Ah yes... saw the remark about snow plows. If you hate the SUV as some liberals do, do NOT move here. Probably 3 out of 4 own one even if it isn't their every day drive. It is just a mater of survival. Honda CRV, Subaru, Jeep, H3, gotta have one.

I saw a BMW with bald tires holding up a line of cars behind them and laughed. Car payment keeping you from buying good tires?

I had to get out of my plumbing truck and push a Prius out of their parking spot. Good tires, just no guts.

Never been much of anywhere especially Portland but...

Portland, and Oregon in general is stereotyped as quite Liberal and Progressive.

Pittsburgh being the child of heavily unionized industry, is very Democratic. Might make you feel at home.

The weather here kind of sucks. I think we set records for the most cloudy days. Not a huge problem if you take a lot of Vitamin D. We put SAD in the medical books (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Oregon is further north I think and so it might not be a big change.

We aren't in the national news for bad crap much. That's a plus.

If you are into cultural stuff we have a good Classical music station, The Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera is rather famous, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra won some nifty awards lately.

Me personally, I used to attend Rock Concerts at the Civic Arena, and other venues. The Arena is gone but we do get major billings here all the time.

Ah! It is what it is. I'm a lifer, already bought my plot in Monroeville, so I guess I'm here to stay.

Food

I tried to find links and just couldn't find a definitive one , but do a YouTube search for Rick Sebak, he is like the official Pittsburgh documentarian. You wanna know about Pittsburgh, he's the go to guy.

I have never understood Vegan. Why in the world would you work so hard to decide what to eat when God gave so many options and told you that they are good for you?

You are placing yourself between attempted help.

Mayo? As in Mayonnaise? I happen to like it with Bacon Lettuce and tomato. It is a human creation I have no idea where you are coming from.

No, God does in fact say He hates divorce. I'm not speaking for Him just quoting what He said.

Telling someone who has had an unfaithful partner to find fellowship with a church family is only a bad thing to a person who does not value God's ways.

This is why God hates divorce. You need to find fellowship. Dunno if you are a Christian, but fellow believers will understand and be there for you. Or they better!!! Find a good church, even if it's not your thing, get to know some people there. You are exceedingly likely to find a friend or two or three that will make it better.

There must be air infiltration down there. Any outside doors ought to be blanketed or something.

It's a boiler. I'm wondering if all the rads are hot. If you have radiators that aren't hot how about trying to bleed air out of them?

Some thoughts. If your boiler is really old, there is a chance that a lot of heat goes up the chimney before that boiler jacket is heated up and the circulator starts moving water. Come to think of it, a lot would be going up the chimney afterwards too. Any boiler manufactured in the last 30 or 40 years should be in the vicinity of 75 to 80% efficiency.

Another thing is insulation. My house is a 100 years old, balloon construction, tongue and groove siding, horse hair plaster over lath, and it had ZERO insulation. I hired a company to come and foam insulate and the savings were incredible. Cost me a bit less than $6000 Cut my heating and cooling in half, no exaggeration. A brick house they'd have to come inside and drill through the plaster to inject

One other thing might be how the gas company bills. Sometimes they estimate and then update after a real reading.

What I found rather amazing is that it went down the same day that
Biden was here to talk about infrastructure funding.

Yea, definitely need an all wheel drive SUV type thing around here with aggressive tires. Take your car out off road or to a mall parking lot when there is a nice snow and do donuts and goof around in the snow. Gun it, cut the wheel, play in a safe place. Then when the day comes and you hit an icy patch on a steep curving hill. You will grin when you pull out of it!

I'm a Pittsburgh lifer so I have no experience elsewhere. I am a Plumbing/HVAC service tech so I do travel all over. I would tend to favor the East Suburbs. That's where I am. The further East you get, the more rural it gets but you don't have to go all that far to get back into the city pretty quick for cultural stuff and entertainment like on the south side. If you get too close to the city, you are most likely going to be in an older home. The good ones do have character and fine craftsmanship, they just don't build them like that anymore, but it may also come with the downside of a 100+ year old house needing maintenance. Then again you might get shoddy builders on the new ones. Avoid a Ryan home. North of the city is pretty upscale too. But you have to go up towards Cranberry and Wexford. South is Mount Lebanon and Upper St. Claire. Upscale, Not too familiar with that area.

People are people wherever they're from but I would say that Yinzers lean toward easy going. OK. Nuff.

Well. I'm a lifer. Stuff I don't like about the Pittsburgh area is not much. They won't do what it takes to make the Pirates a winning team. I'm in the eastern suburbs and it's all good out here.

You like liberal and not so good with conservative? Not to worry. The Liberal machine has had control of Pennsylvania for a long time. That does kind of make the state suck in a lot of ways but if you're from California, you'll never notice.

Pittsburgh does have arts and entertainment.

Wait a minute... you are an avowed liberal, hmm. Yea Boston, Seattle are much much nicer places. The snow here sucks, we record the most gloomy days of any city in America. Yea. Forget Pittsburgh.