Lessons Learned

As I mentioned earlier, it was cold last night. It got into the single digits last night around these parts. Some are excited, because the colder it gets, the faster the lake freezes, and the quicker the ice fishing season starts. Great. Not me!

Well, on the way to the post office this morning, I made a rather interesting discovery. Drinks freeze in single digit temperatures. On my previous trip to Cedar Falls last Tuesday, I bought a Mountain Dew. I left it in the cupholder, didn't go anywhere yesterday, and forgot about it last night. This morning, on the way to the post office, I noticed the 'brick' of Dew sitting there...Luckily it didn't explode in the cupholder.
After noticing the Mtn. Dew, I then made the realization that I had a 6pk of waters in the trunk. They've been there for a good while now too...After a few uses, I recycle the bottles, and get new ones out of the car. Well this morning, yep, they were pretty frozen too.

The bulging bottle...guess I got lucky. Of the 6, 4 of them are okay. Two actually busted and cracked the plastic from the neck to the base. Again, luckily it is so cold, they stayed frozen, adhered themselves to the carpet in the trunk, and just needed to be thrown away. The others, well one is a slush with a rather large bulge through the bottle, and the other is just frozen solid. Again, call me lucky.

I'll put these back in my fridge and try to drink them quickly before I head home. Can't take them with me on the flight...

Note to self: When freezing, remove everything from the car. Probably safer that way!

There should be laws...

...about it being so darn cold. Last night we hit single digits...6*. That's cold. Today, currently, it's 10*. At least it's warming up some.

Coming Home

I've been here since Aug. 1st working. My work here is done and it's time for me to start heading home. After being here this long, I've started calling the hotel home, but I'm ready to really get home. Home, here I come!

I have everything wrapped up, most everything packed, questions answered, travel arrangements made, and now, just hurry up and wait.

Under one week...

I'll see everyone when I get home

I just thought it was cold

I thought it was cold earlier....it's REAL COLD now!
I went out to an early dinner at 4:30 for wings, football, and drinks. When I left to come home for the 2nd half of the Bama game at 8, I already had ice all over the car.

Yea. It's COLD.

Still fallin'

This is really something I can look forward to. It's nice to know I'm not having to pay out my first born for a gallon of gas.
This is taken at the Pilot just beside my hotel and the interstate. The crazy thing is that it's $1.87 about 5mi down the road away from the interstate.

The crazy thing is that regular unleaded is usually more expensive than the super unleaded, all because of the ethanol. The regular has no ethanol in it, so it's more expensive. Amazing what happens when the state has huge tax incentives for "green gas".

More of the Windmill

There are still quite a few windmill workers in the area around here. Just earlier this week, we say another convoy of blades heading down the highway. This is a bad photo, but it's from the 5th floor windo of the hotel.
That's one blade on the truck. It's a pain in the rear when trying to pass them on the interstate. The most common ones around here are close to 150ft long!

This is cold

Yea it's cold. This was the forcast at 11am this morning.
We still have snow lingering around on the grass around us, and ice patches in the parking lots. Definitely colder than back home!

I woke up to snow

As usual, I threw open the window curtian around 6:30 this morning to notice it had snowed during the night. It wasn't much, but it was snow. And us 'southern folk' don't get to see too much snow.

So, just before the morning meeting, I ran out and snapped a few photos for everyone to enjoy. Guess this means that it's really about to start getting cold!

By the way, this is my newest rental car, a two door Chevy Cobalt. Not too terribly bad. I'm sure it's "winter driving" capapbilities may not be the best, but it won't be too bad (I hope).

According to the latest weather reports, it's supposed to snow off & on for the next 4-5days with the high being 37*. We'll see what happens by then though.

Back in Iowa

My vacation is over and I'm back here in Iowa. The vacation itself was pretty good and worth going home for, but it was very short lived.

While home:
--Dad had surgery on his back (10/30) and is finally back home. Surprisingly, he went home pretty early after such a serious surgery. Amazing. He's still got some pains, a 7inch cut, and can't walk very far, but at least he's home.

--We trick-or-treated on 10/31. Bethany, myself, her parents, and Mike all came to the house to pass out candy and eat dinner, and generally do nothing. We burned through 6 bags of candy by roughly 8'oclock. We had droves of kids showing up looking for candy. I carved our pumpkin in about 20mins for the night, and didn't take a single photo of it. Nothing elaborate. Triangle eyes, buckteeth, candle inside...yea nothing fancy. Not long after the kiddies came, we went to bed in anticipation of the race.

--I ran in the Vulcan 10k run on 11/1. It was a new PR for my 10k, but definitely not what I was shooting for. I finished in 1:08:08, placing #1303 out of 1550 runners. Now, my leg is still hurting from the run and I'm willing to bet that means a long time off from running! I have one more race for the year that I'd like to work on so we'll see how that goes.

--Roll Tide. After the race, Mrs. C, Bethany & I drove to Tuscaloosa, tailgated shortly with the gang on campus, and then went to the UA vs Ark. St. game for homecoming. It was nice to get to go to a ballgame finally. Alabama won 35-0. The best part was that Texas Tech beat Texas throwing us to No. 1 in the nation! ROLL TIDE.

-- I packed and headed back out on Sun 11/2.

The interesting thing is that now that I packed all warm clothes, it's turned warm in Iowa. Today's high is supposed to be 69*. Yesterday was about 65*. I guess it's okay though, b/c the weather is predicting snow for the weekend. Guess there's no way avoiding it when I'm this far north.

I'll be heading home for good soon. See you all shortly.