Project 365 Day 304: Fundraiser Delivery

While sitting in our dining room area this afternoon, Amy noticed the neighbor kids across the backyard were marching over with a bag of something unknown in hand. We were hoping they were not bringing faulty Halloween candy back from what we gave out Friday night, and we were happy to find that they were instead delivering the items we had ordered for their fundraiser. Pictured here are the two most tangible items, a plastic bag organizer which is currently holding roughly 10% of our plastic bag collection, and a mini tripod for my digital camera. The less tangible item consists of a subscription to Time which will be on the way soon.

Project 365 Day 303: Homecoming

Another win for the Iowa State Cyclones football team! Today was ISU's homecoming game, and my parents made it over to join us at the game. Kansas was the opponent, and though they are widely considered one of the worst teams in the Big 12, we weren't much different a few years ago, and we haven't beaten them in the previous five years. It was a game that we should win, and a loss would have been a depressing event for the fans, especially after we pulled the amazing upset over Texas last Saturday in Austin.

So we were a little tense when halftime arrived and Kansas was up 9 to 7, their three field goals over our one punt return for a touchdown. It seemed like our defense was pretty successful and confident overall in the first half, which was a good sign, but a few too many bad throws and dropped passes left the offense sputtering. Thankfully, Iowa State opened the second half with a quick drive down the field for their second touchdown, all while my parents were still in line for food, and never looked back.

We won the game we were supposed to win, which Paul Rhoads seems to be good at doing in his first two years as coach, and now we're one win away from a bowl game.

Perhaps our winter vacation this year will involve a bowl game! I hope we can start planning on it with a win over Nebraska in Ames next weekend...

Project 365 Day 302: Tricks and Treats

Halloween was a success this year. We had more than the one family that came last year (and they came again too), but we didn't run out of candy. Which meant we had leftovers, some of which we may or may not have put in this purse when we went to see The Social Network movie afterwards. We definitely bought soda at the movie theater though!

Project 365 Day 301: Avocado Magic

Another few weeks go by and our Avocado tree is looking more and more like a tree! Notice in particular the little green stem growing out of the top of the pit. So exciting!

It also sort of resembles the final scene in a hypothetical Broadway musical about the life and times of magician Harry Houdini, in which the star of the show has just emerged from the water tank he was locked in moments before, singing the last solo number before the ensemble cast (played here by the shamrocks and lavender in the background) joins in for the grande finale.

Sounds like a winner to me. Does anyone have a contact in New York City to get this thing rolling? Let's get Andrew Lloyd Weber or Stephen Sondheim working on this!

Project 365 Day 300: Candy Preparations

We did our Halloween candy shopping early this year, a whole two day's before Beggar's Night! In Ames trick-or-treating is happening Friday night so as not to interfere with the Iowa State football game festivities on Saturday. Last year we had one family stop by, hopefully we'll get a few more this time around.

But I'm sure we can find a person or two in this house to eat any leftovers...

Project 365 Day 299: Hawkeye in Cyclone Central

Tonight we made a visit to the public library, and as we pulled up we noticed this car parked in front of us that decided to use a little bit of the curb. Then we noticed the Hawkeye license plate border. Maybe they wanted to make sure no one, er, accidentally sideswiped their car on the way by.

Oh hey, I've got one.

"Hey, Mr. Hawkeye Car Driver. You almost got that parking job done correctly. Just like the Hawkeyes almost beat Wisconsin!"

Project 365 Day 298: Secondhand Celebration

Amy completed her second test for her Ethics in Politics class today. I promised I would still love her even if she failed it (but I'm sure she didn't), and we decided to do something to celebrate. After kicking around a few ideas like going out to eat, going bowling, or going to a movie, we finally settled on...

drum roll badadadadadadadadaa

Shopping for used books!

Amy had heard from a co-worker that the new location for the Half-Price Books store in West Des Moines was pretty nice, so we finally settled on this. I am easily talked into a visit since they also sell used and shrink-wrapped overstock CDs, computer software, movies, and video games, and I usually walk out with as many items as Amy. The main difference being my items require electricity in some fashion to be usable.

It was a successful trip. Amy got some books and I walked out with seven CDs and four games for our new PlayStation 2!

Now if someone would just sell a real-life pause button so we would have time to read our books, listen to our music, and play our video games!

Project 365 Day 297: Parting Gifts

Last night during dinner with our friend Rashelle, who is moving to New Mexico this week to join her husband (and also our friend) Ben who has been out there for a few months for his new job, she mentioned that she had a few last items to get rid of that we were welcome to. Movies, books, board games, and, oh, a Playstation 2.

Whoa!? Playstation 2? For reals?

That's what I was thinking anyway. So today Rashelle stopped by with the goodies, and here is a picture of the newest member of our gaming family. Now to track down some good used games at the local Gamestop store.

Thanks Ben and Rashelle, good luck in New Mexico!

Project 365 Day 296: Proud To Be One

Since Paul Rhoads took over the Iowa State football program starting with the 2009 season, there have been some ups and some downs, but the ups have been pretty fantastic. Last year it was a win against Nebraska in Lincoln. This year it turned out to be Iowa State's first ever win against the University of Texas, and it also happened on the road!

We were on our way out the door this morning when I decided to check the kick-off time for the game, and saw that it had already started and Iowa State was up 7-3. I then remembered that we had been subscribing to an obscure sports package on DirecTV since last fall when I ordered it so we could catch the Iowa State - Iowa game in Iowa City. Turned out this game was being televised as well, so we stayed put and watched one for the ages.

The keychain schedule has this year's slogan printed on the backside, and it definitely rings true.

Proud to be one.

Project 365 Day 295: Spring Awakening

We took in our second musical at Stephen's auditorium this evening. Spring Awakening, which debuted on Broadway back in 2006, takes place in late nineteenth century Germany, but fortunately the musical is spoken and sung in English. We enjoyed the show, and the music had a nice contemporary feel. We decided the music was a cross between Rent and Rock of Ages, with a little bit of Cats sprinkled in.

Well, maybe Cats is taking it a little far, but overall it a nice change of pace from the last musical we saw, Legally Blonde. We have been enjoying the cultural enrichment opportunities in the Ames and Des Moines areas, and are looking forward to taking advantage of many more in the future.

Project 365 Day 294: Study Night

Amy's next test for her Ethics in Politics course is coming up Monday, and she is busy working on the regular weekly assignments as well as studying for the test. Here is a picture of her reading assignment for tonight, and it seems like a timely subject with the recent history of the health care law and the upcoming elections.

And in case you are wondering, as I was, whether those underlinings were already in the book when Amy bought it, they are in fact her own. Ye who seek proof of her studyin', look no further!

Project 365 Day 293: Backyard Ball Game

Many days when Amy or I look out our South-facing window from the living room, we are entertained by the neighbor kids playing in their backyard or on the walking path. Today when I looked out, I saw the aftermath of what must have been an epic game involving every ball on the block! Too bad we missed the main event.

Project 365 Day 292: Avocado Update

Today's picture is a simple Avocado status update report. The root has continued to grow and fork in the past few weeks, and though you cannot see it in this picture, I believe the stalk is working its way towards the top, based on what I can see through the crack in the avocado pit. Maybe by Christmas we'll be seeing some foliage!

Project 365 Day 291: Bulbs Ahoy!

While waiting for dinner to bake in the oven tonight, Amy and I used our newfangled bulb planter (pictured here on the left) to put a bunch of tulip, iris, and daffodil bulbs we had accumulated in the ground. The bulb planter is really just a mini-post-hole-digger I suppose, except this one does not have a mechanism to release the dirt that gets trapped inside the cylinder. Couple this with some of our clay-rich soil near the house, and it's clear that additional tools will be needed to get the dirt out of the planter.

Thus the weeder rod on the right side of the picture (that's what I'm going to call it anyway). Of the available rod-like items in the garage, it seemed the most well-suited for the task of pushing dirt out of the bulb-planter cylinder, though one could also say that the Iowa State Cyclones are the most well-suited football team in the city of Ames to beat the Oklahoma Sooners. Both scenarios may be factually accurate but that doesn't mean either one is going to work out so great...

Nevertheless I got the hang of scraping the dirt-clay out of the bulb planter, and we put some 50 bulbs in the ground before calling it a day and going in for our dinner. Next spring and summer should be interesting to watch what comes up!

Project 365 Day 290: Tree Walk

Friday as we were leaving to pick up Amy's sister and brother-in-law from the Des Moines airport, we noticed a number of new trees had been moved into the backyard trail area on our block, and were laying on the ground. Upon returning to Ames today we were pleasantly surprised to find that the trees had been planted all along the common area by the walking path that winds through everyone's backyards on our block. Suddenly we no longer feel as torn about whether we should plant a tree or two in our relatively small backyard, especially since we would also like to put in some raised-bed gardens next spring and want to make sure they'll have adequate sunlight.

This picture shows in the foreground the one tree that is directly behind our house on our side of the path. In the background are a variety of four more trees that were planted. There are even more that are not in the picture. All these trees should make the walking trail even more interesting and beautiful in the years and decades to come.

Project 365 Day 289: Serving Duty

The wedding reception for Amy's sister and brother-in-law went off without a hitch. The actual hitching occurred back in June in Washington state, and tonight the local family and friends (including some Midwestern out-of-towners) got together to celebrate. Amy was put on salad-serving duty, pictured here, and I was in charge of electronic photo album display and musical accompaniment. Fortunately, I got the preparation work out of the way ahead of time, and during the reception I basically just had to remember to click Play on the computer. After I completed my clicking duties, I then joined Amy as backup-salad-server. And a salad was never served any better than the job we did tonight.

High five!

Project 365 Day 288: Oline Limousine

Tomorrow Amy's parents are having a reception in Anamosa for her sister and brother-in-law, who got married in Washington state back in June. Amy's mom has been busy with preparations, but Amy and I may have had one of the most important jobs... getting the recently-weds from the Des Moines airport in central Iowa over to eastern Iowa, the land of Quaker Oats, Cornell College, and Grant Wood. On our journey we stopped at the McDonald's near Colfax for some food, and then about an hour later the driver (that would be me) needed to make a "comfort" stop and found another McDonald's near Williamsburg. As we stood in line to order some drinks in return for use of their facilities, I noticed that the restaurant was giving equal wall space to Iowa Hawkeye and Iowa State Cyclone gear, such as this ISU scarf. That's something special when you're outside a 30 mile range of Ames!

Project 365 Day 287: Ladder Tree

David Sedaris visited Ames tonight and we attended his very enjoyable talk at Stephen's auditorium. Amy has read many of his books, and I was familiar with some of his work from stories he has read on the radio on This American Life. His talk consisted of him reading from a number of books and stories he has written, interspersed with some commentary on those stories and other topics, and probably best of all, he read selections from his diary which mostly consisted of accounts from life on his book tours around the world. The audience, including ourselves, were laughing loudly and often.

Normally I would have posted a grainy, poorly lit photo of the stage at Stephen's for such an event as this, but because I forgot to do so, I instead asked Amy to take a picture of this ladder near a very small tree while we were in the drive through at McDonald's afterward.

I am not sure why that ladder is next to the tree, but I am sure David Sedaris could write a very humorous satirical take on life around it.

Project 365 Day 286: Dollar Pints

After I put in a little extra work time tonight, we decided to forego home-cookery and instead took a trip downtime to eat at our favorite (and only?) local brewpub, Olde Main. I knew they had recently tapped their seasonal batch of Horseman's Revenge pumpkin spice ale and was ready to try a pint. Little did we know that every Wednesday at Olde Main is one dollar pints night from 5pm to 2am! Perhaps we'll have to turn this into more of a weekly tradition...

Project 365 Day 285: Lint Trap

Replacement lint traps are surprisingly difficult to locate on the Internet. Observe the following facts:

1. We need a new lint trap (this photo should provide sufficient evidence)
2. We went to Lowe's, which sells our model of dryer, asked an employee about replacement filters, and got a card from him pointing us to the lowes.partsquik.com website, which he told us would provide access to "a warehouse full of replacement parts"
3. I located both our dryer model number as well as the specific lint trap part number
4. Inputting either the dryer model number or lint trap part number into the website's search form yielded no matches
5. Inputting the dryer model number or lint trap part number into Google yielded only a couple of links to websites with Chinese characters
6. Inputting the same numbers into www.whirlpoolpartsonline.com (the "official" Whirlpool parts site) also came up empty

Of the above, fact (5) is the most surprising to me. I have often found that no matter what I'm looking for, if I type it into Google, I will find it. Not this time!

I finally gave up and tried searching for more generic phrases like "Whirlpool dryer lint trap" which eventually led me to what I assume is a replacement part with a different model number on amazon.com. Hopefully the dryer appliance companies are not so evil that they would conspire to create multiple hexagonal lint trap parts that are not interchangeable.

We shall see.

UPDATE: See how this turned out here!

Project 365 Day 284: Fall on Campus

Today I took advantage of my day off (thank you company I work for, for taking all federal government holidays off, including Columbus day!) by meeting Amy for lunch at Planet Sub, and then walking around campus for a few hours, taking pictures of the fall colors. I got a lot of photos, which I will upload at some point, but I thought this one captured the scenery well. This tree with red leaves is in front of the Armory building.

Walking around campus always makes me a little nostalgic for the days of being a student, but it's also a great reminder of what a beautiful setting we have within a few miles of our house.

Project 365 Day 283: Laundry Day

Our laundry machines got a work out today. After a few weeks of us both being busy with work and Amy also with her class, the laundry situation had gotten to the point of needs-to-be-dealt-with. Four loads later, the hampers were empty, and all the clean clothes was folded and put away. While Amy handled most of the laundry duties, I put in some solid hours on kitchen and bathroom cleaning duty as well.

Maybe we should take a vacation until next weekend so as to not mess up our pristine household!

Project 365 Day 282: Walking Tacos and Stampeding Utes

After the ISU football team's big win last Saturday in a high-scoring game with Texas Tech, the Iowa State fan base started getting pretty excited about the prospects of a chance to take on the #10 ranked Utah Utes (yes, that really is their name) today. If we could score over 50 points against a Texas team, the logic went, then why couldn't we keep up with an allegedly good team from Utah that hadn't really played anyone of note on their schedule so far this season? Maybe this could be the biggest win in Paul Rhoads' short career at Iowa State!

As it turned out, it was the biggest something, but that something turned out to be the biggest amount of points scored by the opposing team in Ames at Jack Trice Stadium. ISU went down 68-27! Though Iowa State actually had the lead, 14-10, at the end of the first quarter, those points had as much to do with Utah giving us the ball and a short field on turnovers as it had to do with our offense scoring. Still, we had some hope as the second quarter began, but that was soon dashed when it became clear that Utah could move the ball at will, and we could not convert a third down all game long.

On the bright side, as the photo shows, we took in some Walking Tacos for dinner at the game, and they were delicious! Start with a single-serving bag of Doritos, cut off one long edge, fill with seasoned ground beef, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, taco sauce, and sour cream, and you have a party in your hand that you can eat with a fork!

Project 365 Day 281: Perkins After Legally Blonde

Amy's parents came over to Ames this afternoon so we could all go to Legally Blonde: The Musical, at Stephen's auditorium. It was a fun show that adhered pretty closely to the movie, though they threw in a few insignificant plot and scene differences to make things a tad bit more interesting. Afterwards we stopped at Perkins for caffeine and pie. Here you can see the coffee mugs Bob and I used. Hopefully we can get some sleep tonight. Iowa State has a big football game tomorrow that Amy and I need to be ready for to cheer on the good guys!

Project 365 Day 280: Babar Times Two

One activity I enjoy in my spare time is playing around with my guitars. And because I'm also a computer geek, I have gotten into looping, whereby you put a computer between the guitar and speaker or amplier, and use it record and repeatedly playback different parts. Essentially you can accompany yourself. Lately I have found that one of the cables I was using had a short in it that would cause my guitar to cut out from time to time, so I figured it was time to get a new one. After dinner we headed downtown where there are a couple of music shops, one of which was still open, and I got some new cables. After finishing there, we walked around a little more, and happened across The Pumpkin Patch, which is the kind of toy store I imagine I would have been completely fascinated by back in my single-digit years.

Of course that doesn't mean I can't be fascinated by it now that my years have two digits and start with a 3! They had a lot of neat Halloween things on display, and the walls and tables are packed with toys, most of which are high quality too. Near the back in the children's books area I saw these two stuffed Babar animals looking down from the top of a bookshelf. If they could talk I bet they could tell some funny stories about the kids they've seen.

Project 365 Day 279: Roman's Numeral

Tonight we returned to the Globalization lecture series at the Howe Hall auditorium on campus to see Christine Romans, an ISU alum and host and correspondent on a handful of shows on CNN. She is an economy specialist, and started out with one of her "Roman's Numeral" tidbits. These are noteworthy statistics she talks about on CNN, and tonight she discussed the fact that currently, on average, there are 5.5 applicants for every available job. She related a lot of her talk to the college-aged students in the classroom, and listening as "professional adults" (that still sounds weird), we were certainly glad to have our current jobs.

Project 365 Day 278: Dr. Politics

While at the mall after another walk in some gorgeous Fall weather tonight I saw this advertisement in the hallway and it reminded me that Amy may be taking a class from Dr. Politics himself, Steffen Schmidt, next semester. I knew he had a good reputation in the world of Political Science, and learned from the advertisement that he has written a successful textbook used at many academic institutions.

Good professors, entertaining sports, and a beautiful campus. Three reasons why we're happy to be back in Ames.

Project 365 Day 277: Crock Pot Plans

We had grand plans to get some crock pot cooking started this morning, with a chicken-and-potato recipe from the pictured book that we've made before. Unfortunately work and weekend-wind-down caught up with us and we didn't get around to making the preparations Sunday night or Monday morning. However, since I have nearly almost completely (technical term) finished the current phase of a big work project, we decided to celebrate with a trip to the always-excellent Valentino's Italian buffet. It's about a two mile walk from our house, and with the weather cooperating we decided to work off the meal both before and after.

So, as I get ready for bed, this crock pot book stands guard on my nightstand, at the ready to make sure I do not overdo the snooze button in the morning and do not forget about our crock pot plans again!

Project 365 Day 276: Qdoba

Last summer shortly after we moved back to Ames, we noticed a Qdoba Mexican fast food restaurant going up on S. Duff Ave, and thought it funny because we had first experienced its burrito goodness while living in DC. So it seemed like they had decided to follow us to Iowa, though I didn't think we were good enough customers to warrant it...

Despite knowing that we liked their food, it took us over a year before we finally stopped in the local restaurant today to see how they compared. It's definitely a national chain; the food and decor were pretty much identical to what we had in DC, but that's not a bad thing. Sometimes it's nice to know what you're getting, as long as you're getting something decent.

While we have to go with the local Fighting Burrito (formerly known as the Flying Burrito) for our numero uno burrito stop, it's nice to have another option in town!

Project365 Day 275: Barton Hall, Where It All Began

For non-season-ticket-holders, we sure act like ones! Tonight we made it to our fifth straight Iowa State football game of the season (if you haven't been counting, there have only been five games this season so far). This game was against Texas Tech, and to the amazement of many, myself included, the Cyclones managed to win in a high-scoring shootout, 52-38.

We parked on campus and walked by our stomping grounds at Barton Hall, pictured here, on our way to the stadium. This is where I met Amy when we were both freshmen in the fall of 1998, and we have many great memories (and probably other ones too) of friends, homework, movies, video games, weekly house meetings, dork and angel awards, etc. College was a great time in our lives, and it's nice to get a little rush of nostalgia whenever we happen to be in this area of campus.

Project 365 Day 274: Halloween Tomato

Technically, I picked this tomato yesterday, in September, but it seemed much more appropriate to wait until October to post it here. This tomato is literally unaltered from the its moment of vine separation, save for roughly 24 hours of indoor ripening. Hopefully this tomato, like our recently-cracked-open avocado pit, does not attack us in the middle of the night. I think I should probably be more worried about this tomato...

If I let it sit on the counter until the end of the month, we'll have something really scary to show the trick-or-treaters!