Topic-O-Rama

Posted on by Jordan

And now, a handful of news I have been meaning to post.

First up, the week before thanksgiving, Heather and I went to Kansas City. The event was a birthday party for her grandma’s 85th birthday. The majority of Heather’s extended family was there, and we had a really good time. We also witnessed one of the best “we are going to have a baby” announcements ever. Heather’s cousin played a video, featuring his son singing happy birthday to Gigi, and then ended it with “and what are you going to be?” …. “a DINOSAUR!” “no, what are you going to be?” “A big brother!” and at that point the room went wild. I suppose it didn’t hurt that there were so many friends and family members packed into the room, but it really seemed like a great way to break that news.

Heather and I may have to wait a year or two, just so we can come up with a creative way to announce something like that… I mean the bar is pretty high at this point 🙂

Then of course there was Thanksgiving. Strangely, Heather and I did not even pack our camera… so I don’t have any pictures to post. The traditional meal and family time was spent with Heather’s family in Blair. We really enjoyed it! After dinner though, is when things got more interesting, somehow the women came up with a few copies of the sale fliers from all the stores doing Black Friday deals. The living room was total chaos as they passed around adds and debated plans for the big day. Next thing I know, it’s 2:30AM and I am sleepily saying goodbye and goodluck to my wife as she slips out of bed to trek to the mall. They got eight hours of shopping in before even stopping for breakfast!

While they were shopping, I went with Heather’s dad to the Nebraska game in Lincoln. We left at a much more reasonable hour than the shopping crew had, but still got to Lincoln with plenty of time to do a little tailgating before needing to find our seats. Being at the game was really enjoyable. It wasn’t a nail-biting game like the Nebraska vs. Iowa State game that Jim and I had gone to earlier in the year, but I can live with a less-exciting win!

I forget exactly where this falls in the chronology, but at some point Heather and I attended a “lighting of the Christmas tree” event at the mall next door. (For those of you who haven’t been to our hose… we really are next-door to a mall). I was a little skeptical of the event, but they had a live band and free cookies, so we decided to check it out anyway. Maybe you wouldn’t have been surprised at the number of people there, I know I was… At any rate they easily had a few thousand people all standing outside around the little courtyard lake area listening to the band and waiting for the lights. It was cold, but not unbearable, all the same I was happy when Santa finally arrived with his wand to light the tree. You didn’t know Santa had a wand did you? Apparently when Santa lights a tree with his wand, there are fireworks involved! I am a little sad to say the mall Christmas  tree lighting fireworks are going to go down as the best firework show I got to see in 2010. I am happy to say I really enjoyed them!

Speaking of Christmas events, Heather and I attended the Waukee Iowa Christmas festival. Waukee is just outside of Des Moines, and actually closer to us than downtown. We again got a free cookie, and got to watch ice sculpting. Probably the most enjoyable part of that little trip was meeting up whit a few friends from Church. It was wonderful to feel like we actually know people here in town. Some days it doesn’t feel like we have made much progress in that department.

The last, and most recent event I should record before bringing this to a close is photography related. Heather and I just returned from taking family pictures for another of Heather’s coworkers. We learned quite a lot on that trip. A good thing for sure, as Heather books these things to give us chances to practice. One thing we learned is that, although we got a beautiful sunny afternoon, 25 degrees with a 15mph wind is too cold to do outdoor pictures! We also learned that although our camera has a tiny integrated flash, it really can’t do indoor photography. Despite the challenges we encountered, Heather has some rather impressive results! As I write this she is behind me wrapping up the sorting and editing process. It appears we will need to buy an external flash if we want to do more pictures indoors.

And finally, a bonus future event! We are going to a Court of Honor for my Scout Troop! It will be the first event Heather has attended related to scouts in Des Moines, and the first Court of Honor I have been to. I don’t think it is going to be significant enough to justify its’ own blog post, but we will get to see the boys get recognition for merit badges and rank advancement.

I am still hoping that December is less exciting going forward 🙂

-Jordan

Another Side Of Cooking

Posted on by Jordan

For the most part, when I post something I made on the blog, it is because it is ether a mildly out of the ordinary recipe, or perhaps I was just really happy with the appearance of whatever it was.

Over the past month or two, Heather and I have had the chance to help out with a homework center. Our connection is through our church, although the Des Moines Vineyard isn’t the sole sponsor of the program. Specifically, our connection has been to arrange food for the kids each Wednesday night.

Often we have been able to recruit volunteers to prepare a meal to bring, and all we have to do is coordinate who, when, and where. Other times we have needed to prepare the food ourselves. This brings us to the topic of this post, because cooking for 30+ people is a little different than cooking for just Heather and I.

The first thing I made was chili. I don’t have any pictures of that, but well most chili looks about the same. The noteworthy thing is just that the ‘big’ pot we have isn’t quite as large as I had thought when your trying for massive quantities. I didn’t have room for all the beans and veggies in the pot, but at least we had enough food for everyone to eat.

The second time we cooked, we tried meatloaf and scalloped potatoes. I should be clear, I do mean ‘we’. Often Heather and I find that we get in each others way when we are both trying to work in our little kitchen, so generally I just ask Heather to go find something else to do when I am wanting to try something new. In this case however I wanted every bit of help I could get, and Heather really came through! She peeled ten pounds of potatoes, and then sliced them all! The assembled product, ready to be cooked:

They look pretty good don’t they? What we probably should have known, is that they were going to turn a nasty grey color in the fridge overnight. To make matters worse, we didn’t even know what had happened until we were at the church the next night with just enough time to throw them into the oven and have them done in time for dinner. To make matters worse, we didn’t notice the yellowed note near the ancient ovens warning us that they ran cold until 30 minutes into the 50 minute cook time! In the end, they looked sad, tasted fine, and were only 20 minutes behind schedule. It was a little demoralizing, Heather felt almost guilty serving “those gross potatoes” to the youth. I thought they were good, but I wont pretend they didn’t look a little off.

Our third try was a little more straight forward, spaghetti. I would have to leave work a little early to have enough lead time to make it work, but at least I figured there wouldn’t be any surprises.  Then we got a call from one of the people who work with the youth, saying that they were expecting a lot of extra kids, so plan on around 50!

The church kitchen is well-stocked with huge pots and pans, so at least we weren’t going to run into the problem we had with the chili.

It might be hard to tell from that picture, but that pot making pasta has to hold at least seven gallons of water…  It was kind of surreal cooking on that scale. Oddly enough I can’t think of much to say about that process, except that I was kind of thrilled the entire time to be cooking on that scale. I didn’t ever get a headcount on the attendance, but the group managed to go through 6 pounds of pasta, 4 loves of bread, and roughly 4 gallons of sauce. I don’t think anybody went hungry, but we didn’t have any meaningful leftovers ether.

In conclusion, I have enjoyed some of the challenges feeding the homework center kids have presented, but if you have ever fed a big group like that before and have some great menu ideas we could probably use them!

-Jordan

A Weekend In Des Moines

Posted on by Jordan

As I think I mentioned before, this weekend was notable in that Heather and I didn’t have any plans for it.

I wouldn’t want anyone to think we were bored though!

Saturday was spent mostly cleaning… but after being on the go for so long the place really needed it.

I should back up though, Friday night we walked over to eat dinner and go to a movie at the mall we live next to. It only took us a year to actually get around to doing that! Heather and I often walk around the outside mall in the evenings when we want to go for a walk, and frequently we comment that we should take advantage of our location to walk to dinner and a movie, but ether we have been busy, or there haven’t been movies we wanted to see, or other things just kind of got in the way. Not anymore though! We finally walked over to a movie.

Ok then, back to Saturday… We had a wonderfully lazy morning, then cleaned like mad, then had a chance to go over to a friends house and meet a friend of theirs who is starting a mission of sorts in Mexico. It was neat to hear them talk about what they have seen in Mexico, and what they hope to be able to do there. It was also nice to just be together with friends from church in that kind of “around the kitchen table” setting and just enjoy being together.

While talking that night we found out about an annual event in Des Moines, called the “World Food Festival.” We were excited to learn that it was an all-weekend event, so decided to swing through after church Sunday.

As you can kind of see, it was a little crowded there, but there was no shortage of food to be had. Apparently we should have been writing down what we tried, because I can’t remember anymore… It seemed so obvious at the time, hmm…

Heather had some chicken fried rice, and a spring roll, I had a gyro, and then we sampled some Ethiopian rice dish, and some vaguely South-American vegetable pastry:

The pictures are from my phone, as somehow despite our intentions of learning more about photography, we managed to forget to bring a camera with us today. As you can start to see from the view behind me in the first picture, there were some interesting things we could have taken, if only we had planned ahead a little better. I suppose this let us enjoy the food more, although frankly the authentic spring roll, and the rice dish weren’t big hits with us.

I suppose it’s cheating to throw up this post with a few hours left in the day but I can all but assure we won’t be doing anything else blog-worthy today 🙂

-Jordan

P.S I just realized I haven’t ever put up a post about the Farmer’s Market here in Des Moines… despite having pictures and even some video from when my parents came to visit. I guess I should keep that in my idea list… In the meantime this festival isn’t at the same site, and was perhaps a quarter of the size of the farmers market, just to give prospective against something that I haven’t ever talked about directly.

Labor Day Weekend

Posted on by Jordan

What are we doing this weekend?

Are we driving half way across the US for a wedding? Are we attending showers or parties? Are we going on a trip somewhere?

NO!!!!

We are staying home! We are not doing anything really, just sitting around the apartment and enjoying spending some time with each other.

That doesn’t make for much of a post though. Luckily we had a busy week, so I will tell you a little about that. 🙂

Thursday night was the Iowa State University football team’s season opener. Heather had a work event including a tailgate and tickets for the game. Ames is only a short drive from Des Moines, so we headed up right after work Thursday night. We got there just in time to eat a quick sandwich and walk into the game.

As with many teams, ISU did not pick a challenging team for their season opener. It made for a game that wasn’t terribly interesting. It all felt kind of odd, I was surrounded by loyal fans, and I don’t feel any real antagonism towards the Cyclones, but I didn’t really feel much emotion about the game ether. In the end (or perhaps at halftime when we left…) I think it was fun, and I am really glad we went.

Heather and I realized it was our first college football game that wasn’t the Huskers or the Mavericks, and that alone made it kind of novel. Parking was a bit of a problem. Most of the campus was under water just a few weeks ago, meaning many of the grass areas people would normally park were too soft to use. Or at least I hope that is the reason parking was so bad, we wound up parking about a mile away on some random side street.

On the way out, we saw an…. enthusiastic and perhaps geeky fan:

I started laughing, and stopped to take a picture.

It is at this point I discovered something somewhat sad about my wife.

…

She had no idea what that guy was dressed up as. I made sounds of outrage and left her guessing for a few minutes, but it became clear she wasn’t going to all of a sudden remember.

At the time of taking the picture, I had been planning on asking Heather if she thought he was in the 501st. I figured I would have to explain that group, but I thought it would be an interesting topic… I mean we had a rather long walk ahead of us.

I love my wife, but it is clear I have not fully converted her to a sci-fi fan yet. On the bride side, she did like Battlestar! 🙂

-Jordan

P.S. I came *this close* to blurring the faces in that picture of us in the ISU stadium, but I thought that might be taking it a little far. All the same I do feel more than a little conflicted living in Iowa this time of year.

Adventureland!

Posted on by Jordan

What did Heather and I do last weekend you ask?

We went to Adventureland!

For those of you who didn’t know, and it’s probably a lot of you, Adventureland is an amusement park in Des Moines.

It isn’t the biggest park I have ever been too, but we had fun.

We probably wouldn’t have gone, but both our companies happened to have chosen the same day for their company outing to Adventureland.

Heather and I both remembered kind of liking roller coasters, but after two different ones, we weren’t sure they were all that much fun. I am going to blame having eaten some rather greasy food and the heat for part of my upset stomach… but the fact remains I kind of felt old.

The newer areas of the park all focus on water rides. Nearly all the slides require a tube to go down. I didn’t take the time to try all of them out, but the ones I did try were really fun!

They also have a feature called “the lazy river.”  Its an interesting idea, they basically recreated what tubing down a nice calm creek would be like… assuming the creek has concrete banks, chlorinated water and is packed full of strangers. I think the hot day probably pushed more people into the water, but the lazy river was way too crowded to be “lazy.”

We forgot to pack a camera, so I will have to put up yet another post without pictures /sigh.

The final verdict is that, with free admission, the park was well worth our afternoon. If we would have been required to pay retail for our tickets… it’s hard to say, maybe if we had paced ourselves better with the roller coasters 🙂

-Jordan

State Fair Reflections

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I have been to the Nebraska and Iowa State fairs.

Iowa has what people consider to be a successful fair, and Nebraska recently closed their fairgrounds.

(Granted Nebraska build a new venue, but the impression is that their fair wasn’t so hot)

Having been to both, I can’t really tell the difference. Maybe I am just not a fair person.

My suspicion is that Iowa having slightly more than double the population density of Nebraska helps a lot more than people want to admit.

Omaha being the largest city, not the capital, and not centrally located, all count against the Nebraska fair.

From what I can see in Iowa Des Moines is basically it. The state appears to have more large towns (large from my prospective having grown up in a town of 1000), without having a real competition for “big events.” A concert tour isn’t going to stop in Ames, or Cedar Rapids, or anywhere else in the state… it is going to be in Des Monies. I am imagining that most people are more willing to travel there thanks to it’s status as the big city in the state.

I don’t know how many people come in from out of town… also I am not going to spend the time doing any research… so this is just my musings. It just seems like geography plays into their favor way more than I would have realized a year ago if you had asked me about the relative fairs.

I guess maybe I should re-emphasize my point both fairs are largely ag shows, with food and some live music. I have no idea what would draw someone to spend more than one day wondering around eating a corn-dog looking at sheep. I had always assumed the “successful” fairs had some amazing special things that made them awesome, and Lincoln was lacking. Unless we missed it, they don’t.

-Jordan

State Fair (The Story)

Posted on by Jordan

Well, somehow the entire week got away from me before I sat down to write down some of what we saw at the fair…

Better late than never I hope!

Heather, a friend of hers and I went to the state fair over the weekend.

The fair here is a big deal! I haven’t ever lived in the city that hosts a state fair before, so maybe some of that is normal. When I say “a big deal” I mostly mean that the majority of the people I talk to have plans to at least visit the fair. Often those people speak highly of the fair, again not something I typically saw a lot of in other cities. (I guess I have really only lived in 3 cities, despite my habit of frequent moves) The website for the fair promised 57 different foods on a stick, among other attractions. I didn’t really dig into the website just figured people were positive on it, I would just show up and be amazed.

We set out for the fair late afternoon Saturday, with only a vague idea where the fairgrounds even were. Once we started seeing people hawking their lawns as parking we figured we should find something and start walking, eventually settling on the local VFW chapter area, selling their lot at a slight discount to the average yard (three dollars instead of five!) They made their money back by selling us all water on our way out of the parking lot, but it was warm, and they promised it was cheaper than on the fairgrounds (turns out this wasn’t strictly speaking true, but at least they weren’t over-charging)

Another ten dollars a head got us onto the grounds, and we were at the Iowa State Fair! First up… empty lots, and some combines. I was trying to let the ladies guide our trip, but those combines looked pretty cool. I guess they came up with some neat features in the (20?) years that have passed after the manufacturing of the combine I last had a chance to really look at the internal workings of.

We then headed to a large building that had tiles all around it vaguely hinting at quilting or crafts of some sort. Once inside, we found out it was an arena, and something having to do with horses was currently in progress. There weren’t any signs, and the guy wanted us to buy a ticket or leave so we left, not sure what we missed.

Then we found our way into the adjacent barns, full of the horses not currently participating in the unknown event. I kind of forgot how big horses can be! I also started to realize how much domesticated animal knowledge I had that was new to Heather. We then headed over to a cattle barn, apparently full of dairy cattle. I don’t know if it was heat stress, or something about dairy cows, but practically every cow in that barn had visible ribs and extreme hip-points. I think it kind of set off my subconscious “there is plague and pestilence here, get out!” warnings… so I was glad to leave that barn, but we got to see lots of cows, and again I found I knew the answers to more questions than I would have guessed.

(update, I just did a quick search for “dairy cow” pictures, apparently they all look like they are starving… weird)

We then found our way into another arena, this one free, featuring a two-horse-team pulling competition. I have no idea how it really worked, but  it was kind of fun to watch! Eventually that got old though, so we headed out in search of new things.

We found the 4H steer auction. I have vague memories of going to a stock-auction with my dad when I was a kid. It was kind of fun to see one again. It was also another first for Heather, and technically a first for me as I hadn’t seen an auction where they did it one bovine at a time before. As with the team-pulling the novelty wore off quickly, and it wasn’t like we were planning on buying beef-on-the-hoof.

Somewhere in transition to the 4H craft barn I found an ice cream cone, and we walked past the Iowa Pork booth, featuring the one and only “pork chop on a stick” however the line for that was probably 75 people long. I figured there would be other exciting “on a stick options later”

After the craft barn, full of nice but not really noteworthy fruit, vegetables, flowers, and craft type things, we headed to a nursery barn. The barn featured young examples of most of your stereotypical farmyard animals. To be honest, my thoughts when I walked in were basically “eh, I have seen this before” but I figured it would be fun for the rest of our little group. They had video playing of a live sheep birth, not the most photogenic thing you can imagine. I think it kind of shocked Heather. I don’t know if it was the video or just the fact that we had been browsing a lot of barnyard animals, but we didn’t give that venue much coverage, and then headed out again.

We stopped to get a Falafel for our guest in the main vendor area, then headed over to the non 4H food building to see if we could locate some winning sticky-buns a woman from church had entered. We saw a lot of tasty looking food, but the sticky-bun entries were no longer on display.  A little more wonder-by sight seeing and it was starting to get late. I realized I hadn’t actually tried any foods on a stick, so we headed back to the main food vending strip, to see what we could find.

I have no idea where the exotic options were, maybe I was just being overwhelmed by choices and didn’t notice them, but it appeared that everybody in the area we were in only sold corn-dogs as their “on a stick” option. I didn’t really want a corn-dog so I searched a little and eventually settled on cotton candy. Not really exotic, but it was on a stick, and I thought it sounded good. For the record I don’t really like cotton candy… I don’t know if that happened because I haven’t had it for so long, or if I didn’t like it that much before and just forgot.

After our last pass of the food, we headed back to the car, feeling like we saw at least a good swath of the fair.

-Jordan

P.S. Sorry for the mammoth post, I just wasn’t sure this was interesting enough to warrant splitting into several posts.

About That Bike Ride

Posted on by Jordan

Well…

We did make it back, but there were consequences:

We didn’t get left as early as I had hoped, maybe hit the trail by 10:30. The path I was planning to take, also known as the actual bike path, was closed about half way down town due to the flooding that has been plaguing Des Moines for the past few weeks. Our detour involved a killer hill, but we eventually found our way to Grand, that has a straight shot to down town.

The farmers market was starting to wind down by the time we made it there. Lucky for us Heather’s favorite stand still had a few of the whole wheat croissants she loves! We bought some sandwiches to finish out our lunch, and headed for some shade to relax for a while. At that point we were starting to feel like we had gotten some exercise, but the ride home didn’t sound so bad. I think we were both starting to look a little pink, but each chose denial rather than admitting that two fair skinned adults headed into a day out in the sun without stopping to put on sunscreen.

After lunch we headed for home. As it turns out, the 11 miles we rode in were all still there waiting for us on the way home. Also, that gentile breeze we had been enjoying was blowing into our faces now. I may be mistaken, but I think there is a noticeable climb from the banks of the river to our apartment too. The sun started to feel hotter too, and given that it was now about 1:30pm, it may actually have been hotter. What I am trying to say is that the ride home was no fun! It took us nearly two hours to get all the way back to the apartment. Heather and I are starting to think that her co-workers who described this as “an easy ride” may be trying to get rid of her.

Once home, we were spent. Our plans for the afternoon went from wildly ambitious to lying under the fan and drinking water. As we reflected on the ride, we realized that this does highlight a pattern we seem to be establishing. We don’t go on long walks, so we did a half-marathon, we don’t go on long bike rides, so we decided to ride the entire way across Des Moines. You would think we would be learning about training, and working up to things, but so far no. 🙂

-Jordan

We didn’t get left as early as I had hoped, maybe hit the trail by 10:30. The path I was planning to take, also known as the actual bike path, was closed about half way down town due to the flooding that has been plaguing Des Moines for the past few weeks. Our detour involved a killer hill, but we eventually found our way to Grand, that has a straight shot to down town.

The farmers market was starting to wind down by the time we made it there. Lucky for us Heather’s favorite stand still had a few of the whole wheat croissants she loves! We bought some sandwiches to finish out our lunch, and headed for some shade to relax for a while. At that point we were starting to feel like we had gotten some exercise, but the ride home didn’t sound so bad. I think we were both starting to look a little pink, but each chose denial rather than admitting that two fair skinned adults headed into a day out in the sun without stopping to put on sunscreen.

After lunch we headed for home. As it turns out, the 11 miles we rode in were all still there waiting for us on the way home. Also, that gentile breeze we had been enjoying was blowing into our faces now. I may be mistaken, but I think there is a noticeable climb from the banks of the river to our apartment too. The sun started to feel hotter too, and given that it was now about 1:30pm, it may actually have been hotter. What I am trying to say is that the ride home was no fun! It took us nearly two hours to get all the way back to the apartment. Heather and I are starting to think that her co-workers who described this as “an easy ride” may be trying to get rid of her.

Once home, we were spent. Our plans for the afternoon went from wildly ambitious to lying under the fan and drinking water. As we reflected on the ride, we realized that this does highlight a pattern we seem to be establishing. We don’t go on long walks, so we did a half-marathon, we don’t go on long bike rides, so we decided to ride the entire way across Des Moines. You would think we would be learning about training, and working up to things, but so far no. 🙂

-Jordan

A Wedding, Fireworks, And Demolition

Posted on by Jordan

It has been a while hasn’t it?

What have Heather and I been up to?

Well, we went to her cousin Kiley’s wedding. Perhaps most notable in the fact that it will probably be the last wedding ever to hold it’s reception at Dana College. The news of the college going into bankruptcy came out a few day before the wedding, but somehow arrangements were made to allow the reception to proceed as planned.

Outside of that excitement, it was really nice wedding… I just don’t feel like I know what to say about it. Heather has a big family, and the majority of them came for the wedding. I got to meet a few family members for the first time while I was there! I am beginning to realize that easily my favorite aspect of weddings is the opportunity to interact with the other guests. Everyone has such tight schedules that chances to see some friends or family may only come up at major events like weddings. Not to discount seeing the bride and groom, but if my wedding is anything to go by, so much gets packed into those few hours, it’s all a blur. A warm fuzzy blur, but still a blur.

After the wedding, and after staying up far too late talking to family at the farm in Blair, Heather and I drove to Kearney to see my side of the family. Quite a few of my cousins were there, and they all brought fireworks! To be honest I was a little disappointed that things worked out this year such that Heather and I were unable to attend a professional fireworks show. I am not sure getting to supervise a handful of my younger cousins as they set off an arsenal of patriotic spirit is a full consolation, but it’s something. We have managed a perfect safety record so far, although towards the end of the “show” a lot of effort was put into trying to simultaneously launch two and three things at once. I was sure  that would eventually lead to problems, but we ran out of fireworks before we ran out of luck I guess. 🙂

Moving on to this weekend (still in progress) Heather and I finished work Friday without any special plans for the evening. We had attempted to set something up with a few couples from church, but no concrete plans ever finalized. When we got home, Heather had an e-mail from another couple we know through church, inviting us to come help them demo the house they just bought. Maybe your thinking, “hey, that doesn’t sound like a great way to spend a Friday night” well, maybe you don’t live in an apartment and type on a computer for a living? I am not sure I would want to do that every night, but I truly enjoyed getting to swing a hammer for a few hours! Beyond that factor, it is just nice to feel like we have some friends we can hang out with here in town.

Looking to the future, Heather and I plan to ride our bikes all the way down town this morning to visit the farmers market. It will easily be our longest ride this summer, although not long by most bike enthusiasts standards I suppose. We have discovered that Des Moines seems to have spent a significant amount developing an impressive trail network throughout the metro area, but they have not spent much putting together an online map for said trails. A few low-res .gif files are they best they have to offer, and what they have are years out of date. The adventure may end up being if we can find the trail everyone tells us we should have seen on our last ride.

-Jordan

Home!

Posted on by Jordan

As I write this, I am happy to announce that I don’t have anywhere to be this weekend!

It’s only a partial victory;  Heather is, as we speak, returning from a wedding shower in Nebraska.

Still, I think it is a noteworthy occasion.

The last two weekends were spend in North Carolina, and I have plans to get a blog post up about that… Although honestly, not that much happened.

Should make for a nice short post then, right? 🙂 The only downside is I really didn’t take any pictures ether so I can’t even pad the post.

In the meantime, I am just going to enjoy being in town.

-Jordan