Kickin' it in Muscatine

Sorry for the little lack of updates recently, I've been busy doing, well, not much of anything. (Plus, I wanted to make sure that everyone had a chance to read Jad's most excellent post! If anyone else ever wants to do a guest post here, let me know, I'm always up for new and exciting ventures!) I've been helping out around the house a little, watching some TV (it's been a long long time since I've done that), hanging out and watching baseball with KP, and just enjoying the air-conditioning. (I've been thinking that I need to write stuff down as it happens, because I feel like there were some funny/good thoughts, etc. that would have been good to put up here, but by the time I get around to doing anything about it, I forget what the hell it was that I thought was clever or whatever.) I drove a motorcycle for the first time yesterday, my mom and step-dad took me out to an empty parking lot yesterday and I tried out my mom's Harley! It was a ton of fun, and I think for it being my first time ever on a bike I did alright. Definitely something that I want to do more of in the future.

My big excitement recently was purchasing a Nintendo Wii! This was the only one I've ever seen at a retail store; I had to stop by 5 different places before I found one in stock. Muscatine only have one store that sells stuff like this, as far as I know (Wal-Mart, gross), but I was in Iowa City to take care of some things, and had nothing but time on my hands. It's a little present to myself, a done with school/moving away gift, if you will. I'm very pumped for it. I didn't get any extra games yet, just the Wii Sports that comes with it, but those are hell of fun as it is! I think I'm going to be picking up Madden '08 on Tuesday. And of course I'll have to get Zelda for it very soon. I've done some stuff online with it, like reading sports, news, and weather, and am thinking about spending the $5 to be able to actually surf the internet with it. I'm also going to look into buying some points for it, which will allow me to download old Nintendo/Sega/Turbografix 16 games and play them on the Wii. Most excellent stuff. If anyone out there reading this has one and wants to be Wii friends, let me know, I'll send you my Wii number.

Later this afternoon I'll be heading up to Cedar Rapids with my dad and step-mom to see my brother's new place. He seems pretty happy with it, from what I understand there was already a little garden there with grape tomatoes and jalapeño peppers and asparagus growing. Maybe onions too, I'm not sure. He called me up yesterday to find out what goes into salsa, so today I'll have to judge it and find out if he did a good job. And apparently, his girlfriend gave him a cat. I'm going to get him to name it Chico.

One good thing (among many good things) about being home is the food. I haven't gone out to eat once since being here, and the food that my mom has in stock is usually pretty healthy stuff, which is nice. I've grilled out a lot (turkey brats, chicken sausage, veggies, etc.), including one of my favorite foods, fresh sweet corn. Last night I was talked into eating 4 ears of it! (We made 6 ears, my mom and step-dad each ate one, and I was told that I should eat as much as I wanted, since they don't usually eat corn. So it didn't take too much convincing.) Plus, they get Schwann's food delivered here, so there are some good things with there, like frozen loaves of bread you just pop in the oven, or chicken breasts, or best of all, butter pecan frozen yogurt. mmm.... Also, there is a lot of beer here. Good beers. In the past few days, I've had the following: a Rogue Brewery chipotle brew and a Rogue hazelnut brew, a couple of the new Michelob Ultra flavors (Pomegranate raspberry and Cactus lime - both amazing!), Sam Adams Brown Ale, Miller Chill (like water with a hint of lime) and some others. I'll devote an entire post to these beers soon, I promise.

Well, I'm going to see what baseball games are on right now. For some reason I started watching a NASCAR race today and haven't been able to turn the channel. I actually kind of enjoy it. Although in my defense, it is a road course, so it's not just driving in a circle. But also I've catching some of the Little League World Series games, and love them. Those kids love the game, which makes it so enjoyable to watch. Also now that I'm somewhere that has cable, I can watch like 3 or 4 MLB games almost every day, whilst eating delicious frozen yogurt. Incredible!

I'll try to get some pictures from my next adventures on a bike, or maybe some exciting Wii shots, or just photos of whatever the hell I can find around Muscatine. I gotta say, though, sometimes it's nice to be able to lay around and watch TV.