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adventures / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
13
Jun 16

What’s a blind dinosaur called? A Do-you-think-he-saurus

We journeyed up to Indianapolis for a Saturday trip. And we saw dinosaurs!

I don’t understand how everyone can be so casual about this. There are giant lizards destroying buildings and no one is under any sort of panic or is demonstrating the slightest bit of concern:

That’s at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, which is the largest in the world. They say there are 472,900 square feet on five floors and holds more than 120,000 artifacts. They get more than a million guests a year. But we didn’t go there today.

The Yankee has some family friends in Indy. Since my mother-in-law is in town we drove up for a visit, a catch-up, lunch and a little tour.

I also took a picture of the biggest sky walk I’ve ever seen, this is at the Arts Council of Indianapolis.

This was my first trip downtown. It feels like a small town, but busy. And it is just up the road, which is good, because I have to go see that museum.

The unpacking continues. I’ve got to figure out where to hang things. Like this:

Note the year, 1953. I’ve had that magazine — bought it in Kansas City I’d bet — for probably 20 years, because of a feature on the inside:

That’s my bachelor’s degree, after all, so naturally it is something I framed long ago. It should go on a wall somewhere. Somewhere that the dinosaurs can’t reach.

adventures / Bloomington / Indiana / photo / video — Comments Off
1
Jun 16

Need a box?

So we got into the new house this morning. We emptied the cars and then we went to sign the paperwork. I wish they’d left these guys:

I took that picture in March, when we were house hunting. They were just moving out the day that were looking. We had about 17 places on our list and a handful of them came off the market the first day we were up. It was a huge sellers market in the spring. Of the rest, some looked better online than in reality and a few just weren’t going to fit our style or desires. Which left us the place we ultimately got. They were moving out, big family, and didn’t want to let us in because they were concerned it would be too messy. By the time we got to go inside they were down to that “Do I really have to go back and get that last little bit? Can’t I just set fire to it in the backyard?” stage. The house was not messy. In fact it looked fine. It is a fine house. And two of the things they still had to pick up were those decorations above. I was really hoping they would stay with the house.

Anyway, We’re getting settled, see?

This was all done out of order because of the processing agency and the many layers of paperwork and bureaucracy couldn’t take care of itself in time and there was another meeting and so that changed our schedules and so on. And, oh, simultaneously the moving company was arriving with all of our things. Four guys directly out of central casting who were here to do a job, politely, quickly, and leave. And they did. They only balked at carrying all of my books, so I slung some of those boxes around.

Some things you’d just rather do yourself, anyway.

By the time we’d come back from signing the paperwork, and picking up lunch for the movers, they were almost all done. Those guys hustled. And then we were left with all of our things scattered all over and trying to figure out where to put it all.

This is actually easy because, when we were house shopping, I’d brought a tape measure and compared all of the rooms to our old house to make sure everything would fit where we needed it to. By then we were on our second realtor on this end of the deal. The first guy, let’s just say, didn’t work out.

You knew people like that, say the boyfriend of a friend of yours. You know, the young woman who didn’t know of her own self-worth and so never noticed he was walking her into an emotionally exploitive relationship? The signs were there, you could see them. I didn’t need that out of a realtor. Could you imagine that person standing there while I produced my tape measure and spent six minutes decides which wall the china cabinet was going on? So we thanked that individual, apologized for this not working out and found another one. And, it turns out, she was the selling agent of the previous owners of this house. They had to upgrade here in town. So here we are. Full of boxes, new door locks and so on.

All of the housing difficulties are done. The literally-going-crazy-before-our-eyes realtor representing the buyers of our old house. The logistics of getting a move done. The fired realtor here who went on and on about how they were doing you a favor, the actual realtor and her stand-in. The negotiating. The paperwork, the emotion, the finishing of the packing, the where-the-heck-is-my-charger, the making sure the cat never slipped outside. All of that is out of the way. Now, it is just us and the boxes.

And this wacky ceiling fan I most definitely did not buy at Lowe’s:

That is one wacky ceiling fan, #Lowes, and I bet not a lot of them are sold. #boomerang

A video posted by Kenny Smith (@kennydsmith) on Jun 1, 2016 at 5:12pm PDT

adventures / Bloomington / Indiana / IU / photo / Tuesday / windshield time — Comments Off
31
May 16

Fists and blades

Here we are:

We are here. So if you’ve been reading, you knew we were moving. Today we’ve arrived. We’re in Bloomington, Indiana. The Yankee and I will both be starting at Indiana University’s Media School in time for the fall. We’ll be together. No more week-long commutes. No more 142 mile one-way trips to work. No more lots of silly things.

But we’ll get to all of that another time.

Right now, almost everything we own is on a giant truck and due here tomorrow. We drove up the two cars, which were loaded with the cat, three of the four bikes and not a spare inch of extra space.

Seriously. We’d set aside an area in the old house of stuff that was going with us — things we’d need, things the moving company said we should take ourselves and enough stuff to survive a day or so without our belongings — and somehow we managed to get every bit of it into the cars. If you’d asked me to fit eight more molecules into either car I would have had to quit after the third one. But we’re here.

Scenic drive up, too:

We hit the local Kroger. That place is huge.

Tonight we’re staying in an Airbnb. There is honeysuckle out front:

Tomorrow our things arrive and we sign the paperwork on our new house. Apparently we’ll now do both of those things simultaneously. How that’s supposed to work, we don’t yet know. But, hey, that’s just another thing. We’re so used to housing weirdness at this point (You should hear about our selling experience, criminy.) that it hardly even registers. By noon tomorrow we’ll just be down to unpacking.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
30
May 16

The Natchez Trace

We rode our bikes in three states today. We started in western Tennessee and cut the corner off of Alabama and pedaled into eastern Mississippi and then back into Alabama on the Natchez Trace. (Grab a map, this makes sense.) The Trace marks the old forest trail which ran about 440 miles Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee. It was used by Native Americans, early European explorers, American settlers and traders from all over until well into the 19th century. Today, the path is marked by a closed access road that generally follows the original Trace. It is a great place for scene rides. Perhaps one day I’ll get in the entire route.

But, today, we got in a little over 50 miles of it. I took photographs.

Here we are after having worked through a few miles of Tennessee:

If you’ve ever wondered, Tennessee gets its southern border, and consequently much of the northern borders of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi from the 1663 land grant from King Charles II and North Carolina giving up their lands west of the mountains in 1735. All of the state borders around here were surveyed and established by John Coffee, a lifelong friend of Andrew Jackson’s, who was also a general in the War of 1812. He also negotiated some of the native American resettlements. (Bet we view those differently these days.) He has counties in Alabama and Tennessee and at least four towns across the south named after him. He lived around here and was considered a founder of the city. There’s a chance some of my ancestors knew him. A Walmart stands next to his family cemetery.

The weather was perfect:

The scenery was lovely:

We crossed the Tennessee:

The roads were quiet. So quiet that, twice cars from the other direction stopped in the middle of the road to talk to us. One lady asked us to move a turtle she’d seen in the road just a bit ahead and another guy asked for directions.

The Yankee, making her way into Alabama from Tennessee:

And here she is going from Alabama into Mississippi:

As for the cat, she’s settling in nicely.

She’ll go back in the car tomorrow. So will we.

adventures / Friday / photo — Comments Off
27
May 16

Leg one is done

We’re at my folks. We’ll be here for a few days. Here are some pictures from the afternoon’s four-hour drive.

Allie, The Black Cat, likes Whataburger:

No surprise there.

Mexico was enchanted by the giant ship in the bottle, which was the huge crab’s plan. The country was never the same again:

Because the rule is that when you drive within 20 miles of a Trader Joe’s you take a side trip to Trader Joe’s. I don’t know why that’s the rule, but that’s the rule.

We had dinner tonight at a Mongolian stir-themed place called Genghis Grill:

I fit right in.