Project 365 Day 120: Lottery Winners

No, we didn't win mega-millions or even ten bucks, but today we found out that we got wristbands in the RAGBRAI lottery! This means we can continue with our plans to do the bike ride as part of the Bike World shop's charter, and we don't have to find someone else selling their wristbands. While we heard that the percentage of people who don't get wristbands from the lottery is small, we're still relieved we don't have to worry about it.

Now it's time to get in another 300 miles or so over the next few months so we'll be in shape to enjoy the wristbands!

Project 365 Day 119: Restrung Racket

I finally got out Tuesday for the first time to hit some serves and try to get my tennis game going for the season. I also wanted to warm things up a little because the next night I was going to hit around and possibly play a guy who joined the tennnis website I'm trying to get going. As it turned out, he had similar ideas and we ended up running into each other at the ISU courts Tuesday. We started hitting around then, and as things were heating up, I busted my racket strings. Not too surprising since it hadn't been restrung for a couple of years, but I'm happy to report that it is now freshly restrung and ready for action!

Project 365 Day 118: Ames Big Enough For Two Mayors?

Cyclone Fans keeping up with news in the state have no doubt heard the news that "The Mayor" Fred Hoiberg was announced today as ISU's new head coach of the men's basketball team. It was a bit of an out-of-left-field decision by athletic director Jamie Pollard and has caused no shortage of discussion, debate, and excitement on the Cyclone message boards and local sports talk shows. Fred has no prior coaching experience, but has spent his high school, college, and professional NBA careers around the sport. He's played for some great coaches at all levels (Johnny Orr, Tim Floyd, Larry Brown, Larry Bird, Flip Saunders, Kevin McHale), and he's a smart guy, so I am hoping he can parlay that wealth of experience into success as a head coach over the next five years of his contract. All current players and most if not all of the incoming recruits have announced they are still staying/coming. A few players who had previously decided to transfer after this season have indicated they are open to changing their minds. Fred is keeping T.J. Otzelberger, the best recruiter from McDermott's staff, as associate head coach, and if he gets another couple of experienced assistants, I think he'll be in as good a position as anyone to get ISU men's basketball back on track. His comment during the press conference this morning that he has the phone numbers of all the NBA General Managers on his cell phone's speed-dial shouldn't hurt recruiting.

I still remember sometime during the spring of 1996 (thanks Wikipedia!) when I was a high schooler, and was at a bowling alley with my family, the TVs were showing the last ever Big 8 Men's Basketball Tournament with ISU playing Kansas. We stuck around after finishing our bowling to watch a great close finish as ISU beat the Jayhawks. Fred Hoiberg was a big part of that team and that game, and if he can get Hilton Magic going again at the coliseum in Ames, I think we'll start seeing some good wins over great teams in a few years.

Now when do those season tickets go on sale...

Project 365 Day 117: Going Loopy

What the heck is that, you ask? Why, it's a Behringer FCB1010 MIDI pedal board of course! It arrived yesterday, and the last connector box arrived today from Amazon so I decided to set about trying to figure out what exactly I could do with it. The goal is to be able to run my electric guitar through an audio looping program on my laptop, and control said program with this foot-pedal-board thing. The creative potential is infinite!

So far, I've managed to turn it on and get some lights to blink... and that's about it. Creativity may have to wait a few more days.

Project 365 Day 116: ISU Basketball Changes a-Brewin'

Although the news was still a rumor at the time I took this photo from the ISU basketball practice facility just off of South Dakota Ave, it has been confirmed this evening that ISU Men's Basketball coach Greg McDermott is stepping down from ISU to take the head coaching position at Creighton University. That position was vacated by Dana Altman who is changing locales to take the Oregon job. McDermott had a rough time of it in Ames, and the last four years have been worse than I realized, since I hadn't followed Cyclone Basketball as closely while we lived in Washington, DC. Good luck to him at Creighton; he had a lot of success at Northern Iowa, and hopefully his return to the Missouri Valley Conference will be a more comfortable place for the Cascade, Iowa native. It will be interesting to watch the ISU coaching search over the next few months. My advice: Once a coach is hired, do not follow University of Iowa's fail of an attempt at a new slogan like "Let's Be Mad Again!" As in, March Madness. Those silly Hawkeyes...

Project 365 Day 115: More Germination

We were pleasantly surprised to find today that our pot-o-leftover-seeds has successfully supported the germination process. The tomato and pepper plants took a little longer to poke through the soil in the pot compared to their siblings in the specially-designed germinator pods from Lowe's. Of course we're not sure exactly which plants are which in the pot, but eventually we should have a few hints, as long as they stay alive long enough!

Project 365 Day 114: IT Adventures

Iowa State University does some neat stuff, and today I volunteered to participate in something that I think is really cool. IT-Adventures is a program designed to get high school kids involved and interested in Information Technology. It consists of three main areas, Cyber Defense Competition, Game Design, and Robotics. All three areas seem very interesting, but the Cyber Defense Competition is where my professional career is aligned and so that's where I volunteered. Once again, I was a Red Team member, part of the group that is trying to hack into the networked computers that the high school teams are trying to protect. Overall the teams did a pretty good job considering the scenarios and equipment they were working with, but I still enjoyed the moment during a "fire-drill" when the Red Team members walked out to the competition floor, looking for passwords written on paper and terminals that were left logged in when the students had to leave. I found both, and used this access and information to erase the hard drive on one of the team's servers. Good times! I'm looking forward to participating in the future competitions at Iowa State.

Project 365 Day 113: Tennis Anyone?

After work today we drove around Ames and the ISU campus looking for suitable locations at which to post flyers about the tennis league I am trying to help get going in Ames. When we lived in DC I participated in the TennisDC.com league, and thought it would be neat if something similar could work in Ames. I'm working with the gentleman who runs the TennisDC website (and tennis league websites for many other large cities) to get TennisAmes.com up and running. While our current city is certainly much smaller than the nation's capital, I still think there's a contingent of recreational tennis players here, between ISU students and faculty, and the other residents of Ames, who would take advantage of this league format if they knew about it. So tell all your friends who live in the vicinity of Ames to check out www.TennisAmes.com!

Project 365 Day 112: Cabaret

Tonight we went to the Cabaret musical at Stephen's auditorium with Amy's parents. The show was definitely... interesting. I had a vague notion of the premise going into the show -- Germany, pre-WWII, and dancing. We got that and quite a bit more! Certainly a great cast and pit band, and it's always nice to get these kind of experiences so close in Ames. We're looking forward to taking advantage the opportunity to see more shows in the coming years.

P.S. Credit to Amy's dad for the photo!

Project 365 Day 111: Almost Clean Garage

We took the opportunity to do a little spring cleaning/organizing of the garage recently, and so far we've managed to keep it in order. The boxes on the right are the last remaining unpacked items from our move last summer--the end of unpacking is in sight! The bike pole was more of a necessity when we stored our bikes in our 800 sq ft apartment in DC, but it's still handy for getting the bikes out of the way in our garage, which also feels like it is 800 sq ft.

Project 365 Day 110: Blooming by the Library

Snapped this photo of the sidewalk and trees in bloom in front of the Ames Public Library. Now that the weather is nicer and RAGBRAI continues to draw near, we're getting out for bike rides as often as possible, and the library is a good destination.

Project 365 Day 109: Germination

While neither one of us remembers enough from biology to know exactly what germination means, we are very happy to see our tomato plants know how to do it! The peppers in the second tray are developing a little more slowly, but a couple have managed to poke through the dirt. Hard to believe the size of vegetables that will come (fingers-crossed) from plants that start out this small.

Project 365 Day 108: Grandma Oline's Birthday Party

Happy birthday to my Grandma Oline, who turns 80 on Tuesday! We drove over to Independence to have dinner at the Okoboji Grill with Grandma and many other family members for an early celebration. The picture is of a colorful collection of balloons that my parents brought over.

Project 365 Day 107: VEISHEA 2010

Today we enjoyed strolling around the ISU campus for our first VEISHEA since we moved to Ames last summer. It was fun bringing back memories of VEISHEA celebrations past as well as stopping by some of our old lecture halls. We're looking forward to attending many more in the years ahead!

Project 365 Day 106: Friday After Class

Friday After Class, or FAC, that's what the kids call it these days. Any reason to drink beer is a good one, and the fact that it's Friday is one of the best! We joined some friends from the campus community at Olde Main on main street for a night of good beer, good food, and good conversation.

Project 365 Day 105: What Goes Up...

Question: At what point of the year does it make more sense to just leave the Christmas lights up on the roof that you still haven't gotten down yet from the past holiday season?

Well, here's the first strand of lights I took down a few days back as a test run of my ability to walk on the roof. When I put the lights up last November, I used a step-ladder all around the house. There's definitely something much more fun about climbing up on your own roof and just walking around though. Now I just need to get back up there and take down the last twelve...

Project 365 Day 104: Tax Time

So long 2009 tax preparation, it was swell. As enjoyable as usual. Extra enjoyable, in fact, due to our partial years in two states. Enjoy the rest of the year, we'll meet again next April at TurboTax.com.

Project 365 Day 103: Rolling Over

Tonight is a two-for-one deal! We drove to Jordan Creek Mall in West Des Moines to look for some more bicycle gear, and as we parked we noticed that the odometer was just shy of hitting 10,000 miles. With such a momentous once-in-a-car's-lifetime event upon us, we planned very carefully to capture it for posterity's sake. Upon completion of our shopping, we drove around the mall parking lots very slowly, and snapped these two photos at just the right moments. Only 90,000 miles to go until the next photo-worthy milestone!

Project 365 Day 102: First Grilling of the Year

Ah, the First Grilling of the Year. The weather is finally warm enough to spend an hour on the deck, watching the charwood ignite and become covered in a fine ash, followed by the cooking of the steak. And it's even nice enough as the sun sets to spend a second hour on the deck, because the steak juice seems to drip on the first batch of charwood and smother it out (or maybe there just wasn't enough to start with), requiring the half-cooked steaks to be temporarily removed so a second batch of charwood can be ignited, burned, and finally used to cook the steak to a crisp medium-well doneness. Add in the ability to surf the web from the deck wirelessly (trying to figure out what I missed in charwood grilling 101), and it is truly a great way to wind down the day.

Project 365 Day 101: Saylorville Lake

I took this picture at Saylorville Lake, just north of Des Moines, standing above the opening in the dam where the water rushes south into the Des Moines River (at least, I think that's the river). It's funny how there are some neat things in Iowa like Saylorville Lake that we had never visited, even though we spent seven years in Ames as students. Now that we've returned from DC, where there are so many attractions and tourist traps shoved in your face on a daily basis, we're enjoying discovering some of the great things that Iowa has to offer.

And now for a new attraction on our website: video! Here's an embedded YouTube video I took on my phone of the same dam above.

Project 365 Day 100: Preparing for Spring

Tonight we stopped by Lowe's to look for some of that random stuff that Lowe's carries which makes being a homeowner fun. We came away with a huge rubber mat to put under our Smokey Joe grill on the deck, some new banners to hang outside on our little banner-hangy-thingy, soil pots, and the vegetable and herb kits you see in the picture above. Not sure how much of the jalapeno peppers we'll use, but maybe we can sell them to El Azteca just down the street.

Project 365 Day 99: Bike + Snow = Bad

Today I rode my bike to campus for lunch with Amy and then worked in one of the study areas of the Durham building. On our way to our bikes to head home, we came across this sorry bicycle locked up in front of Durham. Judging from the rust-orange color of the chain and the severe deformity of the rear tire, I'm guessing it spent the winter in this exact spot, and Mother Nature in Iowa during the months of November through February was none too nice to it. I wonder if the owner will ever claim it, or if it will just become an unofficial permanent piece of the campus art installation...

Project 365 Day 98: Ada Hayden

Tonight we took a twilight ride to Ada Hayden Heritage Park. It was a little chilly, but all of our pedaling soon warmed us up. We ended up riding 10 miles, which felt like nothing--quite an improvement over our first outing of the year!

Project 365 Day 97: Annual Checkup

The bike-rack on the back of our car played a key part in getting our bikes to Bike World today for their service checkups. While we had grand plans of pedaling to Bike World and then taking the bus back home, a 50% chance of rain made us decide to go with plan B. While we should probably practice riding in rain when the opportunity presents itself, in preparation for RAGBRAI, it's just a tad bit difficult to convince ourselves to do it. For now I think I'll just continue to pretend I'm riding a bike while taking my shower and consider that good enough!

Project 365 Day 96: El Azteca From Our Deck

As a follow-up to yesterday's Project365 picture, this photo from our deck should help reinforce just how close we are to El Azteca. It was tempting to walk over there for some tacos, but I managed to restrain myself. One day at a time...

Project 365 Day 95: Burrito Surprise

While leaving the house on bicycle to ride to campus this afternoon what wonderful sight did I see but the warm welcoming neon of the "Open" sign hanging just above the door to El Azteca, the newest restaurant in our neighborhood. It is the second location owned and run by the same friendly folks who started the first El Azteca in Ames in a former Happy Chef building on the east side of town back in our college days, and we have many fond memories of driving out there to get our enchilada and tamale fix. The new location is in a nice new building with modern furniture, HDTVs up on the walls, and best of all, it is literally half a block from our house. This is both a good and a very very bad thing!

Of course we couldn't pass up the opportunity to get in on opening day, and we got in before the supper rush to order some tasty burritos. There was a crowd waiting for seats when we left, and we hope they have much continued success in our neighborhood.

Viva La Margarita!!!

Project 365 Day 94: Trunk of Memories

This is both figuratively and literally a trunk of memories, which I brought back from my parents' home today after we had a nice Easter lunch. Ever since I left home for college almost twelve years ago (has it really been that long?!?) I have noticed this trunk, a gift I received in my younger days, from time to time while visiting home on breaks from college during the first seven years, then occasional trips home from DC during the next four, and, now that we're back in Iowa, during day trips like today for Easter. Not only did the trunk itself take me back to my younger days when daily video game entertainment was as important as sleeping and eating, but when I opened it I came across some more great artifacts of my childhood, like a vintage set of Lazer Tag equipment and LEGOs! It and its contents will be a nice addition to our basement.

It feels nice to know we've reached that milestone in our lives when we have large enough home to start moving in all the stuff that has been in long-term Mom-and-Dad storage.

Project 365 Day 93: Nevada Winds

Today we hit a few new milestones in our RAGBRAI training regimen. We went on our longest ride of the season, 28 miles over the whole day, and we made it out of the Ames city limits all the way to Nevada and back. Of course, we spread our riding out over the entire day, and practiced another important facet of RAGBRAI: eating.

After a short ride to Perkins just after noon, we had a late brunch to prepare for the rest of the day. From there we put in 9 miles to one of the notable Nevada landmarks, Dairy Queen, where we fueled up on some more protein (i.e. ice cream), then made the return trip to Ames and stopped at Jimmy Johns for some tasty sandwiches.

Oh, and did I mention that we now understand the significance of tailwinds and headwinds while traveling via bicycle? Well, we do. The ride to Nevada seemed quite quick and easy, thanks to the synergy of our east-bound direction and the Westerly winds at our backs. "No problem!" we thought, "this rural highway bike-riding is a cinch." With our return trip, however, our direction of travel collided head-on with those same winds, and our thoughts turned to words that are not fit to print here.

We now fully understand why RAGBRAI always travels west-to-east across the state. According to the RAGBRAI website, the prevailing winds during Iowa summers are usually coming out of the West.

Project 365 Day 92: Basement Basketball

This is the basketball that currently lives in the basement. With all the March Madness going on, I thought now was as good a time as any to start working on my shooting touch again. It's much easier to find basketball courts in Ames compared to Washington, DC, especially on campus at the Iowa State Lied Recreation center. I figure it's always pretty easy to criticize basketball team players for missing free throws in games, but I'll have a little more credibility if I can make them myself. Hey, maybe I can become a student again and walk-on for ISU!

Project 365 Day 91: Uh, Happy April Fool's Day?

We may or may not have forgotten to post a picture yesterday, but since it happened to be April 1st, I will go with the April Fool's Day story. So here it is, yesterday's picture today! These three musical cats are the latest Pier One Imports addition to our household, and sit on the ledge above the stairs going down to our basement. As I walk downstairs to begin my work-at-home session each morning, I like to pretend they are playing my own personal theme song to get me pumped up for the day.