Cathedral of Learning
Originally uploaded by kjoliat

I arrived in Pittsburgh earlier today and I'm completely exhausted but liking the city so far! The drive down wasn't bad - I went from Kingston to State College yesterday, where I met up with my mom. Job #2 is providing housing in the Carnegie Mellon dorms, so no pets allowed, naturally, and my mom is nice enough to take Maddy and Mal for six weeks. Understandably, though, she didn't want to drive all the way from Cleveland to Kingston to pick them up (it's at least a ten-hour drive), and since George the Jeep has no AC, I didn't want to drive the full ten hours from Kingston to Cleveland with the cats in the car, so we met in the middle to do the handoff. I'll take a moment to plug the Comfort Suites in State College - very nice hotel, free continental breakfast, and an indoor pool/jacuzzi. It's been so long since I had the chance to go swimming that I'd almost forgotten how great it feels to get in the water - I think I might have to start swimming regularly once I get back to Ithaca. Mom and I also went to see Ratatouille, which was adorable and I highly recommend it.

The drive from State College to Pittsburgh is a little under three hours, so I got to Pittsburgh around 1:30 and stopped at the office to pick up the keys to my apartment. I had no trouble finding the place from the directions my boss gave me - unfortunately, he sort of neglected to give me any guidance about what to do when I actually got there. I circled the building a couple of times before locating the entrance to the parking garage, and when I went up and parked in it, I realized that there didn't seem to be an entrance into the building from the garage, so I came back out and parked on the street and rattled some doors until a nice resident came out and told me where to go. Apparently, the key fob I was given along with my keys is the actual thingy that opens most of the doors in this building, except for my apartment which has a separate key, and since it's a mixed residential/office building, some of the doors are open on weekends and some aren't, and there is an entrance from the parking garage to the building but it's all the way down on the first floor where residents aren't allowed to park. You can see why some instructions might have come in handy.

I finally managed to get all my stuff up to the apartment, with a little help from another friendly resident who saw me struggling to unload the car. On the coffee table, there was a note from my roommate (the other intern at this job) with my bus pass, telling me welcome and that I should help myself to anything that was in the fridge even though there wasn't much. She was right about that - there wasn't much - but what there was was beer, two bottles of Blue Moon to be exact. Since I was all hot and sweaty from the drive and from hauling my crap around, finding a cold beer in the fridge was like finding a winning lottery ticket on the sidewalk. That was when I decided that I love my roommate.

After unpacking and enbeerenating, I went out to explore a bit of the neighborhood, and so far I like it. This building is smack in the middle of the Pittsburgh university district, and from my bedroom window I have a fantastic view of the Mellon Institute and the Cathedral of Learning. The living room windows look out onto St. Paul's Cathedral, so I'm definitely pleased with the local architecture. I'm looking forward to exploring a bit more, but since I start work tomorrow, I'm going to have an early night.