blog.zgraggen.name  All-day insanity or I have a blog too!

A few weeks ago Amy and I went to a wedding in Indianapolis. Besides the wedding we also enjoyed exploring the city.
Here are four things which you shouldn’t miss in Indianapolis:

Monument Circle
In the middle of the city is the monument circle. And as the name says there is a monument which you can climb. If you take the stairs it is free and if you are lazy and take the elevator you have to pay for the experience. It shall remain a secret how we got up there

WWII museum
We walked passed the Memorial Fountain and the Veterans Memorial Plaza, when we discovered the second world war museum. The entry is free and the exhibition is very impressive and interesting. Unfortunately, we had only about an hour to look at all the things until a wedding reception was held at this location. But this place is definitely worth a visit.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway
If Nascar fan or not… This place is definitely worth a visit. The 2.5 miles look is huge and impressive even without cars on it. A ride as a co-rider on the track in a Nascar would cost $135 which we thought wasn’t worth the experience. But the museum for $5 was definitely worth it. Many winner-cars from the INDY500 races can be looked at. It is also funny to see and read about the history the first car needed over 6 hours to finish the race where as today the cars finish the race under 3 hours even though there are some limitations for the cars, since the race got too fast. They obviously love their cars and the track, which you can also see on the web page. (History section)

Weber Grill
A restaurant which cooks on a Weber grill. Obviously, we had to test how good it was… Amy and I both approve it! My favorite part was the pretzel rolls (Laugenbrot) which was offered as a free appetizer. I love this bread and couldn’t believe that they have it here in the states!

Of course there is plenty more to see in Indianapolis, but we had only very little time. Here are some pictures from the weekend.

Ps: Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to inspect the Hooters in Indianapolis…

It’s almost a tradition that I clean up my blog at the beginning of the year and publish all the posts which I never finished during the past year. This time I will focus on all the things I did during my last semester at CMU. Passing all my classes with an acceptable grade and finding a job kept me quite busy… But I did a few fun things!

Family Road Trip

Before the last semester started my parents came to visit me in Pittsburgh. After two days in Pittsburgh we started a road trip to see the Niagara Fall, NYC, Amish People, and Washington DC. Besides all the typical tourist stuff which can be seen on all those locations we also saw something special.

A waitress at the Niagara Falls told us that it is possible to operate the lights for the Niagara Falls at night. We followed her directions and knocked on a particular door which was then opened by an elderly nice guy. He told us stories of the old days and how everything used to be and also technical details about today’s lighting system. And finally we were allowed to play around with the light system. I thought this was funny since 100 of people were standing on the edge of the water fall taking pictures of all the random combination my family experimented with

A more detailed description of our road trip can be found on my brother’s blog. (in German)

Oopsla 2009 in Orlando, Florida

I and a friend from school went to the Oopsla 2009 convention as student volunteers. Special about this Oopsla is that it was held in the Disney World Convention center which was in the middle of Disney World Orlando. What a great location. The conference itself was really interesting and it would have been even better if our professor would have relieved us from our homework assignments

But I have to say one negative thing about Disney World Orlando, all the water you can drink from the fountains taste horrible after sulfur. Maybe that is because of the fireworks they light every night.
Before we left Orlando, my friend and I had to visit the Universal Studios and go swimming at the beach, which felt like a mid-semester break

Philly Marathon and Rocky stairs

Amy, I and two of our friends drove together to Philadelphia to run there a half marathon which ends in front of the famous “Rocky Stairs”. It is a nice and almost flat course. The special thing to do after you finished the half marathon is to run up the stairs like Rocky Balboa did in his movie.

There would be many more detail I could tell about each specific thing, but I finally want to publish this post. Besides for most of my readers this is supposed to be a short update on what I have been up to.

Today, I happened to be at the graduation of Robert Rodriguez (Imdb) at the University of Texas at Austin. He left the University 20 years ago for his career in the movie industry. A year ago he finally returned to finish his degree, which he now received. He also gave the commencement speak which was the best one I ever heard so far.

Hook’em Horns!

Yesterday, I got back from the Spring Break. Following an alphabetical ordered list with all the fun stuff we did:

- Caltech campus tour (thanks to my brother)
- Disney California Adventure Park
- Disneyland Park
- Drive through Bel-Air
- Drive through Beverly Hills
- In-N-Out Burger
=> Four-by-four with everything extra and fries animal style
- Griffith Observatory
- Hiked to the Hollywood sign
- Hooters in Hollywood
- Lecture from Stephen Hawking – “Why go into space”
- Run at the Venice Beach
- Shopping
- Surfing
- Walk of Fame

Thanks to my brother for hosting us and playing the tourist guide

btw: Some pictures might follow…

EDIT:
- Drive on an 8lane highway (8 lanes each way)
- Use the HOV (High-occupancy vehicle) lane