Category Archives: Random Thoughts

Where everything that doesn’t have a category goes…

Ames Iowa, a fun place!

Kristin and I went down to Ames this weekend along with the Mooney’s. After leaving late on Friday night, Derek and Meghan did a great job of driving us down there and we got to spend a little time with Liz and her house mate before enjoying the air mattress in the living room.

Saturday Kristin and I enjoyed awesome Pizza Ranch Buffet after dropping off Liz for her rehearsal and pictures. While Liz was there, I downloaded and installed on PlayOn so that we could see how much functionality could be squeezed out of Liz’s new xbox 360.  It seemed to work pretty well, but kept dropping out when we tried to watch Dr. Horribles Sing Along blog.  It ended up working on Sunday, but caused no end of frustration during the twenty minutes I tried to get it working.  I’ll blog more about that some other time.

I picked up Liz and dropped her off again when my dad showed up with the tickets with Mike Cooley.   Jason and Derek showed up shortly later and we all headed off to tail gate just north east of the stadium.    While we were tailgating, a helicopter circled and dropped a paratrooper who we believe delivered the game ball.  It was only about 4:30, so it was hard to tell what point was because the game wasn’t until six.

About 5:15 we headed into the stadium and were treated to a great performance as expected from the band and a surprising victory from the football team.

The Iowa State Varsity Marching Band

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The Iowa State Varsity Marching Band #2

Click on the link for the real deal...

Sitting at the game, I got really thirsty.  Despite a raised eyebrow from Kristin, I decided to buy a cup of pop.  Kristin decided to get a picture of the cup to commemorate the occasion.

It was tasty. Yep.

It was tasty. Yep.

We finished up the game, said goodbye to my dad,  hung out with Liz & Brad at Old Chicago, and that was our Saturday.  Liz seems to be doing really well down there which is really awesome.  “The Rental” in Ames is so much nicer than than “The Rental” was in Waverly that there really is no comparison. It’s really exciting that Brad is cruising towards both graduation and getting married next year, too.

Sunday featured some tasty Chinese food, hanging out with Liz and an uneventful ride home with the Mooneys.  Conversation is always good in the vibe… 🙂

–Nat

Love the automatic windshield wipers…

It’s one of those things you just don’t realize how cool it is until it just works.  The automatic windshield wipers on the Passat are pretty darn nifty.  On the interstate and while driving around, I don’t even realize them turning on and changing speeds; it just happens as needed.

Like the auto-dimming rear view mirror  it is absolutely not needed but adds to “nice” feeling of the vehicle.  It was raining off and on last night and this morning, not having to lift my hand up to the windshield wiper stalk  was pretty awesome from  a laziness standpoint 😉

–Nat

Barnes & Noble Book Club – how many people is this really good for?

I went to Barnes & Noble over lunch with Mooney to order up some books for my Masterful Leadership class;  look for my thoughts on these books in some upcoming posts.  They will probably be pretty good, the professor evidently loves them and he seems like a pretty awesome guy.

What I didn’t realize was that since my order was over $25 (none of my books were in stock, of course) that shipping was free to my house and I would likely get the books sooner because there wouldn’t be the business of receiving them and notification to go through at the store.  That was a pretty nice surprise.

When I took my receipt up front to pay for the books, of course they asked me if I wanted to become a member as I would save a whopping $10 on this purchase. Mildly interested, I remembered turning this down before so I asked if there were any charges to join. $25 per year was the response from the perky cashier. Given I don’t buy books very often, I declined. They must make money on most people who join, why else would they even have the club? It just becomes mildly annoying when they ask about it every time you buy something. I suppose it is just part of their job…

–Nat