Warhol and Cheese

What a day! Full of adventure, new things, and variety. This will go down as one of the best days of the trip probably. Perhaps I should make another list, the top 10 days of the trip. I’ll have to give that some thought and see what I can come up with.

It was great that I had my own room. Couches can get old after a while. It allowed me to sleep in for a nice slow start to the day. Shortly after lunch my destination became The Andy Warhol Museum in downtown Pittsburgh, right next to PNC Park. Brittany played host for the afternoon and we only took one wrong turn downtown. I’ve been a Warhol fan for as long as I’ve known the name. I had seen a lot of his work before at various museums, but not so much all at one place. Though it still seemed like a small museum for all the work he did. Now for all the works of art that Warhol produced that I would love to hang on my walls, there are just as many that just don’t appeal to me. Mostly I love his colorful screen prints.

There was an hour to kill between finishing up at the Warhol Museum and the next destination. That time for rest was much needed for what was in store… Chuck E. Cheese! I remember going to Chuck E. Cheese at least once in my life, but it had to be about 16 years ago or more. I was long overdue for another visit. It was time to celebrate Christian’s 6th birthday with about 10 kids ranging in a few years. To say the least, I was pumped! I hope to always have the kid in me. I LOVE playing skeet ball, it’s one of the greatest games ever invented. That occupied a lot of my time as well one game that had a huge payout on tickets, that’s key, finding the game with the biggest payout. I was able to hit the jackpot probably on average of once every 3-4 tokens. I was sure to give some of my winning tickets to the kids. We had a great time. Chuck Entertainment Cheese (Mr. Manager, is his middle name really Entertainment? Or did you just come up with that to give us an answer?) came out to say hi to the kids, they all danced and sang songs. It was a good night.

We were all exhausted by the time we headed home. But Lisa and Karen made sure we didn’t get back to the house without stopping at their favorite place to get a blend of gelato and custard. Naturally, I went with the raspberry. But my treats didn’t end there for night. We were all relaxing upstairs before going to bed and Lisa handed it down to me, the next person in line, a bag of cotton candy. I felt a little awkward and unsure of what to do. I had never eaten cotton candy in my life. I figured if I can handle trying rocky mountain oysters, I can probably handle some cotton candy. As I reached in and told Lisa and Karen it was my first time, they were in shock. But when they saw the confused expression on my face they knew I wasn’t kidding around. This was a completely new experience for me. I can only imagine how confused I looked when I first touched it, I really didn’t know how to expect, and they said my face was priceless when I first put it in my mouth and exclaimed, “It melts!” They asked that I call my parents to confirm that this was indeed my first time, and not even my parents recalled a time where I had ever tried it as a child. It was a unique experience. If I had to choose between cotton candy and rocky mountain oysters, I would choose the cotton candy. But, if I was at the ballpark or carnival I would choose a hot dog or elephant ear long before choosing cotton candy.