It's official...

This post, like the best showcases on The Price is Right, has a theme.

It's official: I accepted the job with DEM and start April 21st, so my carefree days of watching basketball all day, walking the dog in the middle of the day, and late morning blogging are numbered. I am getting a bit restless though, so it will be nice to start!

It's official: we have 4 number 1 seeds in the tournament for the first time. Boring! But exciting too because Carolina is one of them! Rock!

It's official: I am excited about Obama! Kerns, Heidi, and I went out this weekend and canvassed for Barack in a neighborhood near Butler University. This neighborhood was a great mix of undergraduate students, young couples and families, and older couples. The majority of people we met were already planning on voting for Obama, but we spent time talking to a number who were still undecided. We registered a few to vote and signed up some volunteers. For me, the experience gave me hope and grew my excitement about the primary and general election.

Beer Celebs!

The picture below is from the front page of Indianabeer.com. Elizabeth and I are pretty easy to spot in the middle of the picture, and Kerns is between us, facing away from the camera. You can see Heidi's hat, but not her face. This was originally spotted by John all the way out in Portland, where they have truly good festivals of beer. To read a Kerns's accurately negative take on the AleFest, click here.

Top Pot hits the Big Time

With our niece Alex visiting, we decided to try the local cupcake place, The Flying Cupcake bakery. We enjoyed our cupcakes, though they weren't up to our Seattle favorite, Cupcake Royale (or runner up in the Seattle contest, Trophy). We do plan on heading back to check out their other flavors and their gelato!

We lived in the northwest too long because we were absolutely shocked that a cupcake place could exist without coffee (though they did have milk at least). This dearth of coffee led us to the nearest coffee shop, in this case, a Starbucks. While there, we happened to mention the words doughnuts and Seattle, and the barista announced to us that that very Starbucks would be getting Top Pot doughnuts in a few weeks! I am not a huge doughnut fan overall (Andy sure is), but I love Top Pot. They won't carry my favorite (the cinnamon sugar old fashioned) and I'm not sure if they'll live up to the ones sold in Top Pot stores, but I am damn sure going to find out!

Now, if they would only sell Manny's....

SWEET!

Carolina is in the Sweet 16! And they aren't the only team that hails from the Tar Heel state. Nope, Dook didn't make it past Huggy Bear's WV team (rock!), but tiny Davidson managed to upend one of my final four picks, Georgetown! I hope they make it to the final four (even though they'd have to knock off Matt's Villanova team in the process).

Triple Threat

Elizabeth here. Considering I have a cold and really didn't feel very well, yesterday was a pretty darn good day filled with a trio of positives!

I. I started out the day with a job interview at the state Dept of Environmental Management. They were excited about my background and skills, and since my personality didn't scare them off, they unofficially offered me the job on the spot! It seems like a good fit so baring any other job offers (say to be Bruce Springsteen's personal harmonica cleaner), I should be working there soon!

II. Last night, we went to a show that can be summed up in a word: fucking awesome!* The Boss was in town, and by getting there early and being a bit lucky, we managed to score pit passes (thanks to Chris and Caroline's insistence). We were mere rows from the Boss, 10 ft (or less!) at times. For the first few songs, we were all grinning like idiots, occasionally exchanging a "this is awesome" and "can you believe this?" During the 3rd or 4th song, I almost starting crying I was so excited; I finally understand all of those Beatles groupies! It was ridiculous really! The highlights of the show were older numbers like "Sandy," "Badlands," and "Spirit in the Night." The band didn't seem to have the same energy for the songs from the new album, but I'm really not complaining because they focused on some old classics and backtracks.

At the beginning of the show, Bruce made a reference to The Red Garter, a gentleman's club here in Indy. According to some guy's comment on indy.com (see second comment), at his first Indianapolis show in 1977, he and Clarence made a visit to said club and then brought a couple employees on stage!

The major disappointment of the show was the lack of a sell out. According to backstreets.com (where you can find the setlist), there were only about 10,000 people there. I am not sure if it was the NCAA tournament or high ticket prices or what, but Indy needs to represent! We may be driving to Cincinnati for his next tour!

III. It's NCAA tournament time, which is without a doubt my favorite time of the year for sports. Carolina's a number 1 seed, and I made it through yesterday with a perfect bracket! I better post this before games start and my bracket falls apart!


*bloggers note: I realize that we have used this combination of words before and am not trying to be repetitive; I just felt this was the most accurate way to describe our experience.

Hey, man...check out this song.

So we made it back from a successful trip to Seattle where we saw our friends Jeff and Teri get married, got to see a whole lot of our friends and eat a lot of good food. Oh yeah, I also managed to drink 12 Manny's in four days. I think Elizabeth had five or six herself.

I've recently been mildly obsessed with this song from Okkervil River's latest album The Stage Names. The song is aptly titled The Plus Ones. The first thing I noticed was the infectious melody, which is always a good start with a song. Then I listened to the lyrics and realized how gimmicky it was and decided I shouldn't like it. The song references a series of songs that have numbers in them and then adds one to the number (hence the plus ones). At first this seemed very annoying, but the song is just too well written and it grew on me. It helps that most of the songs it references have indie cred (96 Tears, 7 Chinese Brothers, etc.) So you should check it out. The below youtube video is live so it is kind of a questionable recording, but I think you'll get the point. Enjoy!



I found another blog that takes a pretty extensive look at the song here.

Barak coming to Indy

We're going to be out of town (d'oh!), and there are zero details provided in the wishtv.com article, but it looks like Obama's coming to town this Saturday.

Northwest Again

Tomorrow, Andy and I head back to Seattle for a wedding. All in all, it's pretty strange to be returning so soon. We haven't been here long enough for it to feel like home, and it doesn't seem like we've been gone long enough for us to be guests in Seattle. However, we are damn excited about seeing everybody and drinking some Manny's!

In the spirit of all things northwest, I have to post another link to this random Indianapolis based (Project Runway/Purdue basketball/Oscars) blog I found. On it, there is a post about one of the strangest events to ever occur (at least on national television). In 1998, brilliant sad bastard crooner and adopted PNW-er Elliott Smith preformed at the Oscars, and not only that, he was literally bookended between Trisha Yearwood and Celene Dion. Every time I think about this performance, my mind is blown, and watching the three of them on stage together taking a bow is seriously bizarre.

I am seriously doubting his meteorological knowledge

In my Bloomington days, there was one weather authority: Paul Poteet. Maybe it was because Sarah and I watched Good Morning America before heading off to class. Or maybe it's just because I liked his name (c'mon, it is a great name!). I am not sure. I do know that in college, there was one weatherperson, and it was Paul Poteet. However, upon moving back to Indianapolis, I feel that I may have grossly overestimated his knowledge of all things weather. His bio did not give me confidence. Nor did his website. And I am not sure what to think of his "Off the Cuff" segment with the traffic guy, particularly this one with the Watson's girl. It's more like a car wreck than entertainment. But on the plus side, it does have the Watson's girl. And at least he isn't taking himself too seriously.

Delegate Obsession

Elizabeth here. Fair warning---this is a political post. I have been somewhat obsessively following the democratic primary lately. I am very much in the bag for Obama. In fact, after reading this fellow blogger's post, I was fired up enough to go to Obama's website, make a donation, buy a yard sign and a t-shirt, and sign up to volunteer.

I was hoping (but not expecting) that Texas and Ohio would be wins for Obama (though Texas may have been sort of) and that Hillary would have to drop out. Obviously, this did not happen, and now it looks like we have to go all the way to the convention to get this thing settled. According to Slate's delegate counter, with the superdelegates that Obama has now, he would pretty much have to win 75% of the rest of the contests. But it looks like he will almost certainly have more delegates when convention time comes, and surely the democratic party would not implode itself just to get Hillary in office. Of course, there is also this whole mess with Florida and Michigan. It sure seems like time to revise the system!!

The good news for us Hoosiers and Tar Heels is that our primaries matter for the first time in living memory. Oh yeah, and speaking of Tar Heels, tonight is the rematch with Dook! Let's go Heels!!

In the Basement

So I've avoided this long enough, it's time to get to it. Andy here with my official basement lovefest post. I don't know why, but I love having a basement. Basements are cool. They're dark, damp, kind of creepy. What's not to love? It was one of my few must have items while we were looking for a house. And now that I have a basement of my very own, I find myself down there with surprising frequency, and usually hanging out for longer than necessary in spite of there not really being anything to do down there. So here it is, a virtual tour of our basement:

The graffiti wall is a nice starting point, as it really grabs your attention when you first go down. The only things dated on there are from '93, and as basement graffiti trivia revealed, there was some Terre Haute connection. The only other clue to the motives of those who did this is that they seem to be huge Brady Bunch Fans.

The basement also contains an auxiliary refrigerator, which is something I've thought was a good idea for quite some time. I fill the bottom with beverages (of course beer, but also coke, sasparilla, poweraide, San Pelle-what?, etc.) and Elizabeth fills the top with tomato sauce. This leaves the upstairs fridge free of overcrowding. It's the perfect set up. The second fridge was a welcomed and unexpected perk of this house.

Next in the basement is the discovery I made a couple of days after we lived here. There is a "secret" section of the basement that revealed itself when I lifted a pegboard panel that I noticed was hinged. Behind this panel was an amateur shooting range! There is a can on a string that is on a pulley leading to a metal background about 20 feet away. Elizabeth finds this kind of creepy, but I find it mostly fascinating. It seems like the previous several owners of the house must not have realized this was here. The Vernors ginger ale can on the pulley looks like it could be from the 80s, and I found a metal box right by the shooting range that contained some random things that appear to have belonged to a high school kid who lived in the house around 1960. Among the items are the box for a nuclear power plant model-kit, the January 1960 issue of Sports Afield Magazine, a whiffle ball box. But the prize items are a copy of the Handbook For Pupils of Broadripple High School, last revised, 1957. I have yet to go through it very closely, but I do plan on reading through it at some point. Also in the box were a couple of art projects where he appeared to be designing record covers for (presumably?) fictitious albums. Our favorite is Themes From Horror Movies.

There is, perhaps, more to tell of the Haverford basement, but this post has grown tiresome and must be stopped. Until next time!

Ben-Jammin'

Andy here. So I'm watching TV tonight and I see a commercial where some dude is pitching Comcast cable in front of a convener belt or something . Then suddenly I realize that the dude pitching the cable is someone I went to high school with: Ben Tebbe! Ben's been acting for a long time (I've seen him in an IRT production, of which he's done several), but I think this is the biggest thing he's done so far. This is very funny to me, mainly because he had to share the stage with me on at least two occasions growing up, now he's in a (perhaps national?) commercial. Oddly, I had just been informed the night before by my friend Kristi that he had done a commercial, then I saw it today.
Great job Ben!

First Interview!

Elizabeth here. I just wanted to share the happy news that I have an interview this Friday! As Heather would say, "Woot, woot!" It's with the Indiana Department of Health.