Bloomington

I drove Declan to Bloomington, IN this weekend. It was a different experience. I picked Declan up in Muncie on Friday and drove from there to Bloomington. Kind of taking the sides of a right triangle instead of the hypotenuse, but whatever. The drive to Muncie's a nice one (unlike Muncie, which is a shit hole).

When we got to Bloomington, Declan and I ate at "Cafe Pizzeria." The pizza is pretty good there - and it's cheap. Then I dropped Declan off at some dorm and didn't see him again until Sunday.

The in between part of my visit really isn't that notable. I went to Borders, found the new Christoper Moore book "Fools," and studied. I drove around a lot. Bloomington's a nice town. The one bit of excitement I had, which was unwelcome, came a 6 o'clock last night (this morning?) when some jackass knocks on my door. I was staying in a Motel 6, not exactly the highest quality lodging, so I was not just a little freaked out. For the next half hour, I was wondering who had knocked on my door, and - more importantly - what was still to come. Maybe the cops were going to burst through the door. Maybe someone would throw a brick through the window. Still worse - maybe someone would shoot through the window and an errant bullet might hit me. I was contemplating whether or not I should hide between the two beds or if the bathroom would be the safer option when my phone rang. Since I had spent the last half hour or so scaring myself with incredibly... "likely" scenarios, the phone scared the bejesus out of me. The guy on the other end of the line drunkenly enquired as to the whereabouts of his "Indiana Jones" hat. I hung up in the middle of his emphatic "dammit!" when he learned I didn't know. So he was prank calling or he really did lose his hat. Either way, this is a way more obvious explanation than anything I had thought.

You just gotta be prepared for the worst. And I was really wishing I had a gun for those 30 minutes lying in fear. I might just have to go get one.

After that debacle, I picked Declan up and we ate at a very strange Waffle House. It was much closer to a Denny's than any Waffle House I had ever eaten in before. It was very disappointing, though their hash browns were made with brown sugar which is a pretty good idea.

One thing Bloomington got me thinking about are those big, imposing town halls in many of the smaller towns across Indiana and Ohio (and maybe more states, though I don't know). Why does tiny Liberty, Indiana need such a large town hall? When were these things built? Are these like smaller versions of Cathedrals (medieval status symbols)? Are they just in the smaller towns because the larger towns were more developed and were able to afford larger town halls - or now need modern town halls? Is there some obvious answer to this that I'm missing?