Today, after visiting with my family, I went downtown with my camera. It’s been a long time since I’ve spent time walking around our many urban green spaces.
On my way home, I dropped by Steph and Stephanie’s house in the Old Northside. My friend Jonathan was there with his two dogs, Jackson and Jefferson, having a cookout with them. Not too long after my arrival, Dan and Doug showed up to pay a visit, too.
As it was getting dark, Stephanie decided to make some brownies. Have I ever talked about how much I love chocolate?
Anyway, at about that time, Steph and I started obsessing over history, architecture, etc. It turns out she has an historic postcard collection of Indianapolis just like me! Sometime soon she and I will have to do some card trading. Nothing fancy — just your average nerd fun.
After getting home tonight, I watched the Darjeeling Limited. I’m definitely a fan of little esoteric films like that. Have you seen it? What did you think?
It’s been a while since I’ve shared any music on here.
Cut Copy - Lights & Music
This is the first single released from Cut Copy’s new album: In Ghost Colours.
Bat For Lashes - What’s A Girl To Do
The bunny masks and bicycles remind me a bit of Donnie Darko.
Goldfrapp - Happiness
This is the second single off of Goldfrapp’s recent album: Seventh Tree. This might very well be my favorite track on the whole album, but I’m not sure yet.
Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor
This is off Hot Chip’s recent album: Made In The Dark.
Beatles in Indianapolis (1964)
In keeping with the British theme, I present to you parts one and two of the Beatles performing here in Indianapolis back in 1964.
I recall reading some rumors about a year ago that Flickr planned to add video support, so I was not one bit surprised when it finally launched this week.
I think this is a great idea! I love the idea of having my videos and photos in one place.
So, here are a couple of videos I’ve posted. They’re nothing special, but it’s nice to get them archived up somewhere.
Thunder Over Louisville 2005
I was in Louisville with my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew for Thunder Over Louisville back in 2005. We were on top of a parking garage in downtown. It offered a pretty good view of the 4th Street Bridge over the Ohio River.
Back Home Again in Indiana by the White River Jazz Band
She kept asking me whether she should smile or not while I took her photo. I hope she’s still performing; it was great to see her play and capture the moment in my photo stream.
Google has deemed us worthy. Indianapolis is now on the Google Maps Street View, and they even included many of the other smaller cities in the metropolitan area.
I was sad to hear that Julia Carson passed away this morning. She represented me in the Congress for the last seven years, and has been one of my neighbors for nearly the last four.
She was a force in Indiana politics, voting against the war in Iraq in 2003 and vehemently supporting GLBT rights. She’ll definitely be missed.
The Governor has to call a special session of the General Assembly in order to appoint someone to replace her. I hope it isn’t some douchebag that ends up getting the job.
On Thursday I went with my family to Connersville to celebrate Thanksgiving. This is a long-standing tradition in the family, and something that we’ve done every single year of my life, except for one.
It was just like any other Thanksgiving, but we were missing some people this year: Grandma, Uncle Tom, and cousins Chuckie and Steve. This were definitely missed.
On Friday, I took my nephews to see the Circle of Lights in downtown.
The office where I work is right on Monument Circle. The doors to the office were opened up for employees to bring family and friends to the event, and spend time indoors away from the cold. It was nice and fun to see.
One of the things people like about Greg Ballard is that he’s not a politician. Well, he’s been elected the new mayor of Indianapolis, so he is sure as hell a politician now.
Work has been a ball buster this week! We had a big outage that affected a lot of customers. Fortunately, I wasn’t much involved in the restoration of services (until I did some work to clean up the aftermath the next day), but I sure felt the stress of it all.
As for my weekend, Lisa, Jim, and some other folks are coming in to Indianapolis tomorrow to attend the Fringe Festival. No idea what we’ll see, but the beauty of the Fringe is that you can figure out when you’re there and be spontaneous.
Daniel is coming into town this weekend. I’ll be seeing twice, actually: tonight and Sunday. I haven’t seen him since June, so I’m very excited to spend some time with him.
Preparations are underway for the upcoming concert on Thursday, to kickoff the 2007 NFL season. The show will feature Faith Hill and Kelly Clarkson, and will be free to the public.
It’s going to be right on the south side of the monument, and it starts right at 5:00 PM, so I haven’t decided if I’m going to work from home and avoid everything, or if I’ll go to the office and watch the festivities from above.
Tony and I really enjoyed Almost Walking a Straight Line, which is a personal, solo performance put on by Greg Haskins from California. The story is about Greg’s coming out, and struggles to find balance between his sexuality and his deeply religious Midwestern upbringing. Definitely check it out!
Afterwards, we met up with Adam to see Frank Potente is the Hammer. I didn’t get the point of it, and I don’t think any of us really enjoyed it. There was a lot of German and some very good ballet dancing (to German pop music) between each scene, but we just didn’t find it entertaining or all that provocative.
Married 2 Magic was a lot of fun. It was a husband and wife duo performing magic tricks. We managed to sit close to the stage and got to participate in a bit of the fun.
The festival continues through the end of next weekend, so check it out if you have some time this coming week. I hope to catch a few more shows myself.
After having spent the last two years on the 7th floor at work, we’ve moved up to the 9th floor of the building in to some newly renovated space. Our team went into a room that we’ve now dubbed The Cave since we like to keep the lights off. I like it a lot more than before now that I don’t have to worry about people creeping up behind and scaring the crap out of me when they need to talk. It’s also a lot quieter.
The condo is still on the market. I had a chat with my agent this past week, and we decided to have an open house tomorrow (Sunday) between 2:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon. I hope she got some agents and brokers to come see it.
My listing contract ends in a month. I’m concerned with things, but I know that the market is bad. There’s a girth of listings here in Indianapolis and it’s not as easy to secure financing, but I’ve been told that condos sell in the winter, so I might extend, but I haven’t made up my mind yet.
My friend Tony is finally putting on a production of his one-man show entitled Lies My Parents Told Me. It starts September 7 at The Alley Theatre here in Indianapolis. I’ll post some more details in the next week or so.
That’s about it for now. I’ve got to work on cleaning up the house so that it looks perfect for tomorrow’s open house.
August 11, 2007 at 1:55 PM
· Filed under Indianapolis
Saw this on the way to lunch yesterday (Friday) with friends from work.
It seems that whenever the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra does a free lunchtime concern, they have a drum circle on the sidewalk in front of the Circle Theatre. I’ve never participated, but it sure seemed like fun to me.
August 4, 2007 at 1:21 PM
· Filed under Indianapolis
One of the reasons I love working on Monument Circle is that there’s always something interesting happening during the Summer. Yesterday, was no exception.
The Jagauar Association of Greater Indiana hosted the Jaguar Clubs of North America’s annual Challenge Championship and they had their cars on display all around the Circle.
I took my nephew, Jake, and our cousin Conner downtown to watch the fireworks shoot off One Indiana Square. We met up with Andy P. and Laura who came up to the roof of the Guaranty Building to watch the show with us.
I managed to catch the finale on my camera.
Something must not have gone quite as planned at the end since the fireworks petered off for no reason. None-the-less, it was a success, and was by far the best view I’ve had in a long time. Picture link below.
