Iowa!

I like Iowa. And I like Des Moines. From our plane’s eye vantage, everyone had a yard, there were sidewalks all over the place, trees, a cute little downtown. Wonderful looking city. Except, I guess, for the fact that it’s essentially underwater right now. These poor Iowans, their rivers overfloweth – they’re at least 5 times the size of normal. It’s pretty amazing, makes you want to get stuck in a tree, requiring a daring volunteer fireman rescue.

But that’s not all. We had a cute real dirty blonde, corn-fed, saw-toothed local waitress. And the guy at the rental car counter shook my hand for no good reason, other than the fact that he was happy to greet anyone who likes Iowa.

I love the term “corn-fed”. I want a good corn-fed girl. I want little corn-fed kids with crew cuts, wrestling with their demographically homogeneous friends and shooting beer cans off an old wooden fence, occasionally hitting each other with shrapnel, maybe losing a finger here or there. I even saw some barbed wire fence, most likely for keeping out the Injuns.

But really, I mean it, I like Iowa, and I’ve been here for 3 hours. It has a wholesome feeling to it. A corn-fed wholesome feeling.

I am here, of course, for Stephen’s 5K prelim at Nationals. He has a realistic (though by no means foregone) chance to make finals on Friday. Tonight he is fortunate enough to be in heat 2, meaning he’ll have a chance to see what the times in heat 1 look like – those in heat 2 control their own destiny. He should be able to dictate his race much more easily than at Regionals. If he can be forward mobile at 500 meters, he’ll make finals. I can almost guarantee that – the boy has a kick to rival anyone, so long as he can start it snowballing before it’s too late.

A few other notes…

My parent’s delivered my birthday presents. Running socks (always useful, though I’m embarrassed to ask for them anymore since I’m not a real runner), a fabulous book imprinter that says “From the Library of Eric J Furst”, and, almost shockingly, a technical biblical commentary on Ephesians! A new one, a Pro-Pauline/Pro-Ephesus one. Hoehner is the author, and it is extensive.

My father and the secretary at his high school (who actually insists that people refer to her as “secretary” instead of administrative assistant) came up with his sick day plan for the meet. Then, yesterday, he came in to work with a stye. “Oh, you can’t go to work like that – all the kids will be looking at you funny!” And now now he’s on 3 day stye sick leave. He only has about 237 days left of sick time to use before he retires.

I think people that weigh more than, say, 250 lbs should have to buy two seats on the airplane. Don’t give me any of this discrimination crap – if you overhang into my seat, you should have to pay for it. Lets forget about seats completely, you should buy volume when you fly. We need an Archimedean bathtub in every terminal.

I asked the guy next to me for yesterday’s USA Today, as he was going to throw it out. They had news in brief from all 50 states. Apparently Hendrix College in Arkansas had signed an agreement to host a MMA match at their school. After canceling it, claiming they were “duped” into believing it was a family friendly event, they were sued by the organizer. Hendrix College v. Bone Krusher Entertainment. Now wait a second. Bone Krusher Entertainment wants to hold “Caged Fury” at your institution – and you assume it’s a family friendly production? This is stupid even for Arkansas! They didn’t even spell “crusher” right for goodness sake, what part about the entire enterprise strikes you as being family friendly??

Regardless, I all the sudden love the Upper Midwest, north of Missouri and east of the Dakotas at least. You know what, maybe I like Nebraska too. All that dirty blonde corn-fed goodness, good bones.