Chelsea started teaching me how to crochet this afternoon. I learned only one stitch so far, but I'm going to try to make this baby hat with it, and then I'll try some more. Chelsea's been making a lot of stuff for The Preemie Project, a group started by a friend of a friend of mine, and has been making hats, blankets and a stuffed bear to donate. She kinda got tired of making things for herself and for friends, and this is a really good cause. This baby hat I'm working on is pretty simple, and while I probably won't be able to make something that's good enough to donate for a while, it's been fun for the three hours I worked on it or so. I'll definitely have to work on it while I'm watching TV or something, because once I (kinda) got the hang of it, it was pretty monotonous. So after a while, we quit and played a few rounds of MarioKart.

Another relative is trying to set me up with someone. While it's not quite as weird as my Grandma trying to play matchmaker, I'm still weirded out. Rachael called me and said that while she was showing off her wedding pictures, one of her co-workers saw my picture and asked about me. While I'm flattered in a way, the whole idea of meeting someone with the purpose of seeing if we like each other makes me uncomfortable. And while I realize I just defined "date", it's the "meeting" part of the sentence that's the stickler. The only "dates" that have ever turned out well for me have been with people I have already met.

I suppose it would have been better for me if she had just arranged for us to be hanging out in the same place at the same time. Doing it this way just puts too much pressure on me. It makes my heart sad to just think about dating again, and doing it on purpose...I guess I'm just not brave enough for that.

And perhaps I have issues. Maybe I isolate myself on purpose. Maybe I put too high of stakes on these things. Maybe I'm too pessimistic. And maybe it's just easier to go on the way I have been, hanging on to something that really isn't there anymore. But deep down, I have doubts that it can happen to me twice. And in that same place, I believe I'll go on loving the same person for the rest of my life. Because that's the way I am.

No pirate jokes. Unless they're funny.

I'm not exactly wearing a patch, but I might as well be, since I can't use the eye. "A confluence of events" my doctor said. Or that's how I summarized it. The quotes aren't exactly proper usage there. There's a cut on my eye, right on the edge of the iris, so it's painful to wear contacts. I've either been wearing glasses, suffering through wearing two, or wearing just the one contact. I kinda prefer the last option, because with the first one, I can't *see* anything, the second one: duh, pain, and the third...the third I can get by alright by closing one eye, and then opening the other one when I need depth perception.

It started with the six hour drive home in the dark. I tend not to blink under those circumstances, so it dried out my contacts something fierce. Because my contacts are so thick, when they're that dry, it's really easy to irritate my eye. When my eye was irritated, it swelled a little bit, which allowed a tiny eyelash that was growing in the wrong direction to poke my eyeball and cut it. So every time I blinked, I was irritating it even more. I got some drops for it, and I have to go back on Saturday to make sure it's not getting infected.

The things that happen to me. It's stuff like this that makes me think that the Health Savings Account wasn't such a great idea. I sure do miss that prescription drug benefit.

This sounded like fun when I saw everyone else do it, but it seems I have less variety on iTunes than I thought I did, because almost half of these are the same band. With that clue, good luck!

Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.

1. I tried to kill the pain, but only bled more ~ Tourniquet, Evanescence
2. Let me take you by the hand away from here to another land ~ Put Me Down, Cranberries
3. Old man sunshine, listen you, never tell me dreams come true ~ But Not For Me, Dinah Washington
4. Looking for a penny on an empty beach ~ Turquoise, VAST
5. Yeah, I got a ticket to ride for two ~ Hypersonic, Jane's Addiction
6. Must have been the devil who changed my mind ~ Black Cat Bone, Laika
7. Lying in a field of flowers choir of angels gently sings ~ Ophelia, Darling Violetta
8. You don't know so don't say you do - you don't ~ Real Bad News, Aimee Mann
9. You were standing in a dark club down in New Orleans ~ Be With Me, VAST
10. There's no angels here, just a sun to light the way ~ Lost, VAST
11. My name spells joy I can't remember darkness ~ The Niles Edge, VAST
12. Somewhere in cyberspace, the minutes turn to hours ~ Awesome, Darling Violetta
13. (Gimmie!) Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand ~ Firefly theme
14. They say I seem lonely, they try and console me ~ Blue Miss Sunday, Devics
15. I got you, I got you on my mind and it's time to make you see ~ No Sleep Tonight, The Faders
16. My eyes touch concrete it feels just like a dream ~ Electric Womb, VAST
17. If you, if you forget me, my darling ~ If You Forget Me, Devics
18. There's a sun, there's a ground beneath my feet ~ Thrown Away, VAST
19. Working in files with the sweat on my brow gets so lonely ~ Senorita, VAST
20. I think I'll go for a walk, baby, out in the rain ~ Nothing But You, Kim Ferron

Back already! Lew wanted to come back home still while he was still off work, so we didn't spend a whole lot of time in Indianapolis. Enough to get him unpacked and do a little bit of sightseeing and hanging out before coming back.

I left here at 6 a.m. Wednesday morning, and it got to be around 11:00 and I realized I had to make a phone call to my brother. "Hi. So. I, um, forgot to take the time change into account, and I'm going to be an hour late. Indiana's on Eastern time. Whoops. It worked out well, though, since he was a little later than he expected due to decreased speed with the U-Haul. We got him unpacked, played Tetris, and watched a couple Buffy episodes (We finished up season five today. I still bawl when Buffy takes the swan dive off the platform). Looong day.

Thursday we drove to find the Rolls Royce plant where Lew will be working, then went to the Indianapolis Speedway. I was so suprised that the Hall of Fame is in the middle of the track - you drive under the track to get there. I've seen all the people in the middle on race days on television; I guess I never wondered how they got there. We took the van tour around the grounds, but we couldn't go onto the track because they were doing the Richard Petty Driving Experience that day. Which was kind of a cool substitute, because we watched the cars go around the track and heard the "voom, voom" sound of them going around the corners. Saw a *lot* of cars, though I found the evolution of the auto more interesting than the rest. More video games, more Buffy. Seems I've lost a lot of my Mario Kart skillz.

Friday we wandered downtown to see the Soldier's and Sailor's Monument. You can climb up the thing, all 330 steps of it, which we did. My calves are really sore today. There were some pretty cool views of the top, including the guys on the top of the building across the street. The Vice President happened to be downtown the same day, and there were cops *everywhere*. There was all this hubub about protesters, whom we saw later, and there were like, six of them. It was amusing. Then we drove around a bit, mostly looking for a Best Buy I swear was there, but evidently wasn't. Lew knows his way around south Indianapolis now, though. We drove back last night, and he stayed here and went on back to Ames to visit and pick up his motorcycle. I'm completely lazing out today.

I'm assuming you can look at the album I linked to, since I didn't lock it. If you can't and you're interested in looking at pictures of Lew's apartment and cars, email me, and I'll share the album with you.

Ah, vacation. Wonderful vacation. I'm headed out early tomorrow morning, so I can meet my brother in Indianapolis at noon. I'm helping him unpack, and from there, who knows what we'll be doing. But it won't be taxes, and that alone is enough to look forward to!

Oh. My. God. What a night. What a difference from that entry a couple days ago. Iowa City got hit with several tornados last night. My tenant and I spent some time in the basement last night with the radio. My home is okay, and work is okay, but there's a lot of damage around. Several businesses were either destroyed or had roofs ripped off, and there's debris everywhere. I walked to work this morning, since downtown was some of the hardest hit, but I suppose I could have driven. Uprooted trees, downed power lines...I was out of power for about four hours. The University closed. The University hasn't closed in over ten years.

A church had it's roof ripped off, Dairy Queen is absolutely gone, and just about every car dealership in town was hit. And there were so many nutcases out on the streets last night, gawking, the emergency vehicles were having a hard time getting through. The people on the radio said it looked like there was a football game going on. There are all kinds of people out this morning with cameras. The hardest hit places were downtown, Riverside, and all the big stores southwest of town, like Menards, Wal-Mart and Cub Foods, plus all those brand-new car dealerships. There's also a sorority (one of our clients) that lost it's roof and one side of the house. There was also a major gas leak on South Gilbert street that forced an evacuation for blocks around.

Check out pictures in the Press Citizen.

Edit: A better gallery can be found at the University's page. This is the stairwell of the parking garage I park in (my house is about another block beyond that crane in the background), and I walk through this entrance every day on my way to/from work. The most poignant pictures to me are this one and this one (the aforesaid client).

It's coming! It's coming! I've been waiting ten years to see this show again, and now I only have three months left to wait! The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. is coming to DVD. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the thing I remember most about this show is how much I looked forward to it every week. That and this is where my crush on Bruce Campbell came from. I didn't even see Evil Dead until last year. If you've never heard anything about it, it was probably first in FOX's line of Friday night shows cancelled prematurely.

I had a lovely evening last night. It was so laid-back and relaxing, lovely is the only word for it. I left work early, since I had a chiro appointment (early as in 6:00). My cyatic (sp? too lazy to look up) was pinched, and there was no way I was waiting any longer for an adjustment. She recommended I go for a walk to loosen up my hips, so when I got home, I did just that. I walked over to the stadium, and looked at the progress of the new Press Box. Then I wandered over to the baseball field and watched a few innings of the Iowa/Nebraska game from beyond the left field fence. It's been a really long time since I've been to any baseball game, and it made me feel...peaceful. Watching the little kids play catch, the smell of popcorn, the sound of the organ...The weather was perfect, if just a little windy, the sunset was beautiful, and it was just the kind of evening that makes me glad I live in Iowa City. It made me resolve to spend less time in front of the television and more time enjoying life.

McDonald's has lost half my business. I bought an Egg 'n' Muffin Toaster at Target last week. It was my turn to bring Saturday morning breakfast at work yesterday (a tax season tradition), and I thought this would be perfect. And it was! You put your muffin, egg, and meat in there, and it times it all out so that everything is done at once, and Whammo! instant Egg McMuffin. Well, not instant, it takes about 4 minutes, but it tastes just as good as MickeyD's, and much cheaper. I've eaten about four of these things in the past two days.

I made a kid cry at the Nest Monday night. The kid totally deserved it, but I felt so bad! I was working with three of the white belts on their form, and one of the kids is really slow, short attention span, you know the type. Well, I count the next move, and the middle kid moves, but the slow kid doesn't so much, and then when he does, he completely screws up the turn, gets too close to the middle kid and steps on his foot, and doesn't even realize what he did. The middle kid got totally fed up with the slow kid, lifts his foot up and WHAM! right down on the slow kid's foot. I couldn't believe it. It was a totally conscious decision to hurt the other kid, so I tell the kid to get down and do fifty pushups. I figured the offense warranted it. The kid did the pushups, but by the end he was bawling, and I felt really bad. I'm a sucker for tears.

Okay, hi. I'm pretty much going to be back now. I'll try to catch up on the things I should have been blogging about. I've got a list and everything. Thanks to everyone who inquired after me...even though I pretty much abandoned all of you, it is really touching to know you haven't abandoned me.

So really, the inspiration to post right now is that I'm working on a trust, and part of working on this trust is looking at the assets that went from the guy's estate into this trust, and found the funniest thing: this guy had $25,000 worth of manure in his estate. That could be a meta-comment on living in Iowa, but I'm just choosing to find it extremely hilarious.