in defense of indy

When we told people the main destination of our trip would be Indianapolis, we got some intensely blank stares. It was even deemed, during one reaction, "the randomest place possible." This is fair enough, especially given that neither of us are from here in any sense; my grandparents moved out here with their youngest sons in the early 70s, after my dad had married my mom and moved from SF to Canada. In response, I would explain that my Grandma is amazing and lives in a big house by herself, and my uncles are loads of fun, and it's actually a really pretty city -- but the stares persisted. Here are some pictures so you can at least know we're not living with pro-lifers in the shade of a Wal-Mart.

The house:


Our bedroom overlooks a sundrenched backyard and is the most peaceful place to wake up.


As a kid I'd wear soft-bottom slippers and my uncle Pat would pull me around this marble entryway. Nothing since has ever been quite as fun.


Here's my workstation (Dan's is in a previous post). The best part about this room is that the wi-fi doesn't reach! Very good for concentration, even when all I'm writing are market research reports.


This painting announces the entry to my work-room. (My grandma is an artist). Portrait of the Market Researcher As a Young Girl.


When I do need internet, or just feel like slouchin', I hunker down on the livingroom couch with this nifty Levenger lap-desk that Dan got me for my birthday (excellent present for nerds, btw). (And yeah I pretty much wear this outfit every day).


As for the city itself, I don't have any pictures, but it's really pretty and laid-back. The sprawl is hard to get used to (stripmallstripmallstripmall) but the thing about sprawl is it allows people to have really huge lawns. Lawns are nice. Rachel sent us this article in the NY Times about how you can buy a 4-bedroom house in Indianapolis for $250K, and I bet it'd have a huge-ass lawn.

Despite the sprawl it's still, really, a city. There's a downtown with galleries and old brick buildings and lots of bars with graffiti'd bathrooms. Broad Ripple is the hip neighborhood (although naturally it gets kinda North Beachy by night), filled with vegan restaurants and vintage clothing stores and businesses run out of homes. Dan explored it while I was away on business and now he's the Broad Ripple expert. Sometimes we take our laptops to the Monon Coffee Shop, where all the juices are freshly made in a Vita-Mix and the baristas are all these very likeable people who've probably outgrown an extreme allegiance to some subculture (straightedge, I'm guessing, and the dapper variety of scenester goths) and now throw parties for their kittens. (Honest eavesdrop). There are hipsters everywhere, and my lord they're young, but we still can't figure out where the good danceparties are. All we've found is some flyers advertising "hipsterhouse" which is the most depressing compound I've ever heard in my life. The good dancing must be happening in a secret network of BOTH-style houses (RIP BOTH!).

In leiu of dancing we've been having fun seeing Tim play his wide variety of working-musician gigs. Last night he played a solo acoustic set downtown with a numbered setlist, so the audience could shout out the number of the song they wanted (a trick he stole from the Bobcats of Vancouver), and they were seriously hollering those requests. I had to yell "Fifty-eight" nearly fifty-eight times at the top of my lungs before he played me Man Out of Time. Here he is on Friday night, singing If I Only Had a Brain with a jazz trio at a restaurant.


So, you see, it really is a nice place to be for awhile. We really miss everybody, though; the homesickness is starting to hit. Lots of love and hugs and such.