cww.blog!

In the past few days, I've seen more people than ever write the word independance instead of independence. Are our public schools really that poor?

Yesterday, Katy tried to get me to go to Point State Park, the end of the peninsula where the Allegheny River, the Monongahela River, and the Ohio River meet. The big fireworks show in Pittsburgh is apparently held there every year, and she wanted to do a picnic thing. My counter to her suggestion was that we eat dinner at a nice restaurant on Mt. Washington, instead.
Fireworks as seen from the upper Isabela dining room. Click to enlargeThe side of Mt. Washington facing downtown Pittsburgh (and Point State Park) is basically a cliff face, and there are a number of houses and restaurants built at the very top of it, along Grandview Avenue. I made reservations for 8:30 at Isabela on Grandview, and that afforded us a wonderful view of the fireworks: they exploded at eye-level and were choreographed to a radio broadcast. From the martini to the shrimp, the lobster, the duck, the pork, and the goat cheese cheesecake and all the paired wines and fireworks in-between, it was an exceptionally pleasant dining experience. We must have been really lucky to get those reservations, too, since one of the waiters told us they already have reservations for next year's fireworks.

In other news, I started into my pound of Kopi Luwak coffee (Dallasites: lemur shit coffee) today, and after about a cup and a half so far, I can report that it is the most fantastic coffee I've ever tasted. It is incredibly smooth, yet it has a robust and well-developed palate of berries and old smoky wood. Great stuff, this.