Last weekend Trevor and I took a trip to Indianapolis. The trip was T.’s belated birthday gift because our primary destination was the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, but we made it a weekend full of wandering, cocktails, and small-dose luxury.

We started out Saturday morning with breakfast at Milktooth, a hipster heaven that had been recommended by T.’s coworker Leah. I had an a-maAAAaaaazing duck-egg grilled cheese (oh, you know, just a Gruyère grilled cheese on cranberry bread topped with a fried duck egg and drizzled with black truffle honey [OH MY GOD]). Trevor had something that was equally wonderful but I can’t remember what because all I remember is my grilled cheese sandwich. It. was. so. good. No pictures were taken during our meal because, well, because I had to immediately start eating my food. Because, cheese.

But while we waited for our table, T. made our first Vonnegut sighting and got a picture.

After we ate, we headed to the KVML, but it wasn’t yet open because I’d been looking at their weekday operating hours, and it was Saturday. We had about twenty minutes to kill, so we wandered to the Indiana State Capitol just a few blocks away.

Instead of joining a tour, we just meandered up and down the floors and through the hallways, reading plaques and enjoying the loveliness and quiet of a 128 year-old bureaucratic building on a Saturday morning.

But the best part of visiting the Capitol came as we were leaving. Since it was a Saturday, visitors had to come in through a side entrance on the lower level and take an elevator up to the main floor. The lower level — the basement — was dark and had a lot of hallways and ramps that just begged to be explored. Since the only security was in a hallway by the entrance, T. and I decided to peek around to see what we could see.

And we saw where the Indiana State Representatives and Senators wash their dirty laundry.

We saw where the Indiana Congress probably keeps any misbehaving guests.

We saw where the Senate Committee 130 meets. They’re clearly the least-liked of all the committees in the history of the state of Indiana.

And we saw that some of the people working in basement offices have a fun sense of humor.

We finished wandering and headed to the library, which was open and waiting for us.

The space is small but well curated, with artifacts from Vonnegut’s military career and his writing and reading life, his original artwork, and artwork inspired by his work and about his life. The docent on duty was great to talk to and gave me a lot of extra information about Vonnegut’s academic career. Although Vonnegut had done undergraduate work at a number of institutions, he never got a bachelor’s degree; and he only got his master’s degree (from UC, where he’d studied for his master’s in anthropology but never got his thesis finished or approved) after he was told by the University of Iowa, where he’d been teaching in its Writers’ Workshop, that he kind of, sort of needed to have a degree to teach graduate classes. Oh, bother.

After we exhausted the library, we headed back to our hotel to rest up before we got to formally relax with a massage at the hotel spa. This is a luxury we’ve enjoyed three times now — first for our anniversary and then as part of a Christmas present from Greg and Paula a few year ago — and it’s so much fun. We felt very fancy, drinking strawberry water and taking “aromatherapy journeys,” and we took zero pictures.

Saturday night we had dinner and drinks in the Fountain Square neighborhood. Highlights included cocktails at a Vonnegut inspired place called Bluebeard and an accidental run-in with the Virginia Avenue Folk Fest. It was a chilly night, so we didn’t hang out too long for many of the bands, but on every block there was some group playing something toe-tapping. One in particular, The Hammer & The Hatchet, who were playing outside of a little shop called American Beauty, were especially great. We came upon them when they were playing their last few songs, and we enjoyed each one. It reminded me of when T. and I were on our honeymoon in Spain, and, while wandering the streets our first night in Barcelona, we came upon a sort-of Spanish polka band playing in a square outside of a cathedral. There was a group of people surrounding them and everyone was dancing and laughing and having a wonderful time. So now I love The Hammer & The Hatchet because they made me happily nostalgic.

And that was our trip to Indianapolis!

But taking the trip and planning this blog post reminded me that I’d never written about our trip to Los Angeles in February, so you’re going to read about that, too. Ha, suckers!

The L.A. trip was piggy-backed onto a trip T. was taking for work. He’d been out there with Callie and Leah for the week to work on the Dad Time project, and when my last class ended Thursday afternoon, I headed to California to join him for the weekend.

Clearly, because we are who we are, books were a part of this vacation, and we went to the art book fair at the Geffen Museum of Contemporary Art. We spent a number of hours wandering around, and both of us found great stuff for our bookshelves.

We also took an opportunity to visit some friends who live in L.A. Our first night we met up with a former student of mine named Arabella, who is working as a writer and having a lot of success. I am the most proud of her that I possibly can be. Even if she was just living in L.A. and working as a cat-sitter and trying to make it, I would be proud; but she’s, like, doing it. She was in the first creative writing class I ever taught at MCC, and she was my editor for the literary magazine for two years. She’s talented, smart, and, basically, the bee’s knees.

I didn’t take a picture of us in L.A., but here she is in my end-of-year class photo from 2009:

Our second night we hung for a bit out with my friend Tim (who I know from my days at Chicago Shakespeare Theater) and his wife Annie. We hadn’t seen them since our wedding in 2007; they moved out to L.A. the following year to see if Tim could be successful in Hollywood. And, well, he pretty much is. Annie teaches theater at a high school for the arts, and they have two cool little kids, who we got to meet for the first time. It was nice to catch up.

We also did our fair share of wandering, and the best place we found to people (and animal) watch was Venice Beach. We saw some birds.

We saw some surfers.

And we saw some skaters. They were hypnotizing and I could have watched them for hours and hours and hours and been very happy, listening to the sound of their wheels rolling back and forth on the concrete.

We saw some yard art and walked along the canals, and loved it all, even though our feet were tired.

And our last night, while we made our way through other neighborhoods, we came upon the Hollywood headquarters of the Church of Scientology…

…and the Echo Park Time Travel Mart.

Los Angeles is pretty weird and pretty wonderful.

So those were our trips! We have other news from Camp Crystal Lake that I’ll report out in other posts over the coming weeks, and I’ll be running another online writing group this summer, so you’ll be reading a lot about that. Prepare yourselves!