I seriously can never escape. I love what I do, I find it totally rewarding, but I really work all day everyday. This week I was supposed to be on vacation, including last thursday but everyday I worked for huge portions of the day. Yesterday for 12 hours which is 2 hours over my normal work day if I wasn't on vacation. I wake up with work phone calls and I stop working from bed as I go to sleep where I dream about work problems and then wake up to a work phone call.

In December I lost 4 days when they expired. Now I am losing about 60+ hours by April 1 because there is no time for me to take vacation. Everytime I try there is some mega project that needs to be done right now followed by a bunch of little things that are helping other people but add up.

I really can't ignore any of them it seems. Everytime, I ignore email, I just get a phone call. I keep asking myself why I am doing this when there are plenty of jobs out there that are better fit to my sanity...

We went to the wholefoods in Pittsburgh on the way home. If you remember I loved wholefoods in Orlando and (e:yesthatcasey) and I ate there everyday on our trip. Coming back from that trip I wanted one here so bad. Then I went to the Pittsburgh one. Its was so totally different. The prepared foods section seemed like so lame compared to the Orlando. If we got a wholefoods but its was a half rate one like that I would be so sad.

The trip was to visit (e:joe)'s sister for her 20th birthday today. After the walk around the city, we met up the with family for a trip to the botanical gardens. The botanical gardens are similar to ours but its just so much more refined plus they have a cafe. I wonder if ours would make more money with a cafe attached.

With our membership to the Buffalo Botanical Gardens we get reciprocal deals at ~300 botanical organizations in the US. So (e:joe) asked at the desk if we would get a discount and they were like "pfft - NO" as though we were asking something totally ridiculous.

Anyways the $15 entrance was totally worth it. The temperature, humidity and smells were amazing. I loved the banana scented flower bush in the Indian Forest exhibit. I would go back again in the summer. They have a new sustainable green section that has net 0 energy consumption.

We had so much fun touring around the city in the morning. I kind of wish I lived there now. We tried to go up in the Carnegie Castle but the desk clerk said they don't have any observation decks areas since 9/11.

It was hard to get good photos at night but we had so much fun running around the city in the middle of the night. The architecture was hard to photograph at night but Pittsburgh looks awesome at night. Everyone awesome building we have, they have ten of the same at higher quality. It makes me think no one will really ever travel here for the architecture of downtown even if we restored every historical building that exists.





















After a late start, we traveled all over the city looking for a cool place to hang out. We ended up at Lucky's which was one of the best gay bars I have ever been to. If you are in Pittsburgh and like divey gay bars packed with tons of people, I say check it out. The vibe kind of reminded me of the old buddies in Buffalo and also kind of like the barn in Toronto.

The downstairs looks kind of like a diner with booths and a round bar. We sat and had a drink and I honestly thought that was the whole bar till I saw a sign on a door that said something about nude dancers upstairs. Needless to say, we went in the door and up the stairs of what looks like an old row house. There are still marble fireplaces upstairs and the stairwell looked pretty residential from another era.

The disco lighting, mirror walls and dark interior, mixed with marble fireplaces and totally nude male strippers really set the mood. It was kind of funny how the strippers, who were wearing nothing would just stand up and flop their junk back and and then bend forward to talk to people at the bar, only to pretty much shove their open butt crack in the bar tenders face.

At the very end of the night everyone sang, "Last Dance" by Donna Summers with linked arms dancing in a circle. It was probably the gayest moment of my life.