noel won!  We had played a couple of different nights, it was 7 cards for $1.00 so we really only spent about 5 bucks, but check out this card...single winner, baby!  14 bucks in our pocket, awesome.

Here's the tell all sign...it was great.  The priests of Good Samaritan live down the street from us and they're really really kind.  Maybe cuz of the Miller Lite? ;)  We tried our first pierogies here...yum-my!

Another Pittsburgh favorite that we experienced: 8 dollar tickets for an enjoyable night at the ball game ain't too shabby.  Ah, it's nice to be in a town where the team sucks and the price reflects it.

It was a really fun outing with a bunch of Trinity peeps.

So, for Pirates games, they literally shut down the bridge to cars and people just walk on by...can you imagine the rioting if they tried to close down a bridge in Chi-town?

So, you can't play ball?  Well, kill 'em with aesthetics!

PNC has an AWESOME view of the city and the river which runs right by it.

Look! Isengard!

Same ol' us

This is Gabe, he likes to make funny faces and yelling for the Pirates,

he's our friend Geoff's kid (and Erin's too...gotta give credit where credit is due)

I love this photo, I caught every person off guard, awesome.

All these people are Trinity folks...Geoff is on the far left with the orthodox priest beard, Chimela is from Africa and he's sitting below him, Karen (and her husband, John, who wore matching Canada sweatshirts to the game) and Meg are down in the seats by Greg and they're awesome, Trevor's the Yankees fan from South Carolina, Paul was clearly caught in the flash light...he's from San Diego so he pretty much looks awesome no matter what.  Brian is over there in the Cubs outfit, but get this, he's also from San Diego.  Weird, eh?  Mike, Scott and Bartholomew are in the back row and they all rock.  The first two are our neighbors and we like to hang out with them.  Bartholomew's from Tanzania and has two sets of twins!  The Africans enjoyed the game though I think it was mostly because they got kettlecorn. :)

*****************

 There's a better shot of our friend, Brian...the security guard stopped him, looking quite concerned and partly perturbed, to inform him that the Cubs were not in fact playing in PNC that night.  Brian was like, "oh yeah, I know, I just wear this to all baseball games."  Hilarious.  Pittsburghians definitely take their sports waaaaay too seriously...especially the ones that really suck. 

And here's the real reason that everyone goes to Pirate games: Pierogy races!

Oh yes, you read that correctly...those are pierogies on the field.

In case you're wondering, the purple one named "Oliver" won

Pierogy butts!

 And then, the Pirates actually won...astounding us all!!!  Obviously, Geoff and Ben were just a little excited.  They probably won because Mike was in the back praying that it wouldn't go into extra innings...I said, AMEN and AMEN!

So, as you can see, God's put us in another great city with more great people...and thankfully, a waaay shorter commute to get to urbania.

The Move

6,000 miles and gabillions of bird poops, dust storms and intermittent rain later, we arrived in Elmhurst, IL
Pseudo home sweet home where the Pechanios took excellent care of us...even though we proved to possibly be the most difficult houseguests they've ever had...more on that later!

Well, here's the dirty car:

 Then we picked up the truck and the moving party began

Special thanks to Phyllis, Jenn and Matty for all their help, sweat and tears
(just kidding...unless you did actually cry)

 On one hand, we felt like, "awesome, all our stuff fit in this one unit" but at the same time, we said, "man, we've got a LOT of crap"...and we're only in our 20s...more stuff to Freecycle, I guess (yes, that was a shameless plug...go check it out, it's green, it's free, it's cyclical...what could be better?)

 So proud, so muscular.
In his favor, we did manage to fit all our stuff into the 16 footer, just perfectly.

 

 Sorry about the really dirty windshield...imagine driving with that thing.
Also sorry for the short supply of photos from this trip, things like time constraints, a UTI and not traveling with the truck the whole time held us up.  But, we arrived in Ambridge to about a dozen folks on the lawn ready and willing to help, even after having moved about 3 people earlier in the day.  The whole truck was unloaded in about 45 minutes and there began our relationship with our new community.  Alleluia.

 And that's just the beginning...