Happy St. Patrick's Day

An oldie, but a goodie:

Indianapolis Zoo

Katie and I made a stop at the Indianapolis Zoo on Sunday. We intended to check out the Tropical Adventure exhibit at White River Gardens. The flowers were pretty nice, but the Conservatory was not quite as big as we were expecting, so we ended up fast-walking from building to building in the zoo for a while. As usual, the meerkats were one of the highlights of the trip, and this shot was the best of the bunch. Check out the rest of the photos from the trip here.

iPhoto Faces

The Faces feature of iPhoto '09 is pretty cool. It scans your photo library for faces, you can name then, and then it picks out more photos that could be that person. It's a little bit quick way to tag who's in your photos. However, I found a place where it doesn't work very well: Madame Tussaud's.

Evidence is in the posted screenshots. It's not surprising; I just thought it was funny. This might be pretty scary for a sports photographer, but maybe they'd be shooting with less depth of field than I could with a mural background. It was also very funny to deny Michael Jordan, Prince, Jamie Foxx, et al from being added to my list of Faces in iPhoto.

LEGO Thanks

The folks at LEGO gave us web guys these cool models as a thanks for building the LEGO Castle Adventure website that goes along with the new exhibit. The treasure chest even locks up, and it has a gold LEGO brick inside it. Pretty sweet.

Spring Training

16 Days until pitchers and catchers report. Who's ready?

Snow Day

I'm pretty confident I couldn't make it to work today, even though the museum stayed open. Even Ball State called off classes. So here's my photo for the day.

LEGO Castle Adventure

LEGO Castle Adventure is a new exhibit opening at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis on January 31. We have launched a website that goes along with the exhibit. You can check it out at this link. You should check out the games section. Create an account, build your own coat of arms, play a few fun games, and stack up loads of treasure in your treasure room. Let me know what you think...

Ball State Football

Believe it or not, the Ball State Cardinals are 7-0 and moved up four spots in the AP College Football Poll to #20 without even playing this week. The Cardinals haven't had a record this good since the 1960s and look to continue their winning ways on Saturday in Muncie against Eastern Michigan. Ball State also showed up at #20 in the first BCS standings of the year.

All of this is a far cry from the Cardinals that lost 21 straight games while I was in college. It's great to see the current coaching staff getting their own players into the mix and reaping the rewards of their hard work. Even ESPN at some point a couple weeks ago declared them "the best team in Indiana." I'm looking forward to seeing Ball State get some national exposure in the next couple of months, and hopefully seeing the 9-0 Cardinals pick up their tenth win at Miami in person on November 11. If anybody else feels like an Ohio trip on a Tuesday night, lemme know.

Grumpy

I wonder who hates baths more; cats or kids?

Leaves

My yard needs raked. All you idiots who says you love the fall colors and the cooler temperatures should come over and take care of that.

Wedding Photography

The wedding photography came in yesterday, and I got it uploaded to Flickr today. Feel free to check them out!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smallen/sets/72157607836493385/

Mom's Party

Mom hosted a little shindig at the Thorntown Public Library for the family and a handful of friends since a lot of people didn't get to go to Las Vegas. So it was great to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time, eat some pretty tasty food, and do a little socializing. The library is pretty awesome now that they've done all the remodeling and additions, and it worked perfectly for the gathering. I'll have to put some photos up whenever mom gets some to me.

Now that I'm married, there's nothing better to do than blog.

And that is my reentry into the world of spilling your guts for anyone who wants to read about it. As you can see from the comments on the six months of writing below, that's not too many. But those of you who do, you're great, really. So, let's see, what's new?

1. I retired from running.
Don't expect any more marathon updates or anything crazy like that. Running and I are over. I can't control myself. I went from about zero running for a few months to nine miles in one day after about four or five weeks. And then I broke down like always, because zero miles to nine miles is overdoing it. I can't run in moderation, so it's over for good.

2. We are settled into the new house.
We've been here long enough to have almost everything put away. We've made a couple of painful payments and stuff is starting to break. Joys of homeownership, right? Anyway, it's awesome. I'm sitting here with the windows open, the breeze at my back, and some unnecessarily long grass within my sights. I'll get to it tomorrow.

3. We got married last week.
Katie and I are official. We flew to Vegas, waited for the families to arrive, and did some gambling. (And then we went to the blackjack tables... ba dum cha!) Really tho, the wedding went well, the ceremony was nice and short. The champagne was cold. After we put the family back on planes, we drove a rented Mustang convertible to the Grand Canyon and did some hiking. Then we went back to Vegas to catch our plane and lost a lot more money that night.

Anyway, I think three complete topics is enough for today. Don't want this to be like running. I'll try to post something else before the end of the year... if anyone is still reading.

Marathon Update: Week 1

Thursday, July 10: 3 miles

Saturday, July 12: 5.5 miles

Week Total: 8.5 miles
Grand Total: 8.5 miles

Oh yeah... we moved!

I completely forgot to post an update on the move. We got mostly moved in, thanks to a lot of help from family and Jeff... (Thanks, Jeff.) Then Katie's parents and brother visited for 4th of July weekend, so I wasn't on the computer much. They helped us with a few home improvement projects and let us show them a few of the cool places in Indy before heading back to Iowa. We also hosted the monthly family game nite last nite with my mom's family. So, all my relatives on that side got to come down from Boone County and get a look at the new place. They also got to participate in a rousing game of DVD Family Feud (which the men won 804-295, despite being outnumbered four to eight). Now that we've got an empty house for a while, we can start hanging up some pictures and making the place a little more ours instead of just a place to put our furniture!

Here's a few photos of the house I took over 4th of July weekend. It's messy and not set up, but I'll go ahead and insert them into the posterity of the Internet.

Indianapolis Monumental Marathon

Indianapolis has a new marathon this year on November 1. Straight from their website, "The Indianapolis Monumental Marathon Course highlights a number of great buildings and features in our beautiful and convenient Indianapolis downtown including: the Indiana State Capitol, the Arts Garden, Lucas Oil Stadium, Circle Center Mall, Monument Circle, a number of federal monuments, the Cultural trail and the Mass. Ave. District. We are also happy to showcase several interesting and lovely neighborhoods including the Old Northside, Fall Creek Place, Meridian-Kessler, Butler-Tarkington and Broad Ripple."

I ran the Chicago Marathon a few years back, and the thought of doing something that's happening for the first time is pretty cools, so I decided I'm going to give it a shot. It's pretty late to get into the training schedule (most of the shorter schedules run around 18 weeks, and there are about 16 weeks til the race), but I think I have one modified to get me ready for the race. The route map on the marathon site is super low res and sucks, but if you compare it to Google Maps, you can figure out where it's going. They also posted a video of the route, for those of you familiar with Indianapolis:


I'll do my best to stick to the program and try to update my progress here once a week or so. Anybody else wanna join me?

Move Update

It looks like pretty much everything is squared away for the big move. After a couple agonizing weeks dealing with mortgage people, it looks like everything is where it should be. I'm not going to get too far into it, but let's just say you should avoid getting your mortgage through Bank of America if you can help it. Customer service is not their forté. A quick call elsewhere and all of our headaches were gone.

We close on the loan on Wednesday and should get the keys sometime on Friday. That means this weekend is "packing" weekend, and next weekend will be moving weekend. I say "packing" because we are only moving a few blocks, so it's going to be real half-assed packing. I think the plan is to throw the kitchen in some boxes, move them to the new house, put them away, and bring the boxes back to the apartment for the next room.

Today, my manly self installed a trailer hitch on the Escape so we can tow a trailer with the big stuff on it. I know, I know, pretty impressive. My hands were dirty and everything. The instructions said it would take 40 minutes, but it took me an hour. I guess I needed more pictures. The important thing is: it's done and it's at least sturdy enough to support my weight on it. We'll see how it does with more next weekend.

An Open Letter to the MLB Chief Blackout Officer

Dear Sir or Madam:

I have been a huge baseball fan since sometime between 1984 and 1987. The first year I actually played little league was in 1984, when I was four years old. Don't ask, I was from a small town, and we just made it work. The first time I fell in love with the Chicago Cubs was in 1987. Back then, the Cubs were on WGN every DAY (yeah, day, not night). I, like many other kids, would run home from school to turn on the last couple innings of that day's game. I learned to keep scorebook, and I have since found countless books from games stashed all over my old bedroom. Suffice it to say, I'm a pretty big Cubs fan, and I like to watch a baseball game any chance I get. Let's get to the point.

I live in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is home to the Indianapolis Indians, AAA farm club of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Because of your — what some would call arcane — blackout restrictions, I don't get to see many Cubs games these days. I've always been under the impression that the point of blackout restrictions is to make sure fans go to the ballgame. If there's a home game and it's not sold out, the game is not on TV in that team's market. This is where it gets cloudy. Why am I in so many teams' "markets?" There's no way I could possibly go to Cubs games in Chicago very regularly when I live three hours away. I'm in everybody's market. I can't get Cubs or White Sox games. I can't get Reds games. Despite what the map above appears to say, I can't even get Cardinals games. (Trust me, they're playing KC right now on Fox Sports Midwest and I've got test bars.) St. Louis is NEARLY FOUR HOURS AWAY!

Anyway, I would like someone to explain these rules to me. I just want to see my first place Cubs play a game every now and then. I have made trips to Wrigley Field every year for a long time. Last year I purchased the Extra Innings package because I was out of the Cubs market for the summer. I have paid for MLB.com's Gameday Audio every year for as long as I can remember. I'm not trying to escape expenses. Throw me a bone MLB!

Sincerely,

Scott Allen

Lots of Rain

Over the last couple of weeks, Indianapolis has gotten pummeled with rain. As I'm sitting here watching the Cubs, Fox is running a flash flood warning and seven counties south of Indy have declared a "Level 1 Flood Emergency." Authorities are asking residents not to travel. There have been about three or four occasions where our back yard has flooded full of water lately, which makes me laugh, because the "pond" fills up with mallards almost immediately. I finally got downstairs and took a few pictures of it.

This bad weather is causing all kinds of problems. Some of my coworkers lost power and had flooded basements last week. Hopefully that's not happening again right now. Surely the construction schedules for the bridges on my route to work are falling behind. It looks like the rain has hopefully stopped for today, but Monday and Tuesday are still showing isolated thunderstorms. Any ideas why this stuff is happening in June instead of April?

More Big News

Katie and I keep coming up with more big news to broadcast on the blog. This time we are in the process of buying a house. Although it's really good news and very cool for us to finally be moving somewhere permanent and not paying rent anymore, the house-buying process is way too grueling for me. After years of being about to pick up whatever I want at a store or buy something online and get it in a couple days, The idea of waiting a month and a half to get possession after we've signed the offer is just unreal.

So the stats of the place: It's a 3-bedroom, 2½-bathroom, two-story house. It has a dining room, living room, kitchen, half-bath laundry room and two car garage on the first level, and two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a master suite upstairs. We also have a small back yard and a small wooded area behind that.

The neighborhood seems pretty nice and quiet, and the way it's built, there's nowhere else to build, so it's as big as it can get. We're also not too far away from the park, and the best news of—we only have to move about half a mile from our current apartment! So, we'll be moving the weekend of June 27th. Keep that in mind if any of you want to help us move some stuff.