Big Engagement News

The moment of truth passed on Thursday night, and I asked Katie to marry me. She thought about it for an uncomfortably long handful of milliseconds and thankfully said yes. So it's for real.

Now's where it gets ugly, or so I hear. Planning, planning, planning. I don't know anything about planning anything, let alone a wedding, but that's what they make fiancees and moms for, right? I don't plan to be uninvolved, but I don't plan to take the lead either. I will happily sit in the back seat and opine when asked to.

But seriously folks, it's happening. It's most likely going to be sometime this fall. I'm crazy excited about it. I think she is. (Can't you tell from all her posts? Oh wait...) My whole family is. (Even more than when I won the spelling bee, or won the Little League Championship, or graduated high school, or broke school records in college track, or graduated college, or found my first job, or moved back to Indiana; I'm pretty sure the only reason anyone has baby boys is to marry them off for grandkids. Or maybe it's just my parents. End of tangent.) Anyway, there will undoubtedly be much more about this in the coming months.

March Madness Office Crack

This just in: The NCAA Tournament will cost businesses $1.7 billion this year (brought to you, this year, by Chicago-based placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.) Maybe they should be finding people jobs instead of doing this study. Who hasn't read this in any of the past 10 years? No one. Therefore, I'm not going to write about it.

But what I am going to write about, is the working atmosphere on the first day of the NCAA Tournament. The tournament pool is like crack. You have people wandering around with their brackets doing things they'd never do on a normal work day. Sending faxes. Giving coworkers money. Pulling their brackets out of a sleeve or pockets and handing them off secretively. I spent Monday through Wednesday thinking that there wasn't a pool in my workplace; I was so disappointed considering just how many people work there. Then at about 11:30am, one of my officemates shouts out of the blue, "I forgot to pick my brackets! How long until the first game?!" The first thing I said, within about 0.2 seconds, was, "50 minutes. You have time," and then I said, "Wait a minute... is there a pool here?" Turns out there was, but no one speaks of it. So you had to be in the secret club to know who to turn it into.

Anyway, I got my brackets turned in and became a member of the secret club. Then I proceeded to miss most of the first wave of games, so I guess that's another correlation to crack: money spent for a short term high.

CarSearch™: Climax

This story seems to have taken a turn for the boring (like so many of them do...). I started this little mini-series because I thought it would take a while to make this happen, but it looks like I've found a vehicle that I'm pretty happy with already. I went over to a small dealer in Avon a couple times and looked at a regular Escape that was priced on the low end of my range. It was a little beat up (seats were real bad), as I expected, but the outside looked really nice. I decided I didn't really like that, so I looked around a little more on the Internet and got interested in the Hybrid Escapes. People who have them seemed to be pretty happy with them, and I was finding some that were reasonably priced, considering you get about 30mpg, rather than 17mpg. So I decided my range could be a little bit higher if I considered the car payment part of my lower gas usage.

I talked to the Avon dealer and told them I was leaning toward the Hybrid, so I wasn't interested in the regular one they had anymore. They ended up calling back about 5 minutes later and told me their other lot in Terre Haute had one, and they would have it delivered to Avon in a couple days so I could check it out. I was a little skeptical, but I went and test drove it, and it was really nice. I liked the color, and I got them to come down on the price a little bit. So this car is on the higher end of where I wanted to go, but it's also a year newer and seems like it will last quite a while. So I guess there aren't going to be any insights or 'war stories' from this search. But it's not over yet. We'll see what Monday brings...

CarSearch™: On Car Salesmen

Car salesmen are an interesting bunch. On one hand, pretty much everyone has the same opinion of them: a greedy, lying bastard out to take every penny they can from you, even if it means you can't afford to buy groceries or you might have to make room for a bed in what he just sold you. But on the other hand, the system lives on. The proof is in the pudding. Even if everyone in America hates used car salesmen, a heck of a lot of them still buy their cars from them. So, can you really blame them for acting the way they do?

By my recent estimates, approximately 54.2% of the Internet is advice from people on how to deal with used car salesmen, ranging from '10 Tips For Dealing With Car Salesmen to Make Sure You Don’t Get Hosed' (Everybody likes short and sweet and no one wants to get hosed.) to 'What Everyone Should Know About Dealing with Car Salesmen' (Hmmm, maybe I need to know more than 10 things...) to a 'Dealing With Car Salesmen' forum (Wait... these are real people. Real people I can trust.) to 'Confessions of a Former Car Salesman' and 'Confessions of a Car Salesman' (Clearly these two men have had a change of heart. Now that I'm armed with this, these salesmen better watch out!) and finally 'The Car Dealership's BIGGEST Secret -- Revealed!' (It's like the National Enquirer of car shopping!). After arming myself with this huge chunk of Internet wisdom, I'm ready to take on a world full of car salesmen.

Stay tuned for the next installment to see how well I use my newly discovered powers.

CarSearch™: Introduction

Remember that old show StarSearch that was hosted by Ed McMahon and lots of people age 6 to 60 went head to head against each other to gain the coveted four stars and the chance to fight another day? Well, I'm ripping off their title and pretty much none of their content in my quest to find a new vehicle. So this is going to be a quick warm-up post to make sure everyone is in the same ballpark.

Right now, I drive a 1992 Saturn SC, which you can sorta see on the right in a photo proving I was the first person to arrive for tailgating at the 2002 Ball State football game against Indiana State. So obviously, I've had the car since college. I believe my dad paid $3000 for it, and I've been driving it for six years. It has survived a lot, but it's starting to get worn out. The exhaust rattles a little, and there are a lot of minor things that I just don't care to fix.

So, I have embarked upon a search for a new-ish small-ish SUV. Right now I'm leaning toward a Ford Escape (which you can also see at the right, in a much better -- and much more manly -- photo) or a Chevy Equinox somewhere around the year 2004 or 2005. Hopefully that's enough to get you caught up. The posts will continue throughout the process.

Pacers "News"

Honest to God, this is the first news I have seen about this Pacers since, oh, I dunno, when Shawne Williams harbored a murderer and Marquis Daniels had a rape reported in his home:

Pacers suspend Harrison for detrimental conduct

1. Harrison is another bonehead. I'm not sure how to get rid of all of them; they are like bad pennies. He already made some great waves with his previously documented pot affinity.

2.Do these guys even play games anymore? The ratio of bad news to game stories (let alone wins) is not looking too good nowadays.

It's gotten so bad that the Indy Star has busted out the old timeline move: Timeline of Pacers' troubles

Someday maybe the Birdman will quit talking and start walking and get some of these fools out of here. The Pacers are 100% irrelevant to sports right now, and I'm not sure how they are selling any tickets when they are in Indiana.

Movie Review Sunday

In the last couple days, I've seen three movies, so I figure now is a good time to talk about them.

1) 300

As expected, I didn't think much of this movie. I knew the style it was shot in, I knew the storyline, and I knew that I don't normally like ancient war movies as much as most people. (See: Gladiator, Braveheart) Having said all that, it was a tolerable movie. I didn't give up on it. What I found more interesting than the movie itself was the history behind it. The movie is based on the story of the Battle of Thermopylae, between the Spartans and the Persians. However, depending on who you consult, the version in the movie may not necessarily be completely factual.

A quick search for 'truth about 300' led me to this site which apparently belongs to an Iranian-American who is filming a movie based on the life of Cyrus, who was king of the Persians before Xerxes. Anyway, he has an intriguing take on the battle that I'll leave up to you to read.

Back to the movie for a sec: I give it 2/4 stars.

2) Vantage Point

We went to the theater yesterday afternoon to watch Vantage Point, starring everybody and their brother. It was a pretty interesting movie. The premise of the story is the assassination of the president from 6 or 8 different characters points of view. So basically, you see the same 25 minutes of time from a bunch of different angles. It was a cool concept that worked really well for the first hour or so. It eventually got to the point where you were wondering how many times they were going to do it. The ending was great and, in the end, it was totally worth the wait.

I'd give this one 3/4 stars. If you're looking for a movie to check out in the theaters, this one is a winner.

3) Night at the Museum

And yes, yesterday afternoon, there was nothing better on TV than Night at the Museum on HBO. I'm not always the hugest Ben Stiller fan, but it was a cute movie. I found myself laughing out loud a few times, even though I felt bad doing it. Robin Williams is pretty funny as Teddy Roosevelt, and Owen Wilson is makes a convincing tiny cowboy. Aside from that, it's a typical happy ending movie. Not really many surprises.

It's a decent weekend flick for sitting on the couch. I'd give it 2/4 stars.