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Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2004 - 12:41 a.m.

To Pennsylvania and back

The trucks on I-80, the rolling hills and farmland of central Pennsylvania, the higher mountains and soaring vistas of the western half of the state ...

The bumper-to-bumper traffic through Port Matilda, the the three-car rear-ending that left a miniscule crack in my bumper but no other visible damage, the rain, the striking toll workers on the Pennsylvania Turnpike ...

This was our Thanksgiving.

Though we had to drive through a rain that, at times, was itself driving, heading out on Wednesday and was sprinkling (and flurrying for a bit) coming back yesterday, it was a fine Thanksgiving weekend. There was good wine and beer at the annual Wednesday night Thanksgiving buffett at a cozy and trendy restaurant in town and Thursday I managed to spend the day in my slippers, having forgotten a change of socks and unable to stop at a store on the way into town on account of our late arrival following the aforementioned vehicular incident. When Tessa took me to the Dollar Store -- or Dollar General or Dollar City, or whatever it was called -- there were socks stocked in three different places. I needed some that were dressy and some that were white and athletic-y, and bought a three-pack of each. The dressy (read: colors other than white) were varied in black, navy and tan, but it wasn't until Tessa made a comment the next day as we were dressed up for a reception at the country club that I realized they were women's socks. Of course, Casey's and Tessa's dad thought that was the funniest thing and it deserved a hearty laugh, but other than the fact that the socks were a bit sheer (which could also be attributed to the fact that they cost $1 per pair in the $3 pack), who would notice? To echo Bruce Springsteen, who once said to a saleswoman at a New Jersey Banana Republic when he took some t-shirts that apparently were "women's" into a fitting room, "A shirt's a shirt." A sock's a sock.

The white socks were quite comfortable, however, and they held up well on Saturday in Pittsburgh. We wandered the Carnegie museum and its Carnegie International exhibition, though that grew old for me sooner than it did for Casey.

"These artists put so much effort into these paintings and photographs and installations, you'd think they could spend a little time thinking of a name," I whined at one point, dismayed by so many "Untitled" and "Untitled #_" displays. I then came up with what I consider a brilliant installation of my own: Each morning, I will enter the museum, heading to the room where my piece is on display. It will be a square on the wall, or maybe the whole wall -- or perhaps the entire room. Each morning, I will paint it, and visitors will smell the paint. That's my piece. I call it "Watching Paint Dry." I will then follow that up with a box of fresh, green grass entitled "Watching Grass Grow." Each day, I will take a picture -- from the same exact spot each time -- and then mount it on the wall in order to measure the progress. I will then thank Andy Warhol for my 15 minutes of fame.

After a bit of Christmas cheer in downtown Pittsburgh -- visiting a skating rink and various displays of trees, trains, gingerbread houses, manger scenes and Santa Clauses from around the world, we returned to Greensburg and had dinner at BW3 just as the Irish took the field against USC. Notre Dame's 10-0 lead and glimmer of hope disappeared as quickly as my sobriety, and when a key third-and-long play went for 40 yards for the scumholes, I cried out "Fuckers!" and drew looks from Casey's mom and her friend. Oops. But still. As Heather no doubt said in attendance at the Colisseum, "Asshat." I stand by my preseason wish: If Notre Dame wins a bowl game this season, I will forgive all else. It's become that ridiculous that the last win came in January 1994, eight months before my enrollment at the university, and also coincided with the last time the team was good enough to be in contention for the national championship on the final day of the season (and they deserved to win it, too). It's the Insight Bowl on Dec. 28, and it will likely be against a UCLA team with an identical 6-5 record that will no doubt suffer a similar drubbing to USC this coming Saturday, but we're at that point where we need to succeed at baby steps before we can make greater strides.

As for BW3 and its selection of good beers at wonderfully reasonable prices: I should've stopped at "Fuckers!" It was a slow morning and a longer ride home the next day as a result.

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