It is a beautiful Friday evening on the Plains. The weather has been absolutely perfect this week, with partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the 70s. Early summer is really nice in Iowa, as long as the severe storms stay away. Tornado season been much quieter this year than last. We haven't had any nights in the basement yet.
A few months back, I made the big decision to finish college. It is going to take a long time, since I will be taking classes after work, and my long and varied list of credits from my years at Utah State didn't fit as perfectly into the degree program as I would have liked. I really want to get my bachelors done, though. I start the week after the 4th of July, with a single summer Microeconomics class. I'm excited about it!
Tomorrow morning, I am judging at a BBQ contest in Des Moines. It is a contest put on by the U.S. pork board, and is one of the only contests that is allowed to vary from the usual chicken-ribs-pork shoulder-brisket format of competitive bbq. This contest is all pork, so the entries are ribs, shoulder, loin and whole hog! That's a lot of swine! It is a really fun contest, and it brings in the best teams on the BBQ circuit.
Last weekend, we headed to Omaha, to visit Sarah's grandma, who was in the hospital. When we got to the Omaha area, we found she was being released. We waited to give her time to get home, then visited her at her house. In the meantime, we shopped at Bass Pro Shops in Council Bluffs (opening soon near Des Moines, too), and bought Asher his first sleeping bag. We ate at Quaker Steak and Lube, a great restaurant that exists pretty much only in the Pittsburgh area... and the Council Bluffs casino strip, for some reason. They have about 30 flavors of chicken wings, from mellow to one so hot you have to sign a release (as seen on the Travel Channel). I had the 3rd hottest, and they were very tasty.
We also went to see the two huge locomotives on display on top of a bluff above the river. One is the biggest steam locomotive ever, and the other is the biggest diesel locomotive. They are really cool, especially the steam one. I think I could look at it all day and still find things that are cool about it. Asher likes the locomotives, too, and he really likes to run around outside!
We drove back to Des Moines using a bit of a backroad route. I was searching for a legendary
greasy spoon cafe in the tiny town of Exira, the stuff of roadfood legend. After some serious wrong turns, we found it, and it was closed. Not out of business, just closed. At 6 pm on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Rural Iowa moves at a different pace, and things pretty much shut down at 5. Disappointed, we drove to a
less mythical place in Panora, which was OK, but not what I had worked up to. The Western Iowa countryside is beautiful this time of year, especially away from the interstate. The corn plants, several inches tall now, form a deep green rolling carpet, and the ditches and groves are full of wildflowers.
After some initial reluctance, Asher is starting to get excited about the idea of being a big brother, and has been asking lots of surprisingly tough questions. Yesterday, he told someone that he was going to have a little brother, then told her what he thinks the baby's name will be. Oddly, it was a name we have seriously considered for a long time, but had never discussed with him. So, time will tell if he was right, on either part.
It is a beautiful Friday evening on the Plains. The weather has been absolutely perfect this week, with partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the 70s. Early summer is really nice in Iowa, as long as the severe storms stay away. Tornado season been much quieter this year than last. We haven't had any nights in the basement yet.
A few months back, I made the big decision to finish college. It is going to take a long time, since I will be taking classes after work, and my long and varied list of credits from my years at Utah State didn't fit as perfectly into the degree program as I would have liked. I really want to get my bachelors done, though. I start the week after the 4th of July, with a single summer Microeconomics class. I'm excited about it!
Tomorrow morning, I am judging at a BBQ contest in Des Moines. It is a contest put on by the U.S. pork board, and is one of the only contests that is allowed to vary from the usual chicken-ribs-pork shoulder-brisket format of competitive bbq. This contest is all pork, so the entries are ribs, shoulder, loin and whole hog! That's a lot of swine! It is a really fun contest, and it brings in the best teams on the BBQ circuit.
Last weekend, we headed to Omaha, to visit Sarah's grandma, who was in the hospital. When we got to the Omaha area, we found she was being released. We waited to give her time to get home, then visited her at her house. In the meantime, we shopped at Bass Pro Shops in Council Bluffs (opening soon near Des Moines, too), and bought Asher his first sleeping bag. We ate at Quaker Steak and Lube, a great restaurant that exists pretty much only in the Pittsburgh area... and the Council Bluffs casino strip, for some reason. They have about 30 flavors of chicken wings, from mellow to one so hot you have to sign a release (as seen on the Travel Channel). I had the 3rd hottest, and they were very tasty.
We also went to see the two huge locomotives on display on top of a bluff above the river. One is the biggest steam locomotive ever, and the other is the biggest diesel locomotive. They are really cool, especially the steam one. I think I could look at it all day and still find things that are cool about it. Asher likes the locomotives, too, and he really likes to run around outside!
We drove back to Des Moines using a bit of a backroad route. I was searching for a legendary greasy spoon cafe in the tiny town of Exira, the stuff of roadfood legend. After some serious wrong turns, we found it, and it was closed. Not out of business, just closed. At 6 pm on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Rural Iowa moves at a different pace, and things pretty much shut down at 5. Disappointed, we drove to a less mythical place in Panora, which was OK, but not what I had worked up to. The Western Iowa countryside is beautiful this time of year, especially away from the interstate. The corn plants, several inches tall now, form a deep green rolling carpet, and the ditches and groves are full of wildflowers.
After some initial reluctance, Asher is starting to get excited about the idea of being a big brother, and has been asking lots of surprisingly tough questions. Yesterday, he told someone that he was going to have a little brother, then told her what he thinks the baby's name will be. Oddly, it was a name we have seriously considered for a long time, but had never discussed with him. So, time will tell if he was right, on either part.
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