Goin' Back to Indiana

Sorry for the delay. Monday night I had my Second City class, and last night Jessie hogged the computer for the entire night, sending me to bed with no porridge or blogging. And yes, "porridge" is a code name for sex. So, for instance, next time you want to be subtle about wanting to do it, just say, "Dear, how about some porridge? I'd really like a big bowl of porridge. If you don't want to have porridge, that's fine, but just let me know so that, if need be, I can make porridge by myself. For the seventeenth time in the last fourteen days. I'm just sayin'."

Weekend Recap
This past weekend, Jester, Ari, and I (and Harley, of course) took Friday off and headed to H-town (Huntington, Indiana, not Houston, Texas) for their brother Will's high school graduation from the venerable Huntington North High School.

The ceremony was in the gym, which holds a mere 5500 people, which only ties it for the 23rd largest high school gym in Indiana. It was comparable to Northwestern's Welsh-Ryan Arena (although apparently about 1500 seats smaller). Look at that drop-down four-sided scoreboard. As you may or may not know, Indiana is home to 9 of the country's 10 largest high school gyms. I was pretty impressed when I saw that the conference that HNHS is in (the North Central Conference -- for Wee Wee's sake, I'll give a shout-out to the Richmond Red Devils) is home to 4 of the largest 10 gyms in the US, and its smallest gym (Kokomo) seats 5200. That's insane.

Here's a nice shot of Will and his sisters. Will is the guy in the middle wearing the graduation gown.

My mother-in-law managed to commandeer yet another dog, giving them four dogs, two of which she has basically taken from other people after deciding that the dogs were being treated poorly. (Fear not, she gets permission before she takes them.) This one was basically chained up outside for weeks while his owners were back and forth, paying little attention to the dog. He's a malamute mix. Apparently a malamute is kind of like a husky, and not, as I thought, a really poorly behaved person who doesn't speak. Anyway, here are some pictures of the new guy.

He does not have a permanent name yet. As you can see, he has one blue eye and one brown eye, which has invoked some comparisons to David Bowie (who is often mistakenly thought to have two different colored eyes, but in actuality merely has a permanently dilated left pupil, which gives the appearance of a different color). In addition, the dog is only an "outside dog," meaning that he is not housebroken and cannot be trusted under cover of roof. He is also scared of humans, despite his stature. Whenever I walked up to him to pet him, he rolled onto his back, often peeing while rolled over. He is unclean. Anywho, I think a good old-fashioned vote is in order. Here are the suggested names so far (in alphabetical order):

1. Ace
2. Bosco
3. Bowie
4. David Bowie
5. Nanook
6. Nanook of the North
7. Starman
8. Ziggy

Please vote via comment below, and feel free to suggest any other names. I will pass along the voting results to the necessary family members (i.e., Lizzie, although she reads this regularly anyway) for consideration. In all likelihood, it won't matter because they have about twelve names for every one of their dogs, but it can't hurt.

On Saturday, several things of note happened. First was my trip to the Huntington Salvation Army thrift store, which yielded me a 1990 Bedford North Lawrence state championship t-shirt. For those of you who aren't up on Indiana high school basketball history, the 1990 BNL team featured Damon Bailey, who is still the state's all-time leading high school scorer (and who went onto play at IU). The state championship game drew over 41,000 fans, making it the largest crowd ever to attend a high school basketball game. Unfortunately, I'll have to lose about 30 pounds before I can fit into the shirt, but I guess that's finally the motivation I need to go bulimic.

Second was Will's graduation party. In addition to the legendary Pope twins and Lizzie, there were all kinds of celebrity HNHS alumni sightings, including, but not limited to: Amy "Not the Lead Singer of Evanescence" Lee, Liz "The Pulverizer" Pulver, and Lizzie's friend Janna (who, upon arriving, immediately asked me if the party was going to be on my blog -- the answer is no, Janna).

Among other things, Jester's step-dad Pat cooked up some jerk chicken, and I ate about seven pounds worth. It was quite enjoyable.

Other than that, nothing huge happened this weekend, aside from Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano finally snapping and beating the shit out of his own catcher. I think we all knew it was just a matter of time with Zambrano.


Genius
Every once in a while, I do something that makes me so proud that I feel I must share it with the world. Tonight I had a softball game after work, with my firm's coed softball team. Sure, I went 4-4 with 4 grand slams, pitched a no-hitter, and performed a tracheotomy on some douchbag who was choking on sunflower seeds, but that's not what I'm proud of. You see, I had to go to court today, which meant I had to wear a suit to work. This obviously presented a problem, since I would have to change out of my suit before the game, meaning that I would either have to (1) leave my suit at work, thus leaving me without a suit at home, or (2) take my suit with me to the game, which is just a bad idea all around. I do keep a suit and tie in my office (in case of emergencies), and so yesterday at work I made a fantastic decision: I would bring my office suit and office tie home, wear them to work today, and then just leave them in my office where they normally reside, thereby leaving me nothing more than a pair of shoes, socks, and a shirt to bring to the game (which can easily fit in my bag). My German-like efficiency demands recognition.