Challah, Part II

Success, again!

Challah acquired, same brand, but this time at Fareway, another grocery chain.
Overall, not terribly impressed with store but nice to see more robust bread selections.

Today found out chickpeas are filed under "ethnic/Mexican foods" section in Hy-vee. Who knew.
I was a little suspicious when all other types of beans were clustered together, but since employees seem to hover around, waiting to be of help, one asked me if I was looking for something, and
then I was directed to the other aisle, where lo and behold, chickpeas aplenty.

Additional items, no extra charge

Call now and you'll receive a free door!

Today I saw a door on the curb, with a sign that said "Free"

In other non-Amesian news, wtf is going on in Pittsburgh????
Seriously, I'm not gone 2 months and it's all gone to crap?

Chair in Yard

Here's a picture of the whole scene. In case you were having trouble imagining it. Sometimes this place is like bizarro-world. Maybe I have wandered into the portal, and it doesn't go to Joliet or Ames or Pittsburgh; it goes to bizarro world. I'd be curious to see if they do manage to sell it!

Still for sale...

Apparently, it's still for sale! This amuses and perplexes me.

Impromptu garage sales

Another funny thing I've noticed is the impromptu garage sales that occur here. There are some of the "regular" garage sales but I've seen that there are some people in the building which borders the main road here, who hold these semi-regular impromptu sales. Yesterday I had the good fortune to actually see them "setting up" for this. This involved pulling a card table onto the sidewalk and loading that up with about a dozen (?) old DVD players and a VCR or two, and some assorted DVD's. This was at around 3:30-4:00.
I wonder what, if anything, they managed to sell.

The better "sale" I saw was on a side street- randomly in someone's front yard, they had dragged out their recliner ( I wish I had gotten a picture of this), and slapped a "For sale: $20" sign on that thing. Also it was draped in red and gold (ISU colors) some sort of plastic or vinyl sheets.
I wonder if it sold!

Nugent 2012

Today when I stopped to have a *coffee and crappy scone at this coffee place, I saw a guy wearing a shirt which said: Nugent 2012. Of course this made me think of my friend Rebecca, but sadly, I think his tshirt is asking us to consider supporting rocker Ted Nugent for President.
The guy was wearing a cowboy hat (yes, I know you saw that coming) and sunglasses.

*this made me think longingly of La Prima and of Friday coffee days with H & H.
Although I never did like the way La Prima made their coffee.
The scone at this coffee place was pretty bad, maybe too much baking powder or something.

Tacos Deluxe

For those days when you just can't decide between:
Taco Time and Taco John's.

Luckily, they are right across the street from each other.

Odd convergences

Walking through downtown today noticed the following:

1. Ames Subway Development office
Are they developing a subway in Ames? Weird, huh.
The bus seems pretty good.

2. And the Body of Christ Church

3. Directly across from the strip club

Swans, not swine

Famous ISU swans:
Lancelot and Elaine

If you are wondering, in the winter the Poultry Science Department keeps them on the college poultry farm. They are returned to Lake Laverne (on ISU campus) just before Easter and taken off after Homecoming in the fall.

Also they mate for life....Aw, that's kinda sweet!

swine flu na'at

How you know you're really at an agricultural school...

1. You pass the National Swine Research and Information Center

litterers, revisited

Well, I should amend my previous statement. Although many people do in fact litter here,
and after yesterday's football festivities, which apparently seem to stress the festivity part much more strongly than the football part, there is a lot of crappity crap on the streets.
However, I noticed that my neighbors and their visiting family did, in fact, ultimately pick up after themselves. So, I stand corrected. I should not have been so hasty to rush to condemnation.
For reasons which I cannot fully understand, apparently, they were only temporarily storing their
Bud Lite cans on the grass, under the bushes, but later would remove them. Apparently the cans needed to take a siesta there for a while but later could be removed and transported to an appropriate trash (or who knows ,dare I dream, recycling???) receptacle.

Sorry neighbors...

HWLS stories...

10:15 is re-up time at the liquor store.
Especially after big football Saturday.
There was quite a line in the HWLS last night when we stopped in to get a bottle of wine
and quite the assortment of characters. Sometimes I don't think words necessarily do them justice. This is when I wish for a secret spy camera, like in my finger tip, or somehow activated by me just thinking, take a picture of this. Has anyone invented this yet? James Bond? Sky Mall catalog?
I wish.
There was a crowd of young college students buying alcohol and mixers and amusing themselves greatly by posing and posturing for the security camera. Another dude buying a ginormous bottle of Vodka and a bottle of OJ. A young woman wearing a very short outfit.
I only hope all these people do not litter, like my crappy neighbors.
Also yesterday I "met" the crap-house man. More on that later.

Black n'Gold pride...

Hahhaha... the "rival" colors here - for University of Iowa- are....


black and gold.

Deja vu anyone?

more sports

I have no news for today, except to say there is ANOTHER football game coming up.
Didn't they just have one of these?

Except this is the BIG RIVALRY!!!

IOWA STATE VS. UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

I will stay away...very far away...

kitchen robots

Who says CMU is the only one developing useful robots?

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/articles/2009/09/02/news/doc4a9f2e9317828160199764.txt

Oh my, Pittsburgh was just mentioned on Morning Edition re: an angry driver...

Still waiting for my classmates to get back to me... Oh my... I will learn...soon, I swear.

Victory!

And... Wheatsfield Co-op emerges as the clear winner!

No waiting for Christmas time...

Goats and "Llamas for Obama"

Also, WHY am I not reading the Des Moines Register every day, when it has articles like this:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009909050329

Extra meat, extra cheese

Some moments just come to you. Sometimes you don't even have to search for them.
Sometimes bloggable moments just happen.

Standing in line at Bruegger's today:

Guy is ordering his sandwich:

Bruegger's woman making sandwich:

"So, extra meat, extra cheese?"

Guy:
"Yeah, that's gonna be AWESOME!"

smells

This is random too, but why does the first floor of this building (apt) smell?

Like seriously bad and gross.

I don't know. Fortunately, I only need to go down there to visit the mailbox.
Which doesn't seem to often have much in it (HINT HINT, SEND ME SOME MAIL PEOPLE!!!)

Surprise

Surprisingly, they actually have Jewish New Year's cards in the Target here.
I was less than optimistic that this would be the case. Not a huge selection, mind you, but
still, given the previous experiences, a surprise.
Still no word on when to expect the festive Christmas challah.

litter, assfire everwhere, and randomness

I rode my bike to downtown before, even though it really is only like 15 min away, walking. But I wanted to ride my bike, since I haven't been doing much of that lately, oddly enough.
It was a pretty nice ride, except on the way back, there were two obnoxious motorcyclists behind me, with a serious case of assfire, ie. gunning their engines and speeding as fast as they could ahead of me. Weird. I guess assfire exists everywhere.
Also, sadly, litter. When I was walking before, I picked up two plastic bottles and a beer can, along the side of the road. Why do people litter?
Then I went to Target. I guess I didn't say this before but the Target here looks absolutely identical to the (Pgh) Waterfront Target. The first time I went into this Target it kind of unnerved me. It has the EXACT SAME layout and *exact same merchandise, in the exact same arrangements. The very first time I went there after we'd moved, I seriously felt deja vu, like OMG, Am I back in Pgh? Did I go thru the portal? I could be anywhere. I guess this is the point of chain stores but it is a weird feeling.
Maybe this is why I am drawn towards small and independently owned businesses.

*Except for the ISU apparel, which only appeared since the start of the school semester.

Recycling

Another weird thing is they don't really recycle here. Well it's more complicated. First, they do have a deposit on cans and bottles, including wine. So I guess this is supposed to encourage people to bring back their beer, soda, and wine. Which I don't mind doing, except I wonder if it really works. It's a good idea but it's a little annoying in the implementation. There's a little room/foyer in the outside of the grocery store where all those can/bottle recycling machines are set up.
The only thing is usually if you go in there: 1. at least one or more of the machines is out of order
2. the machines don't seem to accept certain bottles (I dunno, maybe I'm feeding them in wrong),
3. it usually smells pretty rank- imagine all the nasty beer bottles, etc. crap pulled from the trash, whatever smell, yuck
4. there's usually someone with like 2 giant garbage bags full of beer cans hogging up those machines.

But fortunately, you can just bring the stuff to the customer service counter and they'll give you back your 15 cents or whatever.

So this is all well and good for your glass and soda cans. But what, you may ask, about plastic and what about newspaper and cardboard?
In this city brochure thingee we picked up somewhere, they say "materials that are traditionally recycled (such as paper, tin cans, plastic, etc) are not separated from garbage in Ames. Instead, they are separated at the Resource Recovery Plant. The burnable trash is used as a source of fuel in place of coal....etc. Metals are separated and sold for recyling.

Wait, what??? So, the city of Ames does NOT want me to separate recyclable items because first, they are going to pick out the most profitable ones from my trash and sell them themselves? I don't know...this sounds weird.

Luckily there is another option. You can take your stuff yourself to the Ames Redemption Center. Save your soul and your recycling. Kidding... It's just for the recycling.
It's sort of like Construction Junction but much better maintained. Thankfully. CJ made me sort of aggravated and sad, because people would f- things up and throw all sorts of crappity crap in the wrong bins and just plain out crap. For example, last time I went there someone had thrown a LAMP in the paper recycling dumpster. I hate people like that.

The place here is pretty cool and it's all indoors, so no rain getting everything a mess.

So, YAY Ames redemption.

Cyclone fevah

Well folks, here I thought one possible asset to Ames was the lack of professional sports. However, I had not counted on the extreme fervor of college sports, including, apparently, college sports which are not even doing that well. Okay, I don't know if that's true, I was going to even try to look up their record and tell you all this, but honestly I don't really care. So the first football game is
today (why is it even on a Thursday)? It is at 7 pm. Officially-sanctioned tail-gating starts
at....

wait for it....


1:00 p.m.

Good grief. Either this team is mega bad and everyone must be piss drunk by the time the game starts or... well I don't know.

Luckily, in case you were blind or living under a rock, once you step onto the bus, you will start to hear all about the game. Once you get on campus it's cyclone-fevah time.
Today we had to meet with someone in financial services and this woman was all decked in ISU
gear. The funniest part is when we asked if she was a big football fan, she said, No, not really.

But it truly was like being back in Pittsburgh (sorry, not dissing on Pgh, it's just the same level of sports fervor).

Today on the bus ride home, omg, the craziness. I encountered no less than 2 very young, fresh-faced (ie. Poppin' Fresh, right outta the oven) Mormon guys, several band members complete in ISU marching band uniforms, and an unfortunate smelly man, standing quite close to me.
Usually, I must say, the bus here is okay and much less crowded than PAT ever was.

Okay well that's about all I have to say about Cyclones. Except every other kid on campus wears a t-shirt that says "I am a cyclone" Maybe they give them out free to new students.

wine and liquor

Okay, before I completely forget this story, I should get it down. It's about our first experience
with HWLS. The first night we got here, after driving for many many many hours in a truck, we met up with out landlord. The last several (possibly million) hours of driving through Iowa seemed to take a disproportionately long amount of time. I don't know why. Perhaps we entered a time warp. Luckily our landlord is very understanding and was still working and met us at like 11.30 or something absurd. Also it's one hour behind here, so really it was 12.30 a.m. and we had been in a truck for approximately 14 hours. I can't stress this part enough.

After we met up and got keys, we headed over to Hy vee to get some basic necessities like toilet paper and wine.

Now, we had our very first experience w/the Iowa wine store! We walked in- and it quite a sight- it's actually a pretty cool store. It has a lot of different kinds of wine and beer in cases and single beers and lots of things. Including Jekyl and Hyde, but more on that later.

All this was probably lost on us at the time though, as we were extremely tired and overly stressed, possibly from sitting in a truck for 14 hrs.
A VERY YOUNG looking girl who worked at the wine store approached us.

SERIOUSLY, this girl looked about 14. I didn't know you could be 14 and work in a wine store. Maybe you can though. I can't remember her name. Let's just say it was Shelly or Shelby or something like that. Or 14 year old girl.
She asked us what we were looking for and we said a sweet wine. We were standing right by some white wines. I guess we should have just picked one but like I mentioned, exhaustion and mental fatigue.
She recommended something that she called a dessert wine. For reasons I cannot fully explain, we decided to go with her recommendation.

So we try this wine and you know what? It's not really wine. It's like hard cider. It tastes like apple crack.

The next day, after unpacking, and getting some amount of rest, we went back to HWLS (did I mention that it is close). We pick up some "real" red wine to have with dinner (Yay our first dinner in our new home) and guess who rings us up?
Shelly/Shelby the 14 yr old wine steward. Well when we mention that our previous wine selection was a little lacking, she immediately says that she felt bad and that she realized the moment we left that she had given us a bad recommendation! She even starts talking to us about a local winery.
Now every time we go back, I have looked for the 14 yr old but alas, we have run into other wine stewards- an older/normal aged person originally from Ohio, Kenny, and my "favorite", Talon.

The awesome thing, well two really, about the HWLS:
1. They do NOT make you take bags! If you say, I have my own bag, they don't foist a paper or plastic bag on you! Huzzah! This almost makes up for the city's lack of recycling.
More on this in another post.

2. Their awesome selection of the KATZEN WINES!

Katz, aka Schwartzkatz the original, aka Happy Mosel wine, comes in SO Many colors, it is amazing. Red, green, blue, etc!

I know, most of you are saying, what is this Happy Mosel wine?

It is a nice white wine that comes in a BOTTLE SHAPED LIKE A CAT

It was first introduced to me by my good friend Mauren, with the original black cat wine.
I was very excited to see it comes in many different colors.

Okay...that is enough about the happy cat wine, but really, it's wine in a cat bottle.

"Mexican" food?

somehow this place doesn't quite look authentic

Challah, the Christmas treat...

There are many good things about the local (is it a chain, I don't know for sure, but it is
"employee-owned") grocery store. It has a great selection of many many things, it's kind of like
the nicest, spiffiest suburban grocery store- or like Market District Giant Eagle. It's way nicer
than the craptastic Giant Eagle I shopped at in Pgh.
Also you can buy wine there. Have I not stressed this already? Perhaps, the novelty of this will wear off eventually, although I could devote an entire entry (and later, likely, I will) to the joy that is the Hy-vee Wine and Liquor store... It's attached, to the very same store. And is open all sorts of "crazy" hours, like on Sundays. Wild. You know, after living in the strange PA/state monopolized liquor store-land with it's oddly restrictive rules, it is almost unsettling to walk into not just the grocery store but Target, Walgreens, etc. and see lo and behold, Cases of beer for sale. A-M-azing... And I'm not even really a beer drinker.

Okay but back to the topic at hand... Although at some point I will have to talk about the cast of characters who work in the Hy-vee Wine and Liquor Store (hereto will be abbreviated as HWLS)...including... 14 yr old girl, Kenny, and Talon.

This is a second-hand story... but still worth telling. Cory apparently asked someone who works at the grocery if they had any challah. The worker gave him a perplexed look and he tried to elaborate by explaining/describing the sweet yummy Jewish bread. The guy said he had "never heard of that in his entire life"
But, if nothing else, Iowans are very helpful and they do seem to all take their jobs seriously. Honestly. Almost every person (except for that disgruntled girl at Wendys) who I've encountered is very cheerful and nice.
So the guy called his manager to inquire about this mysterious bread- and was told
"We only carry it around Christmas".

Um, yes... all the challah we eat to celebrate Christmas...

On the plus side, also, they have Brueggers here! So you can get bagels. But only til 3 p.m., as I found out the other day. Seriously folks... if you have any bagel cravings post 3 p.m., you're out of luck. Gotta plan carefully.