I was smarter today and wore socks with my shoes and brought a sweatshirt, but my hands and nose are still cold. I usually use Josh's shoulder as a nose warmer, but he wasn't willing to come to work with me today. Apparently he has to go to work, too. I could really use one of these in this place right now. Actually, I think it could be pretty useful in most places during the colder months. June in Iowa isn't supposed to be a cold month. I found an electric company in MN that lets you purchase blocks of wind generated energy each month for about 50 cents per 100kwh. I think it's totally worth it.

My good internet friend Melanie posted a link to Musicovery, which I am quite enjoying. At the rather chilly lab, I usually listen to Pandora, but this is a nice change and a different way to approach listening to music based on mood rather than it's musical qualities.

I have been knitting on the Poms and on my traveling socks (so far the heel flap of the 2nd is on it's third iteration), but nothing yet for Summer of Socks. I think I will need to bust out the baby sock patterns for this one.

I need some pizza ideas. I have another ball of this dough in the freezer (leave it in the freezer for a week, trust me, you won't be disappointed) and so far I have made taco pizza, white sauce with chicken, peppers and red onion, and something else, but I can't remember right now. Josh has been adamant about no red sauce, so I better steer clear of that no matter how much I want a cheese pizza right now.

Josh and I are going to start moving stuff this Saturday, which makes me kind of excited. We started packing up the kitchen and my bookshelf as well as two of our three computers, so a truckload is heading north with us. It will be nice to get the boxes out of our current place. While in the throes of packing I noticed some sticky brown syrup dripping down our plastic shelves in our storage room. This is the shelf that Josh stores all his beer making ingredients on. Somehow, a bottle of malt extract broke and slowly leaked all over the floor. Luckly, since it is mostly sugar, it was fairly easy to wash away, but I had to use my bench scraper to get the stuff off the floor. Why was I cleaning it up an not Josh?

another "stolen"video

Again from the lovely blog of Libby:



I need to start watching The Daily Show again. I was so much more informed when I did.

Hello! I am back. My internet is back, too, which is why I am finally posting. As far as I know, I am not supposed to be going to work. That is what the UI's website has told me and I am going with it since no one I have asked has told me otherwise. This means I am taking a little vacation. It's a good things since Josh and I went to MN this weekend for some apartment hunting. We found one! Actually it's a townhouse with a garage, which will be so nice. We will be moving in sometime next month probably over a couple of weeks.

If you are interested in some more flood pictures from around my apartment check my Flickr page. It has been a bit odd seeing 1st ave just down the hill from our place on the news everyday. At one point they were filming a shed floating down the river and I noticed it was live so I ran out to my back balcony to watch it.

Elijah is done. He could use some eyes, but I am not sure what I want to do since this is for a baby.

I so need a canoe or maybe a paddle boat

This video (which I "stole" from Libby shows what happened when dirt railroad levee close to the Iowa River broke due to the flood waters. I didn't go to work today because I didn't want to get stuck there since almost every route to and from there is currently flooded with water or traffic or both. We are hoping to get to Eldora and then on to MN this weekend to look at apartments, but it may be hard to get that far north. I think there are still a couple routes we can use.

I did go down to the river this morning and took some pictures, don't worry, the water was barely above my toes, but my camera didn't save them for some reason. The parking lots behind my apartment for BK and a couple businesses are flooded due to water coming out of the sewers.

So, they have closed 1st Ave up to the street my apartment is on. The police were just starting to redirect people, including the bus I was on, as we came to it. I knew that was going to happen since yesterday, the water under the bridge looked like this.

ETA: Some thing completely cute to distract you from impending doom.

I did get to help fill sand bags yesterday and I am really feeling it today. Not only am I quite sore from the physical labor involved (wet sand is heavy), but I got a good sunburn on my arms. Josh had both of our bottles of sunscreen with him at the golf course, and I stayed longer than I initially intended. I think I was out there for at least 3.5 hours. We were filling sand bags to be used to protect the city's wells that are all along the river and the electrical equipment near them. There are three of them on the paths I run, and I always wondered what they were.

The Coralville Res went over the spillway last night about 8:30pm and the water should be making it's way down the Iowa River to the Iowa City area in about an hour so it's about to get messy. It is interesting to me how some of the businesses around our apartment have surrounded themselves with sand bags and others right next to them haven't. I took a few pictures yesterday of the bridge across the street from my apartment as I walked to the area they were sandbagging.

More rain is headed our way today and a lot more tomorrow. The river is not predicted to peak until next Monday, so we are in for an interesting few days. I am obsessively checking our local newspaper's website for info.

ETA: If you are in the IC/Coralville area and want to help check out icgov.org/riverwatch and Coralville's website. The column on the right side of the page lists places sandbaggers are needed and how to get to them.

I don't really remember the floods of '93 since they didn't really affect me in any significant way, and I was 10, so didn't really care about that kind of stuff. The floods now, though they aren't really affecting me other than more traffic on my bus' route to work, I am definitely going to remember this. I can see the river from my apartment so I been watching it rise.

I plan to help with the sandbagging this afternoon if they are still in need of more sandbags in an area I can get to. Josh helped yesterday when they asked for volunteers at Lowe's. Amanda found his picture on the local paper's website in the flood pics from yesterday. They are placing sandbags near the dog park I run around in the mornings.

I took some pictures of the clouds (the ones I wanted to see when I stepped on random sharp piece of plastic) from the thunderstorms on Sunday and Monday and have them on my Flickr page if you care to look. You can also see my toe, which doesn't show much or the bloody mess I made on the floor while trying to get to a paper towel.

Though I have been distracted by storms I did make a bit of progress on Elijah.


I have also been distracted by new yarn. See, blurry picture due to excitement.