Freakishly Happy

This is a little daunting. So much to tell! So... We got back to Iowa, as I said in the last blog. I had a great birthday on the second. John took me to the pet store to play with puppies, and I got a fast pair of new running shoes. I am a whoppin’ 24 years old. I was discussing it with my house mate Sarah, and we decided that 23 and 24 are really non-ages. 20 is exciting, 21 means a lot of freedom (well, sort of), 22 and you’re in the Double Deuce club, 23 and 24 are really just waiting it out until you turn 25 which is HUGE.

Okay: to backtrack…
We have been having a great time catching up with our family and friends. We returned from Vermont and went directly to our friend Marcus’s Halloween Bash. We helped him set up and were his Guy and Girl Friday. He set up an intricate haunted garage that was pretty darn cool. The party was a huge success with almost 100 people in attendance. You know the party was good- as we had to spend the next 3 days cleaning up after it. I went as punk-rock little red riding hood- and Johnny was the Big Bad- but hot and well dressed- Wolf. I did his make-up and people couldn’t even tell who he was!

I went out on Halloween with my girl Jessica from Germany. It was really really funny watching all the girls in Iowa City as they walked around in no clothes on a 23 degree night. As I was the chauffer for the evening I was dressed somewhat sensibly.

Then on the 1st of November we moved in with our friends Jonathan and Sarah Windham and their two matching pets, Judah (the Golden Retriever) and Madeline (the tabby cat.)

We live in Coralville, which used to be a suburb of Iowa City, but now the two cities have pretty much meshed together. We live right across the interstate from the Coralville Mall, which at one time or another was said to be the 5th largest mall in the US. Now I’m sure its size is paltry in comparison with many other malls out there.

John and Jonathan are starting a business together. This venture really kicked off this week since we got the internet yesterday. All day they were like two young children waiting eagerly on Christmas Eve, waiting for the UPS man to come with their precious modem that would bring them the internet. It was pretty adorable. They hope to get things up and runnin’ in the next 3-6 months and we will hopefully all be millionaires by oh, say next June sometime. : ) I’ll keep you updated on how that’s working out for us.

So on with what’s been going on…Sarah and I began working out together on Monday. She has a free trial to a women’s gym that allows her to bring a friend. The gym is kind of like Curves, but on steroids. They work you a lot harder and there’s bikes, elliptical machines, free weights, etc. Already I’m starting to feel a difference. I don’t know if this is due to how great the work out is, or simply because I went from not working out at all to actually getting off my bum. As in most women’s gym’s they play really fast music with a driving beat. As this music is very motivating during my work out I began to wander what it’d be like outside the gym. I’m considering stocking up on such CDs so that I can be much more productive on in daily life. Imagine what it could do with my house cleaning! Everything would get done at super speed. It would either be really beneficial or cause me to go completely unhinged.

On Monday I went and babysat for our friend Megan Jo’s completely adorable baby Xander. We had a great day. We played with trucks, watched Sesame Street, Megan and John came home for lunch and then we spent the afternoon cuddling. People ask me if I want one now… But why should I want one when Megan has a perfectly perfect baby just 5 miles away?

When I got home from Xander-sitting, I found that John had tackled the avalanche of boxes and junk in our room and had cleaned and organized everything. He did a fantastic job! Now we have a very cute little flat, with only some minor kinks to work out.

Sadly our camera died. It’s been on its last leg (or tripod?) since I went to Amsterdam and really took a turn for the worse when we took it on a beach in Ireland, where there was a bit of a sandstorm It’s been slowly fading ever since. First the lens started having problems coming out, then the buttons stopped working and finally last week as it lay gasping, the focus stopped working all together. My you rest in peace lil’ buddy. So now we’re on the hunt for a new camera. It served us well though, over 9,000 pictures in a little over a year.