The King of Indiana

Call me, "Your Majesty." More on that later.
For now, I'll talk about other stuff.
This is stuff I should have talked about before, but I was lazy and/or busy and/or tired.
Thursday and Friday seemed like vacations because Daulton wasn't here.
I think I may have just cut my butt with my fingernail. That being said, I really need to trim my fingernails.
I've forgotten any other interesting happenings from Thursday and Friday in the office.
Let us progress to Friday, post-office (as opposed to a post office).
Project 86 played The Gear in Franklin last night. I went of course.
The opening act was, the newly re-founded, Kids in the Way. They sounded alright. I'd never seen them before. They weren't my favorite, but I'd definitely heard worse opening acts.
Children 18:3 played next. I found them highly annoying. Now, I should preface this with a little honesty. Children 18:3 has an incredibly stupid name. They also have a guitarist/vocalist who smears eye-shadow all around his eyes to look like a raccoon. These two facts I knew beforehand and came into the evening expecting to dislike them. So I disliked them from the start. They gave me this positive: they are very energetic and enthusiastic. They gave me this negative: their songs are stupid. They gave me this positive: the drummer had a pretty good solo. They gave me this negative: the guitarist is horrible at stage banter. They gave me this positive: the bassist did nothing in particular to really annoy me. They gave me this negative: the guitarist does this weird mutation of the "devil's horns," where he flashes the horns and then bends his pointer and pinkie finger to meet in the middle, which he seems to find way too fascinating, because he wouldn't stop doing it all night long (even when they weren't on stage). Essentially, that left me where I started. They did just enough to keep me from either raising or lowering my opinion of them. Mostly I just wanted to punch their guitarist.
The Wedding was just okay. Apparently, they have a decent number of fans. Several people were really into their set. I thought they were pretty average.
Showbread is insane. I don't know if that is good or bad. They wear matching outfits (Except the vocalist paired his shirt with a set of black leggings that looked a mix between leather and spandex, over the top of which he placed what appeared to be girls corduroy short-shorts. He accompanied this ensemble with a black rubber glove on one hand and bright blue eye-shadow.). Their band includes a keytar. The vocalist enjoys calling people "dummies." They concluded their set by dancing a fully prepared rendition of the "Can-Can," complete with full choreography. Like I said, they are insane.
Project 86 took their rightful place as headliners. They performed a very different set than I had seen at the other four shows I attended this year. They kicked the show off with one of my all time favorites: "P.S." The song is so weighty and lurching. It's pulsing and slogging and heavy and deep and completely different from their typical opening song. I loved it. They played a few of their standard songs, such as "Safe Haven," "Sincerely, Ichabod," and "The Spy Hunter," but they also brought out some songs they hadn't played in awhile, if ever. "Oblivion" and "Open-hand" made appearances for the first time ever. "Hollow Again" and "Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy" reappeared after long hiatuses (Yes, "hiatuses" is the plural of "hiatus." I checked). "Evil (A Chorus of Resistance)" and "Illuminate" made their way onto the set-list again. They played "Destroyer" and "The Butcher" from their latest release. I had seen "The Butcher" at their show in Evansville, but this is the first time they are playing "Destroyer." It makes an awesome song live. The evening was concluded with the crowd pleaser, "Stein's Theme." For the last two songs, "Evil" and "Stein's Theme," the crown had the floor bouncing enough to make me question the structural integrity of the building. Needless to say, it was an excellent show. It was certainly one of the best set-lists I have heard them play. Afterwards, when I talked to Andrew, I forgot to mention the one song I would have added: "Another Boredom Movement." But on the whole, all I could really ask for was a longer set, not a different one.
Oh, and if you are wondering why I am the king of Indiana. When I approached Andrew after the show, it was the first thing he said to me. "You're the king of Indiana. What is this, five shows this year? Hey (to the merch guy), this guy is the king of Indiana. Hey (to the bassist of Children 18:3), this guy is the king of Indiana. He's come to five of our shows this year." After this odd exchange, we chatted for a bit about past shows. I explained my movement from Colorado to Michigan to Indiana. When he heard Michigan, he commented that they had played at Calvin and fondly remembered Ken Heffner. Maybe artists do like performing at Calvin?
Before I left, Andrew said that they'd be touring again in February/March and would probably be back this way. I sure hope so. There's nothing like having your voice feel completely shredded for a few days after a show.
So that brings us to today. Today, we went to the zoo. Anna and I took the three children of my in-laws' neighbors to the zoo. We were going to go to Cincinnati, but the forecast predicted rain, so we went to Indianapolis instead.
Anna and I agreed to pick Elizabeth, Abby, and Noah up at 9 a.m. Before we did that, we took Daisy to the in-laws so they could watch her while we were gone. When we did pull up to the kid's house, we were greeted by Noah coming out to us carrying a giant blue inflatable monkey. He held this all the way to the zoo.
At the zoo, we made sure we saw everything there was to see. I don't really want to go animal by animals, so I'll go with the highlights. Everyone loved the sea lions and seals, which was the first thing we saw. After that we saw the lonely tiger, who wouldn't turn and face us for a picture. One of my favorite exhibits was the two Alaskan brown bears, who had come to the zoo because their mother had been killed for mauling a jogger. We, together, lamented the fate of the bald eagle because he had to be cooped up with a bunch of ravens and buzzards. We checked out the "Encounters" exhibits, which had common farm type animals so that the kids could see things they had never encountered before (coughcoughsarcasmcoughcough, coughcoughfarmkidscoughcough, coughcoughhickscoughcough). We got a chuckle out of that.
There was a merry-go-round near the exhibit, and Noah really wanted to ride. Because it is the Halloween season, they ran the thing backwards and played creepy music. It was cool.
One of the main attractions of the Indianapolis zoo is their dolphin show. They send five dolphins flying through the air and jumping to great heights, all the while splashing water over eager children. It's a good time.
After the dolphins, we checked out the "Desert" exhibit. The kids enjoyed the lizards and turtles and such. Abby especially loved the meercats. The snake gallery was also in this larger building. In there, I got to be impressed by the abilities of Anna's camera to take good pictures (without flash) in extremely minimal lighting.
In the "Plains" section, we were disappointed to have missed the feeding times for the giraffes. We were also disappointed to see that one of the exhibits was shut down due to the construction of a new cheetah display. Cheetahs do sound pretty pimping though.
One of the biggest highlights of the day was watching one of the rhinos relieve himself for what seemed like an eternity. The kids were all impressed with his resemblance to a hose. And the pee just kept coming and coming, and every time it seemed it would stop, it came out in a new pressure washing rush (I'm pretty positive this is the first thing the kids told their mother, when they got home). The lions were pretty sweet. We also saw a wild dog, which seemed awfully lonely as it ran the circumference of its display, over and over again. The final "Plains" exhibit was the elephants. Here was another highlight as we watched one of the elephants evacuate what appeared to be five-gallon bucket-fulls of waste. We were awed by the sound poop could make, falling in such a quantity and from such a height.
The last portion we saw was the "Oceans." There was a lonely polar bear and three walruses. Two of the walruses had body-parts that the kids mistook for bellybuttons. We let them remain under that impression. The "Oceans" also included a shark pet tank. Noah was afraid the sharks would bite him, so it took us quite awhile to get him to successfully pet a shark. Though honestly, I would say it was more of a "poke" than a "pet." The last thing we saw before leaving were the penguins. Again, we marveled at the high velocity pooping some wild animals can produce.
In the gift shop, Noah spent all $30 of his birthday money on a stuffed penguin that was roughly as big as he is. Anna got herself a giraffe puppet. We gave her a good name, but I can't remember it. Abby and Elizabeth each got small things.
On the way back, Noah feel asleep in his car-seat. While he was asleep, Abby removed his penguin from his arms. When Noah woke up twenty minutes later, his first, panicked, question was "Where's my penguin?"
We returned the kids safe and sound and then went over to the in-laws' for a bit before heading back. Daisy was glad to see Anna.
Then we came back here.
Gray.
I was sitting at my computer, decompressing, when I received an email from my father. I opened it and just started laughing. For the third time in three hunts, he has bagged the biggest deer of his life in the first two hours of hunting on a certain piece of public hunting land in eastern Colorado. I called him up and talked to him for awhile about it. I told him he needs to learn patience, but as long as he keeps seeing deer this big, he's going to have a hard time passing them up. This particular buck looks like one off of those controlled environment hunts, where the guys are hunting on leased property over special food-plots. I just told my dad that when I shoot something bigger this year, I'll photoshop it so it looks smaller and doesn't make him feel so bad.
Something tells me this is a really long post.
I'm tired.
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