On the way back in to Pittsburgh yesterday, we noticed no less than three of those electronic traffic advisory signs which read:

Now, I don't need this explained to me per se; I understand that it has something to do with the big Steelers-Browns playoff game today. But that's not really a satisfactory explanation, is it? Somebody (hopefully more than one person, or I'll be a lot more wary about trusting those signs) who works for the city of Pittsburgh is:

• excited enough about football to put that message up

• excited enough about the Lord of the Rings to put that message up

• not excited enough about the Lord of the Rings to remember that Mordor is the center of all that is evil in the world.

But anyway, I'm back in Pittsburgh after a very relaxing vacation. It would have been somewhat less relaxing had we actually gotten trapped in that parking garage in D.C., but these things have a way of working themselves out if you try hard enough. And despite the fact that I had come up with even fewer things to do with Jenn when she came to Baltimore than in previous years, she enjoyed the visit more this year, which I guess is a good sign vis-a-vis her relationship with my family.

And now I'm back to mooching off her family part-time. I'm waiting to hear back from various job possibilities, but it's finally sinking in that, for the moment, I am completely adrift for the first time in my life.

I need to get Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again" out of my head.