Only 45 Degrees From Ordinary

First of all, the saga of Noodle, the broken windshield wiper, has officially ended. It was quite dramatic! On Wednesday night, we bought a replacement wiper. On Thursday, we tried to change the wiper... in the snow. We were standing outside of one of the schools we were doing a workshop at and the secretaries watched us struggle, apparently. We also asked parents at rehearsal if they could help us! We were desperate. Yesterday, we stopped at a Jiffy Lube for help because we couldn't take it anymore (and you can't have a naked windshield wiper without a blade) and badabing badaboom, no more Noodle problems! Thank you, kind Jiffy Lube employee!

Now, I know that the saga of Noodle all had you sitting on the edge of your seats and trust me, the rest of my blog will only be a let down after that, but please keep reading!

Yesterday, we visited the world famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway: home of the Indy500 and the Nascar Hall of Fame. Neither Jas nor I really care about Nascar but this was a whole "when in Rome" situation, the same way I visited the Talladega Speedway when I was in Alabama. We opted out of seeing the Hall of Fame since we wouldn't know who was in it anyways and chose the bus tour of the track. The sign said that the bus was going to go around the track at 200mph but the sign lied (we assumed that the sign was a liar when we bought our tickets but oh well).

After our lap around the track, we drove downtown for some more fI wanted to be the "I." I'd read that they had the signs at the Capitol Building (the signs move) so that is where we were headed. We saw a sign at Monument Circle, which has a giant monument dedicated to Indiana's Civil War troops, but continued on to the Capitol Building. At the Capitol Building, there were more statues about the Civil War (I didn't know that any Civil War battles were fought in Indiana, but Jas says that if there were Civil War battles being fought in Vermont, they could be fought anywhere) but no "ndy" sign so we retraced our steps to the first sign we saw and I accomplished my dream of being the "I." I have another dream of being featured on the MCT instagram, so I made sure to show off my MCT swag.
un. I was on a hunt for a specific sign. Indiana tourism has been running a campaign with the hastag #LoveIndy and part of that have been sculptures that say "ndy" and you get to be the "I."
I also made Jas be the "I" and was sneaky and got a picture of him smiling when he wanted to take a goofy photo (said goofy photo was also procured).

After that, it was time for food! We love food! We were really hunting for cupcakes because I'd read about a cupcake place online but we thought we should also get lunch while we were out. We ended up at City Market, which is your Quincy Market/Reading Terminal type place except not as big. I would consider it to be a triumph because we found a grilled cheese stand! I got what was probably their most standard sandwich (a lot of their sandwiches had bacon) which was white bread, American, provolone and chive cream cheese but it came with a pickle and potato chips!!

After grilled cheese, it was cupcake time. We walked to The Flying Cupcake, which was fittingly on Massachusetts Avenue. I ended up getting two cupcakes because cupcakes... I got the Red Velvet Elvis and the It's Not a Hoho. I'd say that the Elvis was the winner out of the two, but the real winner was me because I got cupcakes!!! The title of this blog post is inspired by a sign we saw as on Massachusetts Ave. -- which cuts diagonally through the other city streets -- and said "Only 45 degrees from ordinary." I didn't get a picture, but I like that expression because I think that I might be 45 degrees from ordinary too.

Have I mentioned how spread out Indianapolis is? (Trick question because I know that I have). We used nearly 40 joy miles yesterday! It shouldn't take 40 miles to drive across a city and back! Insanity... Well, now it is show day! We have performances at 3 and 7pm and Jas is taking the stage as Palm Tree #1, so it's gunna be an exciting day.