Happy Birthday to ME!

So, it has now been over a week since my last post and there have been some changes since then. To start with, I will wrap up last week in terms of work and class. Work was pretty standard, as it has been for some time. The one standout item was when I finally, if briefly, won my battle with the constituent mail inbox. For a few minutes, maybe upwards of an hour, the inbox was empty for the first time since I had started working in the office. Unfortunately, another huge bunch of mail came in pretty shortly afterwards, and the inbox was quite full when I left on Friday. As far as class goes, we had a midterm in my Thursday class, which I think went pretty well.

Now, on to the weekend. My Saturday started early, really early. I had to be up at 2:45 AM to catch a 3 AM shuttle to the Baltimore airport. From there, I took a 6 AM flight to Moline via Chicago. Fortunately, both legs of my flight left on time and arrived ahead of schedule, which is always a pleasant surprise. I got back to Dubuque by mid-morning Saturday. At noon, Connor and I went to the girls MVC Championship swim meet. I thought the DSHS girls as a whole did very well, especially their MVC champion in the IM. During the meet, I was the source of Iowa v. Wisconsin score updates for the deck, and I am happy to report that Iowa is now 7-0 on the season and #6 in the first BCS poll. I left the meet early so that I could actually watch the ND v. USC game. Unfortunately, that game didn't go as well as the Iowa game. Even though ND played well for solid portions of the game, we allowed ourselves to fall behind early in the second half. Despite Jimmy nearly leading us to what would have been an epic comeback, three incompletions in and near the endzone at the end of the game prevented us from tying it up and forcing overtime. I guess you've got to take the good with the bad, and our boys played like champions at the end of the game and that's a good thing. Friday night, Caity and I went to see "The Full Monty" at the Grand. I'm not going to lie, it was a little more old man than I had really planned on seeing, but it was a pretty decent production.

Sunday, in addition to watching/following several football games, I began my quest to find my Halloween costume. My plan is to go as Neville Longbottom, so mostly I was looking for a Harry Potter-esque robe. While I found one at the mall here, I decided to wait until I could find more options to actually purchase one. In addition, I went and helped out Mom with mock trial at Mazzuchelli. Back to the topic of football, I want to point out that despite my having a very solid week for fantasy, Jordan managed to have three or four players have career games to crush me in our match up, which sucks, but watch out for the playoffs, because my team should deliver when it counts. Sunday night I hung out here in Dubuque with friends and prepped for my big trip on Monday.

Monday was mostly about getting ready for my trip to Iowa City to celebrate my birthday. We left mid-day and got to IC around 4:30. After visiting Jordan and dropping off some groceries, we went to my aunt's house where I was staying last night. Caity and I then went to Carlos O'Kelly's for a little birthday dinner before we went to the mall to look for my Halloween costume some more. I finally decided to just bite the bullet and buy the same robe that I had found in Dubuque. Also, I almost bought my Animal hat from Spencer's, but there proved to be too many character hat options and now I'm trying to decide between Animal and the Grinch, one of my all time favorite cartoon characters. After that, we got a ride down to the ped mall (note: always drink responsibly) to map out our antics for after midnight when I would be 21. The bars were not as dead as you might expect on a Monday night, but I guess that's Iowa City for you. We settled on a few bars near each other and then went to a coffee house to kind of wait it out. After eating again around 11:15, this time at Panchero's, it was finally time. For my first drink, as an homage to "Scrubs", I decided to have an appletini from a martini bar. Then we went to a real bar and I had a couple of beers and a Long Island iced tea. We called it a night at about 1:15 and I headed back to my aunt and uncle's place.

This morning we got a pretty early start back to Dubuque, leaving IC at around 9:30. That allowed me to get home by mid-day and write this post. Tonight I'm having dinner with my family and then going to the girls city swim meet (Go RAMS!). I'll probably write one more post this week before I fly back to DC on Sunday and return to life as usual, but now as an adult!

Jes

P.S. I almost forgot, thank you to everyone who has wished me a happy birthday, either via Facebook or otherwise, I really appreciate it!