I will say, being surrounded by Colts fans and having attended a few games in Lucas Oil (including once in enemy clothing for a Seahawks-Colts game), Colts fans generally have not rated on my list of obnoxious fanbases. I would expect, in some cities, that I would be much more annoyed by the home team because of the fans.

That said, obviously that booing last night was all kinds of shameful, and I wouldn't feel bad for their fans anyway given their insane good fortune in going straight from Manning to Luck.

Man, this is an elite tweet.

I have a friend who will always start a text conversation by asking if I have any plans that evening.

Dude, just jump into the invite to whatever you want me to do. Assuming I'm free, you're asking me to at least pencil in a blank check by just asking me how free I am. Mind you, I don't lie as a general rule and feign busy when I'm not, and I'm fine with just saying "no thanks" to plans if I don't feel like them, but you're reducing my ability to say it politely.

"Are you free tonight?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to <do uninteresting thing>?"
"Well, no."

So much better if you can allow me a line like:

"Hey, do you want to <do uninteresting thing> tonight?"
"I think I have to take a pass tonight. Thanks for inviting me though."

In the latter example I'm able to politely decline without it being so damn explicit that I'm just saying "no I would rather not spend my evening with you, being alone is preferred."

My life improved dramatically when I learned that I didn't need an excuse to pass on invites and it's totally ok to say "Na, not really interested. Thanks though and hope you have fun".

An issue for me is that if I turned down every invite based on disinterest then I fear I'm turning down at much too high of a rate and am probably landing in a place where I'm unsociable to an unhealthy degree. So I force myself to say yes more often than I actually want to, and then when I get out I tend to enjoy myself more than I expected to a lot of the time.

But this exchange tonight is becoming increasingly irksome, because - after setting up a chance to say no - now I've agreed and am being temporarily ghosted.

Friend: "Hey, you busy tonight?"
Me: "Not necessarily busy, though I feel a bit bushed today. What did you have in mind?"
Friend: "Was gonna see if you wanted to grab dinner."
Me: "Ah what the hell, sure, let's do it. I'm actually in the office doing some catch-up right now. When were you thinking?"
<insert one hour of silence, which isn't terribly unusual for this friend>

Context: "in the office" means downtown. He lives downtown. I don't. I sure as hell don't want to leave and come back for dinner. I'll send a nudge now.

(Friend is a good guy and I enjoy spending time with him. I just want to shake him violently and smack the bad texting behavior out of him.)

I'm at the point now where if it's not a "hell yes," it's a "no."

One thing I've found strange in my decade in Indiana: most of the state takes no ownership of Notre Dame (athletics or otherwise). Granted that I come from a different geographic reality by being someone who grew up ~2 hours from Seattle and regarded Seattle as the one and only big city, whereas out here you're only a few hours from a number of big cities, but I still expected Indiana as a whole to really boast Notre Dame.

In Bloomington I shrugged at it, even though IU is perpetually mediocre at best in football, because there's at least an immediate local team. But even living in Indianapolis, there's no sense at all that Notre Dame is a relatively local team. They get a spot in the early-season Crossroads Classic for basketball, when all of IU/Purdue/Butler/ND get a spot, but otherwise you could barely tell that they were an Indiana school.

Just spitballing here, but I'm guessing that's because Notre Dame takes no ownership of being in Indiana, at least as far as sports go.

And it's not because they're private, Duke/UNC and Cal/Stanford are very intense rivalries.

But when you think about Notre Dame football, their rivals aren't Purdue and Indiana (they haven't even played IU in almost 30 years). Their rivals are Southern Cal and Stanford, and to a lesser extent Army, Navy and the Michigan schools. For basketball, they are in the ACC, which makes no sense geographically.

Given this and their national profile, the school could be just about anywhere in the country and very little would change.

Norte Dame is an Indiana school by location only. They are and have always been connected much more with Chicago than anywhere else because of the large Catholic population.

All of the above is true. Have heard ND referred to being effectively in “Michiana” as well.

ND of course has a national following.

I don't disagree with any of that. I still find it a bit surprising that people of Indiana wouldn't care to glom onto its one team with consistent national prominence.

But again, this is likely informed by the fact that I grew up in a state that, particularly in retrospect, feels like its own island. Most of the Pacific Northwest (and, for that matter, Alaska) claims the Seahawks, not just Washingtonians. Growing up, I had little awareness that you reach a certain point east and suddenly big cities pop up every 150 miles.

By the way Dvo, you're still not allowed to have multiple favorite college teams. Some of us are stuck exclusively rooting for WSU. Rules are rules.

And then you get to Vermont and you think "What's a city?"

Our largest city of Burlington would not make the top 20 in population in either Washington or Indiana. And LOL our other "cities", all of which have less than half the population of Burlington. We have this one piece of land that calls itself a city that only has 2,600 people.

Meh, I think mine is pretty legit. Dad and brother are ND grads (cheered ND my whole life) and I almost went, but chose Army instead.

ND and Army rarely cross paths (when they do I cheer Army, not that it does much good). Army’s BBall team is non-existent (program high point was an NIT trip in the 70s). Though this game is when I knew which school I’d pick (ND saves a winning Army 2 pt conversion which was the defensive play of the year in 1995)

https://youtu.be/9sgbWAk9D78

I very much want to visit Vermont at some point. I need to see the whole northeast. This is my current "states I've visited" map. Obviously I don't count really weak stuff like catching a connecting flight in Dallas, or taking an evening during a vacation in Philly to catch a concert on the NJ side of the border.

Vermont is a very beautiful state, well worth visiting.

I started drawing up a road trip to Acadia National Park, which maybe I'll still do one day, but I found that it was impossible to limit myself to a trip of 7-8 days that felt like I was doing the whole thing any sort of justice. Felt like I needed a minimum of 10 days. I definitely didn't want to just zip through Vermont.

I did a Williamsburg/Charleston/Savannah swing this past summer, and it was lovely.

Heady topper though!

Heady Topper and Sip of Sunshine are so good.

My states:

Red - Went for a specific reason and spent at least one night there
Yellow - Went for a specific reason, but spent did not spend a full day there
Purple - Drove through
Brown - Only in airport

Definitely a tier of Alaska, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon and Montana of states I'd like to visit that I haven't yet. After that it's a massive drop off.

Wyoming and South Dakota are amazingly beautiful. I feel like Montana gets the best rep in that chain for scenic beauty, and it's a nice state, but it doesn't feel like it adds up to the other two (and it shares one of its highlights, Yellowstone, with Wyoming).

When I drove east to move to Indiana, there was definitely this stark transition where the scenery went from amazing to boring-as-****, and it happened when I hit the eastern part of SD and got into MN. It stayed boring until I arrived in Chicago, which is awesome, albeit for totally different reasons than the Badlands in SD are awesome.

Oregon is nothing. It's that tract of land you drive through to get from Washington to California. As an added bonus, if you're driving on I-5 you get to change speed limits every 10 minutes, so you can't just live on cruise control. But at least they force you sit in your car while they pump your gas for you.

I'm only missing Oregon, both Dakotas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Maine

ETA west Virginia as well. Have driven through but never stayed for anything

My main takeaway from WV was when I first entered it and saw an awesome three-sign sequence, each spaced probably a quarter-mile from each other:

WELCOME TO WEST VIRGINIA

LUST WILL SEND YOU TO HELL

GENTLEMAN'S CLUB NEXT RIGHT

Admittedly WV is one that I've felt like I was being generous in counting. I've driven through it twice and stopped off for sit-down meals both times. I felt like it added up to being there. They haven't erected any historic sites in honor of Brad Paisley, so I don't know what I would stop off for.