Uncollated thoughts of my weekend.

Friday night my office closed up an hour early due to the remnants of Ivan, which tells you enough about the storm that I was about 800 miles inland from its arrival. While driving home the biggest problem I had was that the creek had taken over one lane on Washington Pike, and was working its way over to the other, so I figured I was going to be okay, though I did start to get worried when I noticed that they had fenced off about 10 parking spaces in my lot because the ground beneath had given way earlier in the week. Living on the third floor also helps.

My parents had decided this was the weekend to visit my aunt in the Carolinas, so I needed to check in with my aunt who lives adjacent to my parents. Not that their houses were in any danger, they're up on the hill, worst case would be a tree falling down. The only tree that came down landed on the driveway, so that was good. However I found out that Houston, PA was getting whacked six ways from Sunday. Given they had already wrecked most of the downtown to put in a wider intersection, I figure there's going to be a sinkhole there next week.

On Saturday, I awake to a sunny day, see that I'm in no danger, aside from the possibility of a tree falling over into my entryway on the next storm. I'll live. I'm also under a water advisory, so I decide to roll out to the local store and get some fluids, and find out how bad people are having it. It was then I found out the highway interchange flooded out, so I was feeling really lucky. Coming back to my apartment, I caught a bit of Pitt-Nebraska, including the first real sign of the scope of this thing. They took a blimp shot of just outside Heinz Field, and showed a marina floating downriver, with about 40 boats attached. Immediately, I think "Hmm. Free Marina."

Sunday morning, the radio wakes me to the story of Carnegie, PA. At about 5PM Friday, the entire emergency services staff of Carnegie gets stuck on the elevated bridge in town. About 5 minutes later, the chief of police gets a call telling him that Canonsburg Dam is about to go. Now, for those of you without a map, if Canonsburg Dam goes, and you're stuck on the elevated bridge in Carnegie, you have eight minutes to consider your future career as a marina. On the other hand, I would have approximately four minutes to consider the need to purchase an Alan Parsons Project or other form of commuter hovercraft. Luckily, it didn't go, however it's no way to start your morning.

Sunday afternoon, I saw two of the most disturbing things possible in a Steelers game. First of all was the Tommy Maddox injury, which if you saw it in real time, looked freakishly like what Willis McGahee's injury looked like if done to an elbow.You can bend the elbow one way, or the other, but not both ways in a one second period. I should apologize to Tommy, after he jammed his arm earlier on someone's helmet, and then started jawing with the guy, I said to myself: "He's not making it out of this game, he's either getting ejected or killed." I guess it's my fault. I need to learn to control these powers.
The second scariest thing I saw in this game was our fake punt formation, which looked all the world like we were put Gardocki in at slot, and Polamalu was at quarterback. Let me get this straight, we still have fifteen former quarterbacks on the team, and we're snapping...to the safety?

Waking up with Burger King next to me has to be about 94-octane nightmare fuel. Comparatively, Arby's oven mitt gouging out its own eye, in an Un Rosbif Andalou moment, only 86-octane.

Late Sunday, two odd bits. First of all, Kellen Winslow blows out the equipment. Given we pretty much already decided to put him on the list, but I forgot to update, can I put him up with strikethru? I need a ruling on this. I then flip over to flooding coverage to find that the death toll is mercifully low, but the injuries are exceedingly high. And Pittsburgh's crappy demographics strike again. The chief injury: broken bones, mostly hips, caused by people slipping and falling as they shovel mud.