The Monster that Almost ate Pittsburgh

This really is not Pittsburgh. Well, not Pittsburgh as I knew it.

The summer has brought two main weather patterns: Heat and Rainy Thunderstorms. The heat is crazy, it has been between 85 and 95 for the past few days. In Spokane, 85 sounds like an ok summer day. Here you never stop sweating... I really miss that awesome cooling feeling when you walk in to the shade. And evenings will never be the same. But this is me being a broken record.

Yesterday there were thunderstorm warnings all across West Moreland and Allegheny counties. On my way home (around 4:00) I got to about 10 minutes away from home, when the sky turned black, and the rain started. The rain here is something else. I am sure there are other places in the world where it rains more, but this was still ridiculous. Traffic was slowed to 10 mph everywhere. I was worried that if I stopped, my little car would get washed away. I was going up hill, like a legit hill, and still splashing water to the sides of my car at least as high as my window. When I got home, I was not going to wait in my car for the storm to stop, so I loaded with my groceries and my bag, and made a run for it (a whole 20 feet). There was no chance, I was drenched when I got inside.

Then this morning, I awoke to a deep red haze all around the house. The high humidity with even moisture in the air and early morning fog mad the sun rise eerie. It was something else... The when I thought I had experienced all of the effects of this weird place, as I was driving to work this morning something else happened. There was fog building up inside my car, so I flipped on my de-fogger. As you may know, the AC kicks on to equalize the temperature of the glass, so the water stops condensing. It was hot, so I also had the 'temperature' set to cold. A few moments later, there was abundant visible fog coming out of all of the vents. Like the 'cold fog' you see when you open the freezer... but this was billowing out in to my car. I got really excited, then remembered I needed to drive.

Yesterday morning, I got up really early to take Andrew to the airport. When  I walked in to my bathroom without my glasses on, I noticed a dark spot on the floor. My first thought was that there was a cockroach chilling in my bathroom. This was not a good thought.... so I decided to reach for my glasses to inspect this dark thing. Just as I was reaching over, the thing started to move. By the time I put my glasses on the thing had made it across the floor, and was going for the dark space behind the toilet. There I saw the largest centipede/millipede/long bug with lots of legs I have ever seen. The body had to be at least 3 inches, with half inch legs rapidly moving, and antenna flailing around. I very quickly reached up for a cup, and captured the beast before it could get anywhere. Looking back, I am a little impressed with my reaction time, as I had only been up for, maybe 30 seconds....

I took a shower and left. I didn't really want to deal with it, so I figure it would not get out. When I got home I knew that I needed to take care of it. I started by trying to get a piece of toilet paper slid under the cup. I lifted a little high, and the beast shot out, making a run for my room (with the carpet in there, I didn't want to deal with that...). I was able to re-capture, and eventually get a piece of graph paper under the cup.  Of course, I needed to get a picture, but I was a little afraid that it could climb out of the cup, so you have to deal with a low quality cell phone picture of it in the cup I caught it in.

The beast...

It then, very quickly was transferred to the toilet, where it almost escaped. A fair amount of TP was thrown on top of it, and it was flushed. Do worry... Pittsburgh is safe.

To answer your question Dad: West Otterman Street. Overly Door Company.