John Dillinger weekend

No, we did NOT have a shoot out, but it was an interesting "John Dillinger weekend" in Indianapolis.

With our friends at Napolese restaurant

One of the things we really enjoy about Indy is the variety of great restaurants.  So when our friends Gretchen and Craig came to town for the weekend, we introduced them to one of our favorite downtown restaurants, Napolese Artisanal Pizzeria.  It's a small, New York city style restaurant with an industrial chic feel.

And the food...very different from your normal pizza joint.  From our brussels sprout salad with apples, dried cherries and a balsamic redux, you get the general idea this is not your mom's cooking.  After savoring the brussels sprouts salad, a white beet salad and a Hamaker pizza and designer cocktails, we headed out to another of our favorite places, The Slippery Noodle Inn.  And that's where our John Dillinger weekend began.

I've mentioned the Slippery Noodle Inn in previous blogs.  We attend their Halloween contests (where Mike won first place last year in his Iron Man costume), listen to live bands and enjoy quick meals downtown when we are going to a concert or a Colts game.  But the place also has a history. It's the oldest continually operating bar in Indiana(since 1850),  and it's on National Register of Historic Places.

Drinks at the Slippery Noodle

And one of its' claims to fame is that during Prohibition, the Dillinger gang used the building in the back, originally built as a horse stable for the inn, for target practice.  Several of the slugs remain embedded in the back wall.  We enjoyed drinks in that very room, and you can still see the holes in the brick wall.  Wow!

And then on Saturday, Mike had the bright idea of going to Crown Hill Cemetery to find where John Dillinger is buried.  Crown Hill is a HUGE cemetery, and at 555 acres, it is the 5th largest cemetery in the United States.

Assuming Mike knew where Dillinger's grave was located, we agreed to this little sojourn and began to drive through the cemetery.  Or course he had never been to Dillinger's grave before and had NO IDEA where it was located.  So we drove around and around, and that's when we realized just how big 555 acres is.

And there were a few interesting signs along the way, things you just don't expect to read in a cemetery...

Cycling?

Tree tour?

But modern technology prevailed, and using my iPhone, we found the section and plot number.  Next we found the cemetery map and drove right to the tombstone.  Note that the tombstone is set in concrete so no one digs up this grave.

I've been in Indianapolis for two years now, and I continue to learn about our city.  Perhaps I should spend more time being a tourist...

Have a great week.
Diane

Learning my new iPhone

Selfie. What can I say?

I will admit that we've been slow adopters of phone technology.  Two years ago we had flip phones.  Until last week we both had "smart phones" that we didn't allow to be smart, i.e. we didn't enable the Internet.  And then Mike got me an iPhone for Valentine's Day, and I suddenly jumped into the 21st century.

And I absolutely love it!  For a person who doesn't like to read manuals, I've been reading the online manual on my iPad while holding my new phone and checking out the features.  I know, go ahead and say it.  TOTAL GEEK!

Here's what I love, and where I've been struggling...

Love these new features...
1. The camera is awesome!  I'm not sure I've got the hang of it yet, but I'll get there.  Ok, it may have taken us several hours to figure out how to get pictures moved to my computer.  But after waiting forever on hold with Verizon, we found it embarrassingly easy once we did a Google search.  As Mike tells his students "Google is your friend".

2. SIRI is an interesting feature that usually has me laughing as she interprets my questions.  But I love that I can ask her about a location, and her answer includes a map.  However she can't tell us who was a lead singer in a band.  I know, get your priorities straight.

3. You can see who called your voicemail if they are in your contacts, and you don't need to enter a password to retrieve the voicemail. Saves a lot of time even though most people don't leave voicemail these days.

4. The display of texts back and forth with another person is awesome.  I love that the dialogue appears on a single screen.

5. We currently use the CalenGoo (Google calendar) app on our iPads, and after downloading it to the phone, I could easily view all of our appointments.

6. I love that I can easily check email on the phone.  It was easy to set up my email, and after a bit of fumbling I also set up Mike's email so we can check them both if we're out and about.

7.  We are very familiar with the App Store from our iPads, and so it is second nature to download apps.  Ok, Scrabble was the first thing I downloaded.  It's a bit of a challenge to play a game on such a small device, but I'll get there.

Not so sure about these features...
1. It's hard to type text messages since I'm used to the pull out keyboard on my old phone.  Once I turned off the auto correct feature it was much easier.

2. It's challenging to read news articles on such a small screen, but I think I'll get used to this over time.  I did make the text size larger which really helps.

3. I have to charge the phone more frequently than I ever did on my previous phone.  I read about this before getting the phone so I wasn't surprised.  If this is a problem, I may consider one of the cases that can power the phone.

4. There are so many features, that it may take me a long time to learn everything the phone can do.  Not a bad problem to have I guess.


Here is a photo montage of Indy taken with my new phone:

Canal in Broad Ripple

Cemetery

Downtown Indy at dusk

Lucas Oil Stadium

White River

Eagle Creek Reservoir

The Pyramids

Of course there's more to life than a new phone...

We enjoyed a great dinner with friends Chuck and Melanie at Napolese in downtown Indy.  Very delicious salads and unusual pizza (we tried a pizza with roast beef), not to mention strange drinks. Mike tried one called "10 bullets".   Not sure why that name, but he loved the drink which included bourbon and a type of Italian bitters that his grandpa used to drink. And  he really had "20 bullets" by the end of dinner.

Chuck and Melanie

And I've been busy with a few crafts during these last (hopefully) days of winter...

Coin pouch

And we enjoyed a brief trip to mom's so Mike could finish some plumbing work he started a couple of weeks ago. And the most famous line of the trip was from Mike:  "Doesn't everyone have a propane torch?" And maybe the answer from my brother Gary sums it up for most people: "If it involves fire, I call in the professionals".

Hope you are enjoying a great week.
Diane