Who less than threes Iowa? I do.

I have decided that while I do not LOVE Iowa I can less-than-three it in a temporary internet-fickle kind of way. Like "I don't really know you but I am a friendly person and I like what your wrote there so I will <3>




So days 2-3: Day two was mostly about work. I kind of started to settle in, do some things rather than just follow like a puppy. Finally got my email setand the work laptop wrangled into submission. I set up some printers and other menial crap. After work I went to Olde Main Brewing for dinner and a delicious beer. I set my ambition too high, because not only did I not have dinner, I didn't get to find out if it was delicious beer. I was seated by the hostess and then ignored until I walked out 25 minutes later. I did read today that yesterday was some Zoo Brew event so maybe they were short staffed in the actual restaurant but seriously? How long does it take to get a drink order from one person? I wouldn't have cared about the wait if I had been sipping beer. Well, I will try again another night.

I stopped by the HyVee grocery store and got three things: candied ginger which was $3 for like half a pound (good deal!), "masala roasted chick peas", and a prepack salad from the deli. The chick peas were disappointing because they tasted heavily of sulphur. The ginger was okay, very spicy but not so much crystallized as heavily sugared. Some bitterness and skin on some pieces.

So I went back to the hotel, drank a cider, found out my kid was getting out of kid jail, had a long talk with my wife and had lousy sleep again.

Day 3 has been all about the food. Finally checked out the hotel breakfast, which was okay because of juice and coffee to-go cups. But lunch is Taco Time. I love Taco Time because when I was a kid and lived with my paternal grandparents every weekend was marked by a couple of important things. My grandfather had very specific food needs on the weekend. On Sunday it was 3pm popcorn from the big air popper, but Saturday for lunch it was two crisp bean burritos from the Taco Time down the hill. So today for lunch I got two crisp bean burritos and enjoyed the hell out of them.
Also stopped by the convenience store, where they sell 24oz soda bottles instead of the usual 20oz. So weird.

So tonight I may try some local flavor such as the Doolittle Prairie Walk. Or go back to my room and watch crap TV again for the 3rd night in a row with some Olde Main beer in a bottle from the convenience store next to my hotel.



Still a lot of corn and penises:

LATER on Day 3: Iowa just went up a lot in standing because I just got to see a whole bunch of little baby bison. Awwww... cuh-cute! I want to sqeeeeze them.

Iowa detail -- Day 1

So this is Iowa. I get off the plane which was two hours late and can already feel the humidity.
The airport is tiny and easy to escape, and the car rental lady is very nice.

No one in Iowa seems to care that I am a big old queer.

I drive to Ames, find my hotel finally, then go out for a drive to see the sights and find dinner... also to get a bunch of crap I forgot.

I find the University and it is AWESOME. Well I really just love the trees and the buildings like the great red brick horse barn.

I drive around, finally run into an area with a lot of stores and hit the Big KMart for the things I forgot. Soda is really expensive here, and there are no liqour stores. Finally find a liquor store which informs me that all grocery stores and convenince stores sell booze. Ah.

A shining beacon of hope in the night.

I find a Taco John's (across from a Taco Time!) and return to the hotel.

The next morning I run to the work campus and figure out what the hell I will be doing all day, which is WALK. The square footage of the building is 11 football fields on 4 floors. Whew. There are also cool things like level 2 and 3 labs, which are empty so you can go in and look at them with no danger of contamination.

For lunch the boss of the customer service folks takes me to a great pizza place Great Plains Sauce and Dough. It should be called Great Plains Dough and Cheese because that is what most of the pizza is made of. TONS of cheese, on thick whole wheat or oat crust. I liked it quite a bit, and it was cheap. 2 slices and a coke set me back 5.66, with free soda refills.

We tour the main street a little and then head back to the campus. After work I go to cool down in my room then venture back out to look for the supposed gay bar, a big box store, and a proper grocery store. Gay bar is non-existent. Grocery store is odd, frozen food is NOT cheap here. The soda is still not cheap, which I figure is because of the deposit on bottles. The store brand soda makes me laugh.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaaaaw!

Dear Bing...

You are a piece of shit and here is why:

I am sure you are just as adequate as Yahoo! search or anything else. But my coworker wanted to search for something this morning so she went to GOOGLE and typed in BING. (Actually, she typed in "BLING", because your name is so stupid people cannot even remember it.)

Yeah. They are using Google to find you, Bing, which is kind of like using your TomTom to find a Garmin dealer. It is not quite a compliment.

We all have the perfectly functional items we use every day, that work really well, and we all have the new shiny things we try for a while because they were a gift, but turn out to not be all that great.

Sorry, Bing. You fail.