Spring Break 2012! Indiana/Nashville.

My parents and I drove to Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana for a couple of days during spring break to check out the campus.  We also checked out the University of Illinois at Urbana.  Apparently I need to be considering different options for graduate school already...so this was the beginning of campus tours (...again...) for the next phase of my "adult" life.  It was very interesting and nice to see these very prestigious schools in person, and all of the history associated with them.

To wrap it up, we decided to make a stop in the magnificent town of Nashville, TN on the way home.  We ate at a really awesome restaurant called Jamaica Way, that was actually featured on the Food Network show "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives".  After eating some great Jamaican food, we made two more stops: Grimey's and Trader Joe's.

Trader Joe's is a fantastic grocery store, with really cool food items you can't get anywhere else.  For example, I bought a jar of Habenero and Tomatillo salsa.  Definitely worth the stop.  Next was Grimey's, the most incredible, unique, best-stocked music store I have ever been to, ANYWHERE.  I have never seen a more vast collection of CDs and vinyls in such a small area.  It was great to just chat with some of the employees too, and hear stories of some of the bands they have been able to get in the past to play in-store shows.  One guy I got to chat with told me the story of how they got the Black Keys to play, before they made it big time.  If you want, check THIS VIDEO of them playing one of their old hits, "Your Touch", in store!  It gave me great satisfaction knowing that I stood in the same spot where Dan and Pat had graced the store with their prescense.  So the story goes that the employee I talked to had heard about the Black Keys before they went big, and he had to ask them to play a show in-store.  The Black Keys remembered that favor, and actually came back to play again as a "thank you" to the store for giving them a gig as they were trying to make it to the big leagues.  We also talked about how I heard about the store from watching THIS VIDEO of the Avett Brothers playing a show during Record Store Day a couple of years ago.  I will definitely be going back there.  I really like Nashville as a city too.  Who knows, maybe I'll end up living there when I grow up.

Purdue!

University of Illinois campus

Pictures of Nashville

GRIMEY'S

Great sunset pictures.

(My treasures from Grimey's.  From left to right: Andrew Bird's new record, X&Y, Tallest Man on Earth, Mutemath's Odd Soul, and a Cage the Elephant Live @ Grimey's recording CD)