Sunday, June 14, 2009

happy to be home

I'm home from Prague! It feels so, so good to be back to the house that I love so much, to be greeted by Grubble running down the stairs making his little "irk?"-ing noises, and to see what's thrived (spiderswort, lamb's ear, and purple coneflower) and died (tickweed, ghost fern) in the garden. After the cats all came down and sniffed my suitcase for a few minutes, we all went outside so I could see the garden. The weeds! How did all those weeds grow in two weeks? Five minutes after I got home after 14 hours of travel and being away for two weeks, I was weeding the garden.

Dave had cleaned the house, which I was delighted about since it's so nice to come home to a clean house. This morning it was nice that the sun didn't rise at 4:30/5 like it did in Prague (because of the latitude difference.) And in general I was just happy to be back in Pittsburgh, which was in the news a lot while I was gone with the #1 Most Livable City rating by The Economist and the Penguins winning the Stanley Cup. However, I agree 100% with this opinion piece in the Post-Gazette about balancing all the recent accolades Pittsburgh's been getting with the need to continue to "seek the inspired leadership" and change the "political shenanigans of a one-party town."

Today, we walked over to the Arts Festival--it was the last day. The Gay Pride Festival and a Pirates game were also going on, so Downtown was packed! It was hot and sunny, which felt nice because it's been cool in Prague. Happy to be home.

A giant squid was part of the exhibit in gallery at 937 Liberty Ave.
Robot by Toby Atticus Fraley, from Washington PA. He had a booth in the artists' marketplace, and we bought a really cool clock with a honey bear dressed up as a bird. Sounds strange, but it's cool. I really like his stuff in general--check it out. At Point State Park for the Arts Festival.
Clouds over Downtown.