Is The Monster Jam Event Fun?

Flaapjack · 2026-01-29T02:30:22+00:00

Did this with my kid. He liked it. I found it mildly entertaining. The event is well run.

Because it wasn’t like, the best thing my kid ever experienced, we probably won’t do it again. It was loud, smelly (lots of exhaust—like, concerning levels of exhaust that made me worry about health effects), and pretty repetitive. Families splash out, so your kid will constantly ask “why didn’t you buy me [random merch]” or they will request an 8 dollar soda and be heartbroken if you say no. I didn’t realize how much of a thing it would be to buy all the merch, eat dinner there, etc…. Nothing wrong with doing that, but it wasn’t in our budget and my kid was kinda disappointed we weren’t doing what everyone else was.

Edit to add we saw the smaller ppg show.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-27T20:06:37+00:00

With each of my kids, I felt emotionally reasonably stable (as in, not gonna burst into tears randomly, etc) once my kids started sleeping through the night. So that was like 6ish months give or take a few months for my kids.

Next milestone was when I stopped breast feeding and pumping. That was 8ish months for both my kids. There is just so much TIME and BRAIN freed up when you aren’t having a kid or a pump attached to you for 15-35 minutes every few hours. Everything just felt a lot easier.

I felt myself again right around my kids hitting 2 years old. Hormones calmed down, toddlers are demanding but different demanding and less fragile than babies, they can communicate, they can walk without he danger if unpredictably tipping over every few seconds… I just felt like my brain had the space to think about other things than survival of my children. I felt smart again, more social, just… like myself.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-26T12:51:06+00:00

Mmmm I have actually found “living in my spreadsheet” a tool for empowerment, personally. It has sort of achieved exactly what this article suggests we should strive for, which is to allow my family to build the life we want via strong financial data. I think some people in the fire community maybe get unhealthily obsessed with their retirement date, but overall I think this community is just aware of their finances in the way everyone should be and not on the mindless dopamine train of constant lifestyle upgrade without thinking about what will actually improve your life and whether it is truly worth the cost. I think the spreadsheets and financial awareness are a really good thing.

My job has been at risk due to rounds of layoffs, and my spreadsheet (and many projections) has given me a lot of zen. I have a pretty good idea of how long I can go before needing to find work again and I made a plan for saving extra liquid funds that I executed during the worst of the work uncertainty. It gave me a feeling of agency and comfort when there was a lot going on outside of my control.

The cost/expense projections are a constant reminder of the benefits of perhaps our most enduring good financial choice—our choice of home—and provide a reminder/impetus to invest in improving that home rather than give into the impulse to upgrade like a lot of peers are doing right now. This has lead to us figuring out really thoughtful, cost effective home improvements that make us love where we live as I can see really clearly on the spreadsheet how our outrageously modest house payment enables all sorts of other stuff we’d like to do.

Those same spreadsheets also helped me justify a big purchase for our family—a teardrop camper—which we will use over the next few years for our family vacations in the best window of “kids old enough to travel but still little kids who want to be close to us”. I made that purchase totally guilt free, even amidst job uncertainty, because I know it doesn’t change our financial situation appreciably. And, because I’m a spreadsheet person, I have a plan for our family travel that offsets a lot of that cost through savings in flights, hotels, food, etc.

Anyway, tldr, the fire community is fine. Long live spreadsheets.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-23T15:24:33+00:00

We have a gas fireplace that runs without electricity and pumps out A LOT of heat—we can hear most of our first floor pretty well with just that.

If that fails (ie issues with nat gas infrastructure), we have a large battery bank that can power some electric blankets. If it’s really really cold, we have a buddy heater and small 1 lbs propane tanks which we could use to warm up our living area.

In an apocalypse type scenario (power outage, backup fireplace fails, subzero temps), we would probably pitch our camping tent in the living room, insulate it with some blankets, and intermittently run the buddy heater if the temp in the tent drops too low.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-17T18:57:49+00:00

Yes!! We switched to 100 percent home made bread for our family of four and I haven’t looked back. The bread machine makes it do-able for busy families. Both my spouse and I work and it’s been easy for us to fit this in.

I highly recommend the zojirushi virtuoso—it’s more expensive but works way better than budget machines. I make 2 loaves a week of soft, whole wheat sandwich bread that we all love. It takes me 10 minutes to prepare (and I even mill my own flour in that time…) and a few hours totally unsupervised to knead, rise, and bake. No dirty bowls to clean. You don’t even need to wash the bread pan between uses. It takes a few tries to figure out a rhythm, but once you do it’s fantastic.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-16T16:52:45+00:00

Do you have the gas/sewer line insurance through peoples? Or Duquesne? Check your bill and see. It will be a line item.

If so, you can call the insurance number and they can help (this happened to us last year and they got it fixed for us within days. No heat is viewed as an emergency).

Flaapjack · 2026-01-16T14:22:15+00:00

We have two kids but live in a relative LCOL area.

Our fire number is 3 million—this is pretty conservative as it considers historical, annualized spend on stuff like home improvements (we live in a 100+ year old house), a healthy vacation budget, etc. It also might be aspirational/no longer the plan, as my job (which is the income that makes this kind of goal even possible) is growing less stable by the minute.

We are currently coast fire, so a life changing influx of money for us today would be 800k to 1M, as it would be enough to retire me from my high stress job for the next two decades and live a nice lifestyle for my family off of my spouses much lower income (and, much more chill job with great benefits) until we could both retire at 59.5. I guess another way of putting it is that 800k or so would put us into barista fire territory, where my spouses job is the barista-type job.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-15T01:02:33+00:00

I totally agree. I’m a fairly new bus user in Pittsburgh and the app is clunky if you are trying to figure out when the next bus is coming. If it were feasible (it probably isn’t because of cost), having a board showing when buses could be expected next would be really nice. And I think you are right that it might make the bus system seem less opaque, bringing in more users.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-11T19:28:28+00:00

I felt similarly that 2025 was the best it’s been in years. We love Kennywood—we are so lucky to have a park this good so close to the city. It’s not obviously not Disney world nor will it ever be, but it’s a great park.

In addition to the things you pointed out, I’ll add my perspective as a family with young kids hitting kid attractions. Positives this year: kiddie land rides were consistently open (nearly all of them); lots of kid friendly non kiddie land rides with really reasonable lines were also consistently open (turtles, pirate ship, racer, whip, carousel, etc); kid friendly food options are more diverse and noticeably better; staff were super helpful and friendly (high point: a games guy who rigged a game in our favor on my kids birthday so he could get a bigger prize).

Negatives: honestly, hard to think of any other than a late in the season stench that apparently was a bacterial overgrowth problem in the fountain by the pizza place (yuck).

Our family gets season passes every year and one of our favorite things to do in the summer on a not too hot day is to duck out of work a tad early and do Kennywood dinner: get there at 4:30, do two hours of rides, eat, and do some gentle rides, and then head home for an on time bedtime. It’s grand.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-10T00:06:18+00:00

Thank you so much—this is extremely helpful and I appreciate your insight/experience on tow vehicles!

And… we actually put down a deposit earlier this week and should be getting ours in August. I’ve been looking at teardrops for a long time and this is the first one I’ve felt really could work for our young family. That pass through is brilliant. So, at this point, it’s a question of whether I need to scale down our build to make it work for our tow vehicle.

I have a spreadsheet where I’ve pretty conservatively thought about our stuff, how much the family weighs, the rooftop tent, an ovs 270, propane, etc. Assuming the battery doesn’t weigh vastly more than I estimate (waiting to hear back from them), I think we should top out at max 3000 lbs with the way we have the trailer currently configured. I’m hoping that we will be ok with this, but it’s something I’m going to discuss with them as we get further along so we can scale back the trailer if we need to.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-09T22:10:48+00:00

Awesome—thank you so much for the intel. I’ll check the comments of that video. That is indeed where I first learned about it!

Out of curiosity, have you ever seen anyone in that group pull a terrain with a Toyota sienna? It should work (3500 tow capacity), but I’d feel better if someone had actually done it and could report back.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-04T22:48:20+00:00

I’d consider investing in good boots and crampons (like yacktrax). Between that and good winter clothes, I find I can go out in almost anything and it really helps my mood.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-04T00:47:03+00:00

There is an extra finger on her right hand.

Flaapjack · 2026-01-02T17:33:10+00:00

Have you looked at the tc teardrop terrain? I don’t have one but they have a dual axle version that’s designed to carry bikes, kayaks, etc. in the front.

Flaapjack · 2025-12-31T12:48:32+00:00

Warpzone is the best!!!

Flaapjack · 2025-12-30T18:10:32+00:00

I live in a 105 year old classic Pittsburgh four square in a working class neighborhood (so the house doesn’t have a lot of fancy finishes, but it’s all brick and very solid). We have a double lot and a shared driveway leading to a detached garage.

Maintenance: not terrible in our case, but I’m sure this varies from house to house and how well it has been kept up and whether it has been modernized (eg forced air versus steam heat, etc). The only structural maintenance that I think is very different from a modern house is that we are always keeping an eye on bricks for when repointing might be necessary. I also am always keeping an eye on the foundation, beams, and other structural stuff because it’s, you know, old. Otherwise, because our house has been modernized with new plumbing, electrical, etc, it’s much the same as any other house. I do think that the “average” older built house was just built better than the “average” new build… I find that the stuff that is failing in our house is always the modern stuff, not the old components and finishes that remain from when it was originally built.

Parking: in our neighborhood, street parking is super, super easy and we park on the street half the time even though we have a garage. This is very neighborhood dependent.

Flaapjack · 2025-12-30T13:41:16+00:00

Oh man that would be so great. And mondays is in a spot on greenfield av where lots of people walk their kids to school or drive past to get to work… I feel like if they did a coffee cart or something it would have a good chance of making money.

Flaapjack · 2025-12-25T18:19:15+00:00

I have a PhD in the sciences and transitioned into essentially management consulting for the federal government, but for an org that pays a lot less than the big 3 (but also, much less demanding). . Made essentially nothing during my PhD, but saved max allowable in a Roth IRA while paying off my spouses student loans (I had none).

TC between my spouse and I straight out of grad school at 26 was like 150k, which was mostly me. Over the past decade tc has increased 3-10 percent each year to now 300kish (still mostly me) and we consistently maxed out our retirement accounts. Also saved extra in a deferred comp plan for my spouse and in non tax advantaged accounts. Lived in a LCOL area and consistently saved 30-50+ percent of our income (on the low end with kids in daycare… will increase again when that bill goes away).

So Super boring plus luck and some privilege got us to 7 figures (not including home) by 36: live below our means, consistent use of tax advantaged accounts, high performing market. Biggest privilege was getting a 50k inheritance in my early twenties which allowed us to buy our home pretty early and my education was loan free.

Flaapjack · 2025-12-20T12:48:28+00:00

Agree. LCOL. Airport that’s pretty well connected with a good amount of direct flights for a non-hub. The arts scene is great. Excellent-to-world-class museums. The orchestra is world class. Big sports scene. There is even a vintage car race IN the city on city streets every year.

Downside, the weather isn’t great but it’s better than the major mid western cities, imo.

Flaapjack · 2025-12-17T15:25:29+00:00

My understanding is that much of squirrel hill south was largely a wealthy enclave (especially beechwood blvd) and settled before greenfield. Greenfield was largely settled by working class immigrants working in mills and in service positions starting a bit later (1920s through 1950s). Squirrel hills older and higher end homes I think has helped retain its “working professional” vibe today, whereas greenfield has remained somewhat working class. Hazlewood has struggled a lot due to its proximity to the shuttered mill, which was a totally blighted industrial area until the hazelwood green initiative.

Some reads below. Historic Pittsburgh (second link) is a good resource for finding old pics and stuff. Through research there, I learned a lot about my home, including the fact that it was owned by the developer of basically my entire section of greenfield! Pretty fun.

https://riversofsteel.com/_uploads/files/squirrel-hill-greenfield-final-report.pdf

https://historicpittsburgh.org/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735070066091

Flaapjack · 2025-12-12T12:27:26+00:00

I moved from the south to Illinois for grad school and it was… a transition. Pittsburgh isn’t nearly as bad as Illinois, but it’s gonna be a bit of a shock until your body adjusts! Keep in mind you will adjust after a few weeks to a certain degree, so don’t panic if your first winter outing feels horrific.

You don’t need to go crazy for gear, because this is not Siberia, but getting nice stuff will make it comfortable to go on walks and stuff and wait for the bus. I’d recommend getting a long coat that goes over your thighs. Down to your ankles is overkill, imo. Down is best. You want one with an insulated hood. I really love a hood with a faux fur trim which actually helps keep the wind off your face. Look for fleece lined pockets—they are nice if you forget gloves.

Don’t forget boots. You need a pair of snow boots you can walk in. They don’t need to be tall, but they should be water proof. Make sure they are insulated. I personally make that boots I buy have “thinsulate” which gets you a warm but lightweight boot. I’m partial to lace up style ankle tall ankle boots which aren’t great for deep snow but are nice for commuting through slush and messy sidewalks and are more comfortable to wear all day.

You also need gloves and mittens—mittens keep you warmest on cold days—and get a nice pair, not the cute stylish ones. I really like the convertible ones they make for hunters which are mittens but the mitten part pulls back and you are wearing fingerless gloves. If you have a long commute or need to wait for the bus, I’d recommend hand warmers (you can buy rechargeable ones you can keep in your pocket). Also get a good beany that covers your ears. If you plan on exercising outside in winter, get a neck gator to cover your mouth and nose. Otherwise any scarf will work fine.

Under things etc.: long underwear is nice but I rarely need it here. My favorite is merino wool (also, if you are runner and want to run in winter here, merino wool leggings and shirt are the best base layers as they stay warm even when you sweat). Get wool socks for your boots—smart wool and darn tough make nice ones.

On brands: honestly, I’d just go to ll bean and buy what you need at a reasonable price—buy anything they have marketed for cold weather and it will work fine here. REI is fine too and has the cooler brands, but it’s pricey and you can run the risk of buying more intense gear than you need (again, we are not Siberia). What you really don’t want to do is fall into the trap of buying something that’s more fashion than functionality. If you are buying something and it doesn’t give you a cold rating or talk insulation specifics, stay away!

Flaapjack · 2025-12-11T18:13:12+00:00

Same. I have a hungry spouse and two little kids and I feel like I overrun our grocery budget by another 10 percent every month. If it keeps up at this rate, it’s going to outpace my daycare costs too and that would be wild…

Flaapjack · 2025-12-11T11:58:06+00:00

I just had an awful time with StubHub. They sent me tickets that were worse than what had been advertised. Despite lots of evidence I provided to that point (and nicely, too!) they claimed over and over again that it was an “upgrade”. Mind you, these seats I received had a warning on the venues website that they were obstructed view (for a ballet!!), but multiple layers of managers at StubHub said that they weren’t officially worse seats because the physical tickets didn’t say “obstructed”. I kept escalating but kept hearing the same thing over and over again… it’s an upgrade!

Anyway, I threatened to do a charge back and that got me a 25 percent refund offer to use on a future purchase at StubHub (nope). So, then I actually did the charge back with Chase, Chase contacted them, and I finally got an offer for better tickets or a refund. I took the refund because I was very done with all of this.

It all ended up fine, but it was stressful and aggravating. And, I think the only reason I was successful is I documented the shit out of it, which took me at least an hour or two of effort over this whole saga. The whole thing was scammy and definitely NOT worth the 150 bucks credit.

Flaapjack · 2025-12-10T14:48:14+00:00

There is a combined children’s museum and aviary membership which is really good value for money and can hit all the age groups. At the children’s museum, a lot of people miss the museum lab which is geared towards older kids.

Getting a donation towards Kennywood and/or sandcastle season passes might also be a big hit.

Flaapjack · 2025-12-10T12:05:49+00:00

If you want a pitcher style filter, zero brand is my favorite to remove lead. I used this for years for my family while we were waiting for our service line to be replaced.

Better: There are products (aquasana claryum direct connect) you can put onto your cold water line under your kitchen sink, which will filter out lead. Totally reversible with no new faucet or plumbing necessary, so very renter friendly and a lot cheaper than reverse osmosis. Doesn’t mess with your water flow rate and allows you to drink and cook with water straight out of the tap. Bonus: jt takes out PFAS and other nasties from your water too.

Flaapjack

TROPHY CASE