This Past Week

I spent the last week in Indianapolis for SUPER USER training for work. I was stoked to find that I could fit a Lady Rocket game at Ball State into my drive down to Indy on Sunday. With the new Route 24, the drive to Muncie took about 2.5-2.75 hours. There were SO many UT fans who made the trip…I would say 1/2, if not more, of all the people there were UT fans. Those old people really love their Lady Rockets.

I had to drive by myself, since I was going on to Indy, but Bossman and Sue brought Ron the Usher and another rabid Rockets fan. I beat them there, and went into the arena near the ticket office, and the Lady Rocket Fan Club was in the lobby taking pictures and screeching. I had to wait outside while they wore themselves out. Here’s a picture from my wait outside:

The Lady Rockets won the game, despite their best efforts, and here are some pictures from the game:

From Muncie, I went on to my hotel on the northwest side of Indy. Here’s a picture of the weird “&” in my hotel room’s bathroom:

What the hell is that about?

Anyway…so far, my work trips have always worked out so that I have an old pal I can hang out with. My old AW BFF Stephie lives in Indy, and she was nice enough to let me hang out with her at her house a few nights. Sunday night, after I checked into the hotel, I went to Stephie’s and met her 22 month-old son, Hunter, and saw her (relatively) newly constructed house.

Monday, we had 5 hours of meeting in the distribution center conference room. The part of Indy where we were seemed to have a ridiculous Canada Goose problem. There were a couple of geese who squawked outside our conference room window most of the time we were there. The receptionist put this weird plastic wolf with a furry tail out to scare the geese, but it didn’t affect them too much:

The manager of the Indy pharmacy made a list of things to do in Indianapolis that was passed out to us on Monday, and he listed Pacers’ games on Monday and Wednesday. When we finally got out of class on Monday, I tried to recruit somebody to go with me to the Pacers game that night. Of course, they all just looked at me like I was crazy (possibly because when we introduced ourselves and were supposed to ‘reveal a hidden talent,’ I told them about being able to pick up golf balls between my toes), so I decided to go by myself.

Here’s a picture from the outside of the Bankers Life Fieldhouse:

I went into the store and bought some pencils (!), a Pacers hoodie, and a David West t-shirt.

Bankers Life Fieldhouse is very nice and relatively new (built in 1999). There are no walk-through metal detectors – everyone gets wanded and has to lift up their pant legs – and the concourse is set up really well and has tons of different food and drink options.

A picture from the concourse:

From the concourse, I could hear what sounded like a marching band. It turns out, they have a couple of sections for (painted and what not) rowdy fans, and one of the sections is fronted by a group of drummers.

I went in and made my way to my seat I had bought on the NBA Ticket Exchange (with a bit of help from a jerky usher), and I was relieved to find empty seats on either side of me. After a while, a guy and a girl came and sat on my left. At first they were giving me weird looks, but as the game went on, they drank more and more and finally asked me if I was at the game by myself. Um, yes. I am a weird person.

Here are some pictures of David West, who was scratched in the eyeball by gross Brook Lopez a minute or two into the game and sat until after halftime:

My seat was $24 + about $10 in fees and was at the top of the middle section. I was in a corner, though, and my scoreboard view was a little weird:

Here are some game pictures:

I sent this picture to Brian to annoy him:

I took this picture on the way out after the game…notice David West’s X tattoo:

Wednesday night, Stephie and I went to Wine and Canvas for a painting class similar to the one I did with Kim a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the instructor’s painting:

Wine and Canvas is a chain, and they have a dedicated storefront for the classes. They don’t allow you to bring your own food and drink in. They have an expensive bar:

The classroom is big, and they charge $35 a head for the class. They must make money hand over fist:

The paintings were not nearly as neat as the ones that Kim’s friend teaches. Here are some pictures of my painting along the way:

My painting turned out pretty terrible:

Afterward, we had somebody take our picture:

Stephie looked at it and realized she hadn’t put her hair down, which she thought made it look like we were “partners.” We took this one to fix that:

Our class ended around 10am on Friday, but not before we got the grossest shirts ever that we HAD to wear for a picture. As someone who is grotesquely fat right now, this cheap shirt did not delight me. Ew: