return of tax man!

Poor guy, I saw him outside on Duff Ave advertising for the tax prep place, in the bitter cold. What a job- standing outside, dressed like statue of Liberty, trying to entice people to get their taxes done, when it's FREEZING outside. Surely this company can think of a better, more humane method of advertisement!

seldom seen

What is that bright thing in the sky?

Oh, that's the sun. It has returned, after not being seen for the last 4 days.
Yay. Now it is cold and miserable, instead of dark, cold and miserable.

Winter.

nice things are nice

In our old address, we had the nicest and most hard-working mail carrier. Not only was he a super dedicated & conscientious mail carrier, he was just a friendly guy too. If we ran into him around our neighborhood, he always recognized us & gave us a friendly greeting. He would bring our mail and packages to the door sometimes. Right before moving & holiday vacation, we wrote out a Christmas card to him with a tip, although I still didn't even know his first name! I handed it to him while he was delivering the mail, to make sure he didn't think I was trying to give him some outgoing mail. Soon after that we were caught up with moving & holiday travel. Last week I saw a card with an unfamiliar name & address as the return address. When I opened it, I was delighted to see it was a very kind thank you note from the mail carrier (whose name is Chuck), thanking us and wishing us a good new year!
Yay for small towns and nice people!

snow

first snow for the year

License plates...

One thing that is kind of unique is the sheer number of personalized/vanity plates you see here. It seems to be in much higher proportion than other places. *
The vast majority of the plates are the special Iowa State ones with many variations of
ISU love/support and reflections on the mascot, Cy-bird.
Often when I'm out or walking through the parking lot, I take note of how many vanity plates I see; and how high that proportion is to non-vanity plates. Also I like to see what things people come up with and what this might say about the particular person who requested such a plate.

Yesterday I saw the following:
SCHLTZ



* I haven't done any actual analysis of the comparison of these proportions.

seen

On the back of a truck: decal/sticker
nativity scene with camel, wise men, etc.
and
Calvin urinating


how to interpret this???

the Io- way

Not to get too political here but this week's election results are pretty drastic. First the state
reverts back to uber-conservative governor. Secondly the state makes major news for voting
to not retain its 3 state supreme court justices, allegedly in reaction to their "activism".
Even though in a recent poll, mentioned here in DM Register:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090921/NEWS10/909210321/Iowa-Poll-Iowans-evenly-divided-on-gay-marriage-ban

92% of people polled "say gay marriage has brought no real change to their lives."

But apparently people were convinced by some major campaigning of conservative groups
to vote not to retain these justices anyway.
Of course not retaining these judges doesn't immediately lead to overturning the law
allowing same-sex marriage but I guess this is the direction people hope it will go.

Yay Iowa for proving it's not actually too progressive.