Downtown Canal Walk

Indianapolis Skyline over the Canal Walk, originally uploaded by scott_allen13.

This past weekend was beautiful, so we spent the whole time outside. After a long jog through Eagle Creek Park, we cleaned up and headed over to the Canal Walk for some people watching and photography. The nice weather has me itching to get out the camera. It's just too bad there's no leaves on the trees yet.

So a few hours and four sore calves later, we came out with this batch of photos and a little bit higher level of physical fitness. Enjoy the shots.

Children's Museum

Dinosaurs, originally uploaded by scott_allen13.

I spent a day at the Children's Museum over the weekend a couple weeks ago and took some pictures. I thought I'd show off the ones that are worth looking at.

FYI: The photo links to the complete set of images.

Texas Roadhouse

Katie and I just got back from Texas Roadhouse on Michigan Road. I don't ever fawn over food, but this was the best meal I've had in a long, long time. I had a ribeye with a baked sweet potato and a caesar salad, all of which were excellent. I also had two Captain & Cokes that were quite well made. Katie had the prime rib, which she also said was very good. Anyway, I don't really even have any jokes for this one. It was just tasty. I'll probably go back sooner than later.

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.