Pokemon National Championships

Over the weekend I developed a sore throat, so I'm taking it easy at home today. I haven't had a day of no responsibilities for a long time, so this one morning will have to stand in for an entire summer vacation.

Yesterday I drove Sweetie to the National Pokemon Championships at the Indiana Convention Center, so he could see the crazy people who devote their lives to the video game in action. Some of them were seriously scary--and I don't mean like unwashed and barely dressed, but capable of reading minds. I even became a little emotionally invested in the outcome, because we spent the morning watching someone from Jersey win through luck and showman antics. His friends and family were all there shouting non-stop, disparaging his opponents and quacking during matches. Yes, quacking. It's a Mighty Psyduck thing. He didn't seem like a bad guy, really, but we did not want him and his loud fans to win the championship against the more strategy-wise one in a collared shirt who Sweetie immediately picked out as his favorite. Sweetie sympathizes with people in collared shirts because they look like "serious business." And he was indeed serious business; during the final matches he had terrible luck (getting paralyzed, flinching, etc.) against the Mighty Psyduck and still managed to stay in control. He won, of course, because Pokemon plushies and quacking do not a battle win.

For lunch we we walked down the street and found a Steak 'n Shake on the corner. I knew there would be restaurants there because we were in Downtown Indianapolis, and you can't walk two steps in any direction without running into a restaurant or shop. Downtown looks sort of like a proper metropolis, but honestly, Indianapolis is tiny. This is coming from someone who grew up in the suburbs, too. Like, if we walked ten minutes in the opposite direction, we would have been out with the corn fields and factories. The streets are bizarre because they were strung together on the fly, and parking is abysmal because it wasn't designed for a big influx of people. It's certainly not the sort of city you would expect national competitions to be held, and apparently this was an unusual year. But that Steak and Shake was much higher quality than any you would find in Bloomington--both food- and people-wise. Our sever had manners; whodathunk?

Other than a spot of bad traffic fleeing the city in the afternoon, we survived the trip without incident. I spent the morning worried that we would come back to find our car towed, or couldn't get out of the public lot, because the machine ate my $5 and opened the gate without printing a ticket. But thankfully no one made the rounds to check, and the exit gate was motion-sensored. I really, really don't want to have to go back again any time soon, but we did escape in one piece.

When we got home I did laundry and ate canned soup for dinner, because canned soup always calls my name when I'm feeling under the weather. Then when I felt better I jogged on the treadmill (2 miles in 23.5 minutes! Woo!). That was probably a stupid thing to do because it ran my body down even more, though it felt like a good idea at the time. So today I am sitting around, sucking on lozenges and waiting until the microorganisms in my system finish their repairs.