I’m the world’s laziest blogger. I’ve reduced this whole thing to one post to cover my weekends. I suck.

This weekend with CP canceled, we headed out to Indianapolis and hit the zoo. (the last missed stop from the two week trip in 2005)

We left late afternoon on Friday and hit I-70 west and noted that this was the first time we ever traveled this particular stretch of highway and vowed to hit any weird-ass roadside thing we could along the way. Little did we know that unless you’re in the market for an RV, that I-70 west from Dayton to Indy is a useless stretch of highway.

We did pull over and check out the Warm Glow Candle Outlet off of exit 145. A little too ‘country’ for my tastes. The only time I really tend to dig that sort of thing is around the holidays – once Halloween hits and the chill is in the air until New Year’s Day. That time frame puts me in the mood for the whole ‘down-home’ thing. Fireplaces, home cooking, the country scents…but other than that, no thank you. Blew a little time there and continued on to our room waiting at the Hilton Garden Inn.

Nice hotel, although we’re convinced we were the only ones staying there. The parking lot was empty and we never saw a single person in the hotel other than employees. Weird.

Went across the street to Bennigan’s for dinner. Haven’t lived near one since Florida which means it’s been almost 6 years since we’ve eaten there. Good stuff. They had a dude going around table-to-table doing magic. I noticed on the ‘specials’ sign when we entered that Dan The Magic Man was scheduled from 6:30 to 8:30, but didn’t think much of it, but sure enough right after our appetizer came, so did Dan. He was everything you’d expect from a magician at Bennigan’s – we’ll leave it at that. We weren’t sure of the etiquette involved though. Do you tip someone like that? I’ve never gone to a chain restaurant and had a personal magic show and I doubt it’ll ever happen again. But after the guy kisses your ass, does some wacky card tricks, cracks some jokes and pulls a rock out of his shoe then thanks you – are you supposed to tip the guy. It felt kind of awkward, but we didn’t even have any cash on us, so Dan got dicked. Fuck it – I’ll never see the guy again.

Had fun at the zoo. Got there nice and early and didn’t really see crowds until mid-afternoon. Nothing special, but a decent enough zoo. Tons of big cameras and bigger lenses walking around. Usually I’m a bit self conscious because it feels like everyone is staring at the guy with the big ol’ camera, but here I felt like such a schlub. Lots of folks with much nicer cameras and lenses. The Canon SLR’s have gotten so cheap that everybody seems to have on anymore. Sigh. If I’m going to continue to compensate for my shortcomings with my camera, I need to go bigger. Luckily, that’s my plan for the offseason.

“Do you see this $2800 camera!? Clearly my penis is not small! Duh!”

Just as fun were the White River Gardens which are included with Zoo admission. Lots of good stuff and the butterflies thing they have going on is really neat.

Got way too many pics, even got a few nice ones. I’m not going to post them here though. You’ll have to watch for the update on coasterimage for those. However, one that I don’t really think fits over there is this vertical panoramic shot of the entry to the gardens building and I wanted to share that:

On Sunday we continued our quest to piss off car salesmen by wasting their time with no intentions of buying a new vehicle for at least another 6 months. Today’s big winner was Honda’s CR-V – nice vehicle for the price. Also slowly convincing the wife that Mazda’s RX-8 fucking destroys. After seeing them in person today, I could probably talk her into seriously considering one. Is that a reasonable choice for a married couple with 2 growing kids? Of course not. Would it be fun? Fucking right it would. How can you not love a car with suicide doors? (even if they’re technically quasi-suicide)

And DQ’s Kit Kat Blizard still kicks ass.