Since Pittsburgh is the other big city in Pennsylvania, and I had never been there, I decided to check it out with Merritt this past weekend. The chosen weekend was timely; The Animation Show (which isn’t scheduled to visit Philadelphia) was screening in Pittsburgh, and since I wasn’t going to Ottawa this year, this was a good excuse to drive several hours to see some animation, and see whatever else Pittsburgh had to offer while I was at it. As it turned out, much of the “whatever else” (at least the stuff I was most interested in) was unavailable when we visited. The Mattress Factory was closed on Saturday as they put together a show that would be open to the public on Sunday afternoon…when we were scheduled to be visiting Falling Water. The beautiful irony, of course, was that when we arrived at Falling Water, all the tours for the day were already booked, so we could only get grounds passes and wander around outside the house, envying those inside. We did get to see The Animation Show, however, and only a fraction of its program was new to me, a forgettable fraction at that. Still, most of the films were a welcome second (or third, or fourth) viewing, particularly Don Hertzfeldt’s hilarious, minimalist shorts. And we did get to see The Andy Warhol Museum, which provided seven floors of inspiring synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen on canvas.

On a completely unrelated note, if you need an upcoming wedding or birth announcement to look extra pretty, look no further than Rhubarb Design, just launched by my friend Heather.