wednesday's words and wanderings and wonderings

On the road last weekend to watch some college basketball. The Dayton Flyers belong to the A-10 Conference and we made the trek to PPG Arena in Pittsburgh to watch our Flyers in their tournament games. The road to March Madness begins

Back in the day of traveling from the Midwest to visit my grandparents in New Jersey, we always took the Pennsylvania Turnpike which primarily cuts through the Appalachian Mountains. It was a long, boring drive for four young children but what got us through the tedium of the drive were the stops at the service plazas and going through the tunnels that were cut through the mountains. We always looked forward to the Kittatinny and Blue Mountain Tunnels - one right after the other. 

On the drive to Pittsburgh didn't take us on the Pennslvania Turnpike but we did get to drive through two tunnels, one in Wheeling, WVA, and one right before getting to Pittsburgh. That little kid excitement of going through these tunnels is still there.

My son and grandson joined us to watch the games. 3 1/2 year old Owen could watch only so much basketball so to help him get his wiggles out we went up and down the escalators too many times to count. "Let's do it again, Didi!"

All smiles after an exciting win to get into the championship game. We beat #1 seeded Saint Louis University by one point in the last .5 second.

Nothing like a messy red, white, and blue popsicle to keep a kid happy!

One of Pittsburgh's nicknames is the Confluence City. Three rivers converge at Point State Park. The Allegheny River is in the forefront of this photo, the barge is starting its voyage down the Monongahela River, and Point State Park where the concrete platform comes out into the rivers marks where the Ohio River begins. 

Pittsburgh is also known as the City of Bridges. It has 446 bridges, which is more than any other city in the world.

While walking around Pittsburgh I saw lots of references to "Yinz" and "Yinzer." Come to find out "yinz" is equivalent to "you all" or "y'all." It originated from the Scottish-Irish immigrants who used "you ones" (or "you'uns") and it evolved into a signature phrase of "Pittsburghese" dialect. A person who speaks this way is often called a "Yinzer." 

We arrived home Sunday night and then in the wee hours of Monday morning, I woke to the sound of howling winds and rain slamming into the house. Very scary. No tornado sirens going off but it was enough to keep me awake for a couple hours. Monday morning my neighbor was in the street with his chain saw cutting up a huge branch that had broken from his old, massive tree and was blocking the street. He wanted to clear a path before the school bus arrived. He got a lane open and then the city street crew arrived to finish the job.

The storm caused our power to go out for a few hours and our wifi was out for most of the day. My son's power was out longer than ours so he came over to do his laundry. It was nice to have him around and have a catch up visit. I invited him and his wife to come over for dinner. I wanted to surf the 'net for some dinner ideas and got shut down because of no wifi. So I went old school and thumbed through a lot of cookbooks. It was like becoming reacquainted with old friends. I do love my cookbooks and got a lot of smiles from finding old favorites and just being taken back to how I used to plan meals when the internet wasn't around. I found a recipe and prepared Chicken Cacciatore from Cucina Povera. Comfort food that came from the stress of a storm.