Seriously Dudes

(click on the images for full-size photos)

OK, this is a post that I had written at one point and then deleted without posting. It was all rambly and weird and I figured no one cared. It was originally called:

Iowa is Kicking My Ass

After last night, I decided I needed to make the post since apparently Iowa is pissed at me for not acknowledging its awesomeness as well as its ass-kicking prowess...at least where I'm concered.



When I first came down here on Feb 4 to get ready for my new job, it got to about -20 fahrenheit overnight. That's twenty degrees below zero air temperature, no wind. So the wind chill was somewhere between eyeball freezing and skin killing. My apartment has two bathrooms in it (well la dee da) and the one on the north side (the one that doesn't share walls with other apartments, i.e., it's exposed to the elements) had frozen pipes. This would have been good to notice before I went to the bathroom. Oh yeah, sure was fun getting that to work. It took more than a week for the pipes to thaw so that that bathroom was completely useable.



Then, it snowed. This is not strange, but East Coast folks know that I just spent ten years complaining that I missed the cold and snow of the Midwest. I have had enough. Please stop. Also, the windshield wipers on the car I was driving are broken. Once you start them, they do not stop until you turn off the car. (note: this is a different car than the one in the photo; the one in the photo was in a garage for the ice storm...more on that soon)



Then the movers came. Four hours late. And it took them nearly seven hours to get our stuff into our apartment. The whole time the front door was open, so our apartment was about 30 degrees inside. Not good for a 11-month baby. I had to be at work, so it's not I could send my wife somewhere warm. Nope, they got to sit around in the cold and be miserable. A few things got broken in the move, but it was not too bad overall. Of course, then we were left in a small apartment with enough stuff for a house. You couldn't move anywhere. I borrowed a hand truck from the library and rented a garage on the complex so that we could get stuff out of the apartment and have some space. There are no books out in the apartment; there are no decorations out; nothing. It's fairly spartan. We'll be looking for a house soon.



Then there was more snow. And more cold. Average temperatures below freezing, and often below zero overnight. All the Iowans claimed that the winter had been very mild up to that point. Great. Doesn't help me now. Then I got a flat tire. Correct that, when I pulled the tire off, there was a hole--on the inside of the tire--big enough to put both my fists into it. Yay! Nothing better than driving around in the freezing cold and ice with a spare tire on.

This last weekend was the ice storm where these pictures come from. A whole lot of people lost their power, but not us. The lights flickered all day Saturday. I was sure we were going to lose power but we never did. I went to take the trash out, and I couldn't get into the dumpster because it was frozen shut. So I went back out and took some pictures.

Then last night. I was digging for a recipe box behind some recipe books (hey, we're cramped for space) and when I went to stand up, I cracked (read that as: CRACKED) the top of my skull on the pointy edge of the kitchen counter. It dropped me like a sack of rocks. I tried to stay standing, but my body was like 'sorry, you need to spend some time sprawled on the floor now' and I dropped everything and flopped on the floor like a dead fish. My wife didn't know what was going on because she was feeding the baby and I couldn't formulate a coherent answer. I touched the top of my head and it was wet. Nothing better than a bloody head wound at dinner time. I never felt nauseous, or sleepy, or dizzy, just had a huge headache. It still hurts today. And I have a nice scabby bit under my hair.

So it's official, Iowa is kicking my ass. I think it's a character-building thing.