Right then, so this weekend I went to my niece's wedding. While in the area, I bounced around to see a few places.
Friday:
After some adventures in getting to the Turnpike, such as getting around flooded roads and dead-stop traffic jams, along with driving in the rain for several hours, I finally get to Mt. Pleasant, where I had reserved a room through Priceline. I tried leaving early enough so I would at least cover most of the trip during daylight. I can handle driving in the rain, I can handle driving at night, but driving at night in the rain is not something I would do voluntarily. Had I not reserved the room a couple days earlier, I would have probably just said "screw it" and stayed home.
Stopped at Westmoreland Mall, where I found some Red Hot Chili Pepper CDs I was looking for (but too lazy to buy online). Then I ate at Primanti Brothers. If you like coleslaw on a sandwich, this is your thing. Went back to the hotel, fell asleep.
Saturday:
Gorged myself on the hotel's breakfast. They have a pancake machine. You press a button, and pancakes come out.
Since it was now daylight and the weather more favorable, I was able to venture out properly into the land I spent my childhood. It was as I remembered, just about every building had an aluminum awning. Stopped at the graveyard, where about 6 family members are buried. One is an older sister who I knew about but never met. Friday would have been her birthday.
Going down US-119, I went as far south as Laurel Mall. I heard it was effectively dead as a mall and turned into a giant flea market but figured if I was in the area, I might as well see how dead. Well, I think this qualifies as a zombie mall, since aside from a local bank branch there were no mainstream stores in there at all (which in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing). Monroeville Mall is a zombie mall, but that's more an honorary title. Anyway. The first thing I noticed was the parking lot had more potholes and craters than the surface of the moon, typical of the area. The second thing I noticed upon entering the mall, was the smell. It was like a giant neglected pile of dirty laundry, and someone decided the best way to handle it was to throw slightly less dirty laundry on top of it. Y'know, if you're going to sell old clothes, that's great; it's the highest form of recycling. But please, WASH THEM first.
Since I didn't get to the area in time the night before, I stopped at Joy's Japanimation. The parking lot was a giant muddy pothole. It's a neat little anime store, although incredibly dated. For the most part, the entire last decade skipped over them. Need to rent anime on VHS? They have that. Oddly enough, I found some doujinshi there.
Then it came time for my niece's wedding. It was both a respectable and laid-back event, and I'm actually surprised there weren't more people there. What wasn't surprising: About 90% of everyone there smoked. I could probably count on one hand the number of adults (including myself) who didn't smoke there. In fact there were more lit cigarettes than people. About a packs' worth of cigarettes were just floating in mid-air, waiting for someone to supply a mouth.
Once all that was over, I felt it was time to head on home. It was getting dark, but the weather was still decent. Not a problem. Eventually stumbled home at about 12AM. Would have been 10:30 had I not stopped at a rest area, but oh well.
Yeah, I know. Normally you're lucky to see two posts from me in the same month, and here are two in the same day.
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