Good Week, Eh?

What a nice week.

It began on a pretty annoying tone, I guess, with my phone becoming mostly reduced to ornamental status with some incompatible hardware being introduced to its finicky OS. That was Father's Day. The Father's Dayishness of it really got rolling at around 12:45 when the whole lot of us (ma, pa, brother, sister-n-law, grandpa, uncle, and nephew) gathered in the dining area for quality food and conversation. That scene was quickly followed up by the time-honored tradition of the Father's Day gift giving. It had been mentioned that Dad might like some coffee, and there was a particular brand that I wanted to nab for him, but dipped if I could find it anywhere.

Tuesday was real productive. I had found out on Monday that there was a huge assignment that I should have been working on all semester. All the productivity came from not having to go to BSU (that place sucks all the academic motivation straight out of me, oddly enough) and taking up some advice to schedule out my day using Google Calendar. Needless to say, after a hard day of mild productivity, there's nothing like a nice game of Frisbee golf with the roommates! For the uninitiated amongst you, let me explain a bit. There's a makeshift nine-hole frolf course that's been established on the Anderson campus over the years, that incorporates various AU staples as "holes" or whatever they'd be called. In other words, one "hole" might be hitting Helios, or the door of Morrison Hall, or some other such thing.

As it is, one of the holes involves standing in the courtyard on the south side of Decker Hall and throwing the Frisbee through the breezeway and hitting the bike rack situated by the lower exit on the north side. The kicker is, there's a fifteen-foot hole in the breezeway called "the atrium" and that's what makes this particular hole so exciting. After the first two of us had successfully managed to get our Frisbees past the atrium, I mentioned how cool it would have been if one of us had lost our disc down there. As trickeration would have it, the third member of our party (who had been delivering a questionable performance all evening) took his turn and managed to get his Frisbee stuck in the bushes on still the south side of the building. Frustrated, he retrieved his disc and attempted to make the now extremely awkward throw past the gaping fifteen-foot hole. The three of us all watched in dumbfounded silence as the disc flew swiftly and surely down into the atrium.

In theory, the atrium is only accessible through two doors in the basement of Decker. In my five years of mucking around the AU campus, I've only seen the atrium used about three or four times. In any event, the doors were of course locked for the evening, leaving the Frisbee itself presumably quite unreachable. That being the case, we were of course completely determined to get it. For getting down into the atrium safely, I laid down on the breezeway floor, under the cement railing, with my torso dangling over the edge, with one of my roommates hanging onto my ankles. The other roommate climbed over the railing and he and I used a wrist-to-wrist grip to lower him down. Even with his entire standing height, almost half of my height, and our combined arm-lengths, he still had about a four-foot drop to hit the bottom. Once down there, he became the instant subject of attention for a youth group that was meeting down there for some reason. One of the more action-oriented youth members found her way clear to take a brief respite from slack-jawed disbelief and try to open the doors leading into the building, but like I said, they were locked.

Once the Frisbee was retrieved and thrown to safety, the problem became how to retrieve our roommate? By stacking a chair on top of a table, we were able to again clasp hands and get him the heck out of there, all the while falling under the disapproving scrutiny of the youth group's den mother. After that colorful episode, we rode our bikes to the nearby BP for the refreshing power of a frozen Ricker's Pop.

Wednesday was pretty productive as well, though not quite as much fun because I actually did have to go to class. The class was long and probably useful and afterwards, a significant subset of us went out for half-priced appetizers at Beef O'Brady's.

I'm not sure what happened Thursday. Not much probably.

Friday started being real sweet at 8:45 when I got to go to breakfast with the folks at the new Waffle House by exit 14. Then, after we all had finished our All Star Breakfasts I did a bit of packing and set out for Chicago to kick it with one of my former rugby teammates to whom I shall refer henceforth as "Old Chum." Anyway, Old Chum had given me an invitation a while back to come over to Chicago and visit him and his fiancée and take in a little rugby action, much like the journey referenced in The Moon and My Anderson Year. So it takes a long dang time to get through Chicago. Despite the combined claims of Google Maps and Mapquest, I imagine that there's got to be a faster way to get to Palantine, Illinois.

Once I finally got to my destination we engaged in the customary, "Oh, I haven't seen you in so long, this sure is swell, blah, blah, blah" and then we hit the road again. Old Chum had mentioned something about an event being put on by the Chicago Scottish community called the Highland Games, which features a veritable smorgasbord of classic Scottish frivolity. There was rugby, Scottish music and dancing, mostly authentic Scottish cuisine, a hagis throw, a weighted throw, and of course, caber tossing. One thing about caber tossing that I certainly did not know: the throw is judged for accuracy, not distance.

Amidst all of the Scottish spectacles to behold at the Highland Games, one particular tent caught my eye rather quickly, because of the large sign above the entryway which read "Whisky Live." Anxious to take advantage of this rather unique opportunity, we edged closer to the tent until we were greeted by one of the event workers who cheerfully informed us that we could sample five whiskies for ten dollars and twelve whiskies for fifteen dollars. I'm not exactly a mathematical genius, but I knew a solid deal when it was pitched to me, so we all went for the 12 whisky package. [Note the spelling: "whisky" as opposed to "whiskey." The "e" traditionally indicates a beverage of American or Irish distillation, while the shorter spelling usually is reserved for Scottish or Canadian whiskies. There are exceptions to this, but that is a general rule of thumb.]

All in all, Friday turned out to be really fun and highly educational. As you might imagine, it was with great pride that I got to inform the resident "Scotch Master" that I was a real serious whisk(e)y drinker. He probably sensed it before I even told him, though.

Saturday was great! All day at Toyota park watching the Churchill Cup is the recipe for a good time and a mild sunburn! Old Chum and I were pretty excited to see if there would be any players that we would recognize from their European clubs, and I was happy to say that representing Scotland A was none other than Steve Jones, who of course plays for the Newcastle Falcons along with Jonny Wilkinson. The only complaint that I have for the whole affair is the presence of some annoying drunk folks and their vexing penchant for muttering obscenities of all kinds at whomever.

The trip home was pretty nice as well. As it was last August, watching the sun set against a beautiful midwestern sky while you're booking it along at 80 mph is just a really great thing. One of the more novel things about driving back from Chicago is that it affords you the opportunity to listen to Andrew Osenga's Kankakee while actually driving over the Kankakee.

Having not eaten anything since breakfast, I was for sure feeling it by 9:20, and I reckoned that an Arby's Chicken, Bacon n' Swiss would taste really good. A quick perusal of my fuel gauge suggested that I'd need gas soon. I figured that it'd make sense to get them both at the same time. The next few exits were pretty light on the Arby's so I plodded on, figuring that one certainly had to be coming up sometime soon. It was at about this point that the "Check Gauges" light came on, informing me that my first instinct was correct, I did in fact need gasoline. I checked my odometer and thought to myself, "Heck, I can get another fifteen miles, easy. There's gotta be an Arby's coming up here somewhere."

Up until this point, the exits had been showing up every two miles or so, so I can honestly say that at this point, I wasn't really concerned. My general lazie faire attitude changed abruptly about twelve miles later when I regarded with some concern a sign that read "Thorntown 18 miles." Oh, pickle. To kind of give away the punch line a little, I wound up making it to Thorntown, but I didn't see any gas stations, or any Arby's for that matter. I was feeling pretty spiritual by this point. I kept plodding on ahead, and mercifully enough, the next exit, Crawfordsville, came up pretty quickly and there was an Arby's there! I figured out that I had driven 34 miles since the "Check Gauges" light first came on, and I was really stoked about that. One last kind of interesting thing: on my way to get gasoline, I passed a Days Inn hotel, and out front they had an Ale-8-One vending machine! I thought that stuff was just supposed to be sold in Kentucky!

God is good all the time.

-Ryan