toasty sandwiches and bear with underwear

One thing that only marginally has to do with Ames but it does since it was sparked by a local location of a chain store. There is a certain sub type place that has toasty sandwiches that is nearby, like within 10 minutes walking distance. It's okay as far as fast-food type places go and the sandwiches are fairly good and not greasy. I can't get past the smell associated with subway- the overpowering yeast/bread/something smell that envelops you when you walk by the outside of the store is a pretty big appetite suppressant for me. So I couldn't even tell you if their food is okay or not because I haven't eaten there is years. But quiznos is okay and doesn't have any sort of overpowering odor. So we would sometimes stop there for a quick bite to eat; plus they often had coupons and all in all, it was fine. When we would go there, we'd get the little buy 6, get one free card punched. My husband was very on top of keeping track of this, hoping to redeem it for a free sandwich. So imagine our surprise when we saw the place was closing. Too bad, we thought. Not only would we lose out on one of the few decent quick places to grab food but he wouldn't be able to get his duly-earned free sandwich.
After a couple months we saw that the store was going to re-open in the same location, under new management. When we went there and tried to redeem the free sub, the person working there told us they weren't able to honor the "free" sub cards because people had been buying up the stickers on the internet (?) and then fraudulently claiming they had bought the necessary amount to get their freebie. The manager confirmed this.
I suggested to Cory that he should write a letter to the corporate headquarters - I figured at best we'd get a coupon for a free sandwich and at worst, just waste the postage.
A week or so ago we get a package slip from the mail carrier, saying we have a piece of certified mail - from Quiznos! I go to the P.O. to pick this up- it's an envelope with $5.50 in postage!
This turns out to be a gift card.
Now does anyone want to guess how much this gift card is for, bearing in mind that the company paid $5.50 to mail it via certified mail?

Anyone...?


.... $5.00!

hahhahhahhahah

Bowling at MU

So in an effort to expand our horizons or at least try to give some support to the university, we tried to utilize the bowling alley at the student center. They do a lot of advertising for it and had promoted the fact that the lanes were completely re-done over the summer. There is a pretty good bowling alley with a lot of lanes and some video games and pool in the "newer" part of town, but figured this one was worth trying. Also the games are only $1.00 each.
Problem is well...the lanes are completely warped! I don't know what their resurfacing or renovations entailed but bowling here was quite a challenge. Also pins would get stuck in the gutters! Then if you did get a gutter ball, your ball could knock out pins from other frames. It was crazy. Also the scoring mechanism kept mis-firing or misreading- it would give you pins when you hadn't gotten any or not give you ones. At one point all the lanes shut off and had to be re-set. The young guy working there didn't seem terribly concerned or interested, he looked like all he wanted to do was close up shop and get home already. He also informed us that we could really only bowl until 9:45, even though they are open til 10, b/c it would take him 15 minutes or so to clean up everything and close up.
So needless to say, not that eager to go back, even for $1.00 bowling.

aggression twd cycle

Well good to know people are hostile toward cyclists everywhere, in case I thought it was just large cities. Someone leaned out of their car (SUV) window to tell me that I had missed a stop sign, which I don't think is true. People are mean to bike riders and it always puts me on edge. I pay a lot of attention to traffic and where cars are, b/c I know most drivers aren't that alert or concerned. So that put me in a bad mood.
But on the plus side when I was leaving the food co-op, there was a little girl eating grilled sweet corn, that they were grilling today, who was completely fascinated by bicycles. It was pretty funny.

misc. ramblings...

Well, in case anybody actually reads this... the stores in dwtn Ames are open to the unheard of hour of 8 pm on Thursday nights! Wow. Can you believe that? Sounds scandalous. I love it.
The cupcake girl's store is still open so we will see how she fares. I tried a different cupcake which was good but it was a "premium" cupcake and thus priced accordingly ($2.00 + tax). That is really too much for a cupcake. It was pretty good though.
When we returned to post-floodsville, we "met" one of our "neighbors". Well by neighbor I mean someone who lives on the next street over, in an actual house. We must have walked by his house a thousand times, because it is the route we take when walking anywhere; to downtown, to Hyvee, etc. Often he is outside - his house is right on the corner. I think a few times he said Hello to me when I was walking myself.
So imagine my surprise though when totally out of the blue we're walking by and this neighbor calls over to us: "OH you guys are back. I was wondering if you were okay with the flooding." I guess he has noticed us walking by his house for the past year or so. Either we're the rare youngish people who walk anywhere (?) or he is just very observant and/or spends a lot of time outside his house? He was pretty friendly and introduced himself and told us these were the worst floods he had seen in 30 years.
He seems like a pretty okay guy and it's nice to have some connection to people in your neighborhood.
Okay well time to get going since the repairs are still underway and that means there is going to be hammering all day long. I have to give the repair people and our landlords credit, they are right on top of the situation and making very speedy repairs.

bark management fails...

our neighbor obviously has not mastered it. I saw the UPS delivery person standing outside her door for a full 2 minutes, listening to barking, while waiting for her to answer the door.

Also I saw someone coming out of the next building wearing a contamination suit? Should I be concerned?

life here on the flood plains

here is a photo of what the apartment complex looked like in the midst of the flooding last week-
Ames had a major flood and water main break

the first floor of the building had 30" of water, all the appliances were ruined/pulled out, drywall knocked down, carpets pulled up.

Granny's secret Kool aid habit and free food for me?

On Saturday at the hy-vee- Yes, this IS where many odd and interesting things happen...got in line behind this granny who was buying about $50 worth of Kool aid, all in individual little packets. Who knows why...Unfortunately the cashier was ringing up each one individually, although I'm sure there is some way to ring up multiples of the same flavor at once. That's one of those times you get in line thinking the person before you only has a few items and it will be quicker than scanning all the items yourself. Whoops. I think the packets were on some mega-sale, b/c they looked to be about 12 cents each, although I have no idea how much Kool aid is normally. She spent quite a bit of money on her total purchase though, and a lot of that on the kool aid....
Before when i stopped to buy a bagel, the guy working there gave it to me for free! I'd like to say it was due to my incredible charm or nice smile but I think he was just disgruntled, since he said, just take it, I don't feel like taking my gloves off to ring you up. But free bagel for me, so it's win-win.