torley manor

Lil’ gifts are fun.

Lil’ gifts are funny when they are a set of magnetic scottie dogs.

Look at them take over the tea kettle!!!!

thanks emma!!

It can be argued that the last thing this world needs is another coffeeshop, but to be fair there are some neighborhoods that lack this nicety. I’m guessing that the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Morningside was one of these neighborhoods. I say i’m guessing because i’ve rarely had the necessity or impulse to venture into this particular neighborhood. No particular negative feelings towards this chunk of land, I merely was led to believe that there wasn’t much to do there aside from live there. To my knowledge it lacked any restaurants, stores or other points of interest which would draw you to a neighborhood. So aside from a couple visits to our friends’ house over there and a handful of times dropping off one of my fellow coop board members, I hadn’t ventured Morningside’s terrain.

But just this month recent Pittsburgh transplant Jeffrey Fry opened up the Morning Glory Coffeehouse at 1806 Chislett Street. So last night Emma and I decided to travel over there and check things out for ourselves. Jeffrey is still getting things rolling over there but things look great. The walls are freshly painted white (soon to be covered by artwork by Mary(Mack) Tremonte and Heidi Tucker — opening next saturday Nov 1st), small wooden cafe tables and seating line both walls, its cozy warm and pleasantly bright. MoGlo offers 100% fair-trade organic coffee, a full espresso bar, baked goods, soup, salad, wraps and the requisite free wireless.

Emma and I stuck with tea to drink, so unfortunately we can’t tell you much about the coffee. The tea selections were currently few (5 varieties?), but I would expect that to expand soon. I also got a bowl of the vegan chili, which was delicious, if only a bit more soup-like than expected. We got to catch up with Morningside residents Ian and Laura bonnet and their wee one who were also enjoying a little downtime at MoGlo. Jeffrey jammed the Tusk Lord CD while we were there which was a pleasant surprise. We recommended that Jeffrey check in with Deanna at My Goodies about getting some vegan baked goods over there, so hopefully that’ll happen.

So if you find yourself in the Morningside area or wish to venture somewhere new, give MoGlo a visit. They are open Mon-Fri 7am-7pm, Sat 9am-7pm and closed Sundays.

We haven’t turned the furnace on in the house yet. Sunday morning I woke up and the thermostat in the living room said 51 degrees. This morning it said 50. Emma and I agreed we would hold off until it got into the 40′s. I suspect that will be in the next couple days.

In the meantime, yesterday I went into the attic to get something and came to the realization that the attic right now is the warmest place in the house, as it gets sun all day. Seriously its like 10 degrees warmer up here. So today after work I headed up to the attic to hang out and transfer computer files from our old Dell laptop that i’ve shared with Emma to my fancy-pants new Macbook that I bought for myself. Its cozy up here. My hands aren’t numb. I’m lovin’ it. Plus I feel like a teenager up in my secret hideaway.

Also, I get to visit with our army of stuffed animals that we’ve displaced from the living room. Here’s a photo of me with our lil’ friend the hedgehog.

Tonight I will also be up here digging through a stack of old show flyers, looking for material for a show flyer artshow at Roboto that Leanne is putting together. This artshow will likely be in conjuction with this year’s ADD Fest, which marks Roboto’s ninth anniversary. More details on all of this forthcoming.

rama-lama-ding-dong!!

Last week I decided that I could use a new sweatshirt. Don’t get me wrong, my black Carhartt hoodie treats me well and the York College Tennis sweatshirt that the Meisbergz recently gifted to me has a special place in my heart, but I wanted a zip-down hoodie with some color. Somehow red seemed appropriate. Red goes well with the colors of fall and then works well into the X-mas holidays, not to mention the red lights of emergency vehicles as we daily tumble towards the apocolypse.

And while I don’t normally endorse the works of Adam Sandler, this is perhaps one of my favorite works of his, taken up and over the top by Kevin Nealon at the 2:30 mark.

SNL – Adam Sandler – Red Hooded Sweatshirt –