Mama I'm Coming Home

Well, this past weekend was Homecoming weekend in Bloomington. The local football match pit the Hoosiers against Northwestern. IU has been playing fairly horribly this year (and has been riddled with injuries) and came into the game at 2-5, searching for their first win since September 6. Northwestern has been doing quite well this year, coming into the game at 6-1 and ranked in the coaches' poll. Needfull to say, IU won the game 21-19 and actually played pretty well on both sides of the ball at the same time for the first time in a while. So now with four games left, they have to go 3-1 to end up at 6-6 and bowl-eligible. They play schedule that conceivably could result in that very 3-1 record I just wrote about: Central Michigan (6-2) at home on 11/1, Wisconsin (4-4, 1-4) at home on 11/8, at Penn State (9-0, 5-0) on 11/15 (IU shocks the world), and at Purdue (2-6, 0-4) on 11/22 (I don't much care for that school). Given how bad the Big Ten is this year, a 6-6 record may not be a problem as far as getting, say, a Motor City Bowl berth. They've given me hope. I hate it when they do this.

Other highlights of the weekend include:

• Tailgating before and after the game with several Mandersons (apparently there's a third one they call Merv), the newly married Mr. and Mrs. Stoll, a Ferber, some Bapperts, some Lutzows, some Davidsons, some Eckerles, a Kashman, Can Can, Schnelly, and a whole host of others. Unfortunately there was no Kan Jam.
• I had dinner at Irish Lion. You may not know this, but lamb is delicious.
• After dinner, I met up with a the Davidsons, Eckerles, Can Can, Schnelly, and Jana at Kilroy's. It soon became apparent to me that in the time between the game and when I met up with them, someone had poisoned all of them with alcohol.
• At around 1 a.m., after discussing the many benefits of Cheap Trick, Can Can explained to me that he was unable to ingest any more alcohol. This picture was quickly snapped. Soon after, we made our way out the front doors at Kilroy's to go to their little fenced-in sidewalk to enjoy a fine blend of tobacco and cardboard products packaged and sold by the British legislative branch. After going out the front door, I turned to the right to stand against a nice looking wall. Can Can exited behind me. As soon as he got out of the front door, he held up his finger as if to say "give me a second." He then sprayed the sidewalk with several gallons of vomit. From what I could tell, he hadn't eaten anything in a while. Without batting an eye, he looked back at me and said "I'm done," then left and presumably stumbled back to Schnelly's place. I may have been laughing out loud during and after the upchucking. I shrugged it off and texted Manderson to see if he was still out.
• I met Manderson and his crew at Upstairs. Upon entering, I ordered a big AMF, as is the custom in those parts. I walked over to Manderson's crew, at which point he informed me that they were just about to head back to their hotel. Sweet. Nothing more pathetic than a thirty-year-old dude drinking a giant blue drink by himself while staring intently at a relatively small TV screen showing a baseball game involving two teams he could care less about and making whale noises indiscriminately at passersby.
• A bearded man smoking unfiltered cigarettes taxied me back to my dad's house.
• On Sunday, I ably assembled bookshelves of Scandinavian descent. This was not the first time.