Ornoth

Last weekend’s Pittsburgh trip: not much to talk about.

Saturday morning, a package I’d ordered arrived: new Teva sandals. I put them on and went for lunch at the Prudential mall food court, which was overrun with costumed attendees of the Anime Boston convention. Pretty surreal.

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Grabbed my bag and left home, but on the way out, I received another package I’d been waiting for: a second battery for my video camera. Threw that in my bag and made my way to Logan.

The flight was fine except the descent into Pittsburgh was bumpy due to wind. The woman next to me squealed on touch-down. Weather a balmy 82 degrees but overcast.

Hit a grocery store that Inna wanted to visit, then dinner at Maharaja, an Indian restaurant tucked inside a Days Inn by the highway. It was set in a long-abandoned ballroom, with used dinner plates littering several of the many empty tables. To my horror, Inna violated my first rule of Indian—never order the buffet!—and it delivered in spades. Spots in the steam table labeled rice and naan were empty, and what food there was looked like it had been sitting on the Sterno for months. At least they didn’t serve Goat Bone Curry like Ajanta used to!

Since Inna’s mother was traveling, we stopped by to feed her cats Theo and Pumpy, then called it a day.

Sunday was Easter, so I tried to get Inna to sample a chocolate bunny, but she refused. We spent a mostly lazy day doing not much of anything, since most places were closed for the holiday. We walked around Shadyside and had ice cream at Oh Yeah!, then drove around at random, ending up having a nice walk around the reservoir at the summit of Highland Park.

After feeding mom’s cats, we went to a place called Thai Cuisine on East Liberty, which was unmemorable, then home so that Inna could study.

Monday I walked down to the Fifth Third Bank and snagged some small bills, then off for ice cream at Klavon’s. Drove around Lawrenceville, and saw three deer in Allegheny Cemetery. Back in Squirrel Hill, we stopped at Radio Shack to pick up Livestrong wristbands for the cats to play with, and chocolate for us.

Dinner was a burger at the Elbow Room in Shadyside, which wasn’t bad, then we went home and played “Wits & Wagers” and some “World of Goo” game on Inna’s Wii.

Tuesday I packed up and we hit the Waterworks Mall where Inna shopped for clothing while I picked up some Eneloop batteries and found a kitten to play with at Petco. We made our way out to Moon Township and had a tasty lunch at Mad Mex before saying our goodbyes at the airport.

All told, it was a very low-key visit, which seems pretty typical of Pittsburgh. Atypical, however, were the mediocre meals, since my experience has been that the thing Pittsburgh usually gets right is its food. But the weather was pretty gorgeous for early April, which made a nice change from the freezing cold of my previous two visits. Mostly it was good to see Inna, since she’s been buried up to her eyeballs all year with work for the one-year sustainability MBA program she’s enrolled in.

Yesterday, modpixie posted to the b0st0n community a list of Boston sights and sounds that no longer exist. It sparked enough nostalgia that I thought it might be interesting to set down a list of the things I’ve seen here that are, sadly, either endangered, going, or gone.

There are two lists. The first column enumerates those elements of Boston that are already historical data. The second column is a list of things which are currently in the process of failing. Most of those are still here—at least nominally—but I think they are endangered species that could disappear tomorrow.

More recent updates can be seen at this post from 2009 and this one from 2013.