My weekend in pictures

The first phase of my move is now complete! As I'm typing from Muscatine with my car parked out front with a lot of crap in it, my bed, futon, and lots more crap are all sitting in the basement of my brother's current place of residence in Iowa City. On Saturday, Travis will be moving into his new house, one that he's actually buying. (Ridiculous stuff, right? My younger brother is buying a house and starts his full-time job on Monday. In the meantime, I'll be "temporarily homeless" for the next month, surfing from couch to couch. And I'm fine with that.) Hopefully a majority of my stuff will be moving up there with him this weekend, at least the larger items (bed, futon, tv) that I can't get with my car. The best part about it? I will not be around to help out, as I will be invading DC for Flenkerfest 2007 (apparently my first 2007 trip that way wasn't the "official" Flenkerfest. That one might have been Birthday Bash). I feel bad about not being able to help out, I mean it's my brother's first house and all, but the timing on everything just didn't work out. And besides, he only helped me a little bit, while he was extremely drunk, around 3:00 Tuesday morning. Yes, I was up, moving at 3 am yesterday. I didn't really sleep between 9 am Monday and 11 pm Tuesday. Poor planning on my part. Not packing early was a poor choice. But, my room went from looking like this:

To looking like this:

(that brown spot was on the floor when I moved in, I swear. It was under my bed the whole time, how could it have gotten there with my bed over it???)

Many thanks to my friends Travis (not to be confused with my brother Travis) and Erin for helping with my move by providing a truck and moral support!

To keep the theme of some recent-Flenker pictures, here are a few from the Bix weekend festivities!

This is LeClaire Park, one of 3 or 4 venues hosting jazz bands during the weekend, right on the Mississippi River.


Every year a building on the Illinois side of the Quad-Cities turns on the lights in some offices to spell out "Bix". I think it's pretty neat.


This is the Centennial Bridge, right near LeClaire Park, a nice site when it's all lit up. It's even better in person or in a photo taken by a good photographer.


And this is the only photo that's been posted so far of me from the run. I'm hoping that there will be a couple more, but this one will do for now!

Now I really should be getting to bed, I've got a long day of travel ahead of me. I'll try to check in from the east coast while I'm there, but be sure to be on your best behavior if I'm not around.

Downtown Jazz

Well, the weekend was fun. It was Iowa City's annual Jazz Fest, so that along with the beautiful weather we've been having made it a wonderful time.

Saturday was spent at work most of the day, then kicking some ass at tennis in the afternoon. Later, a friend had a party for a good cause, a "Kegger for Cancer", so I felt ok paying $5 to go, even though I'm usually adamantly opposed to that sort of thing. As long as (some of) the money goes towards something like that, I'm alright. After a little bit, my friends and I headed downtown for a little bit, sneaking into a bar to avoid the cover charge, and then getting free drinks for the rest of the night. One of my friends is the manager of a liquor store, so he knows people in all the bars, and drinks for free. So, we do too. Awesome!

Yesterday Jimbo was in the area, so we went out for lunch at El Ranchero. It was an amazing lunch, cheap and delicious. Any time I can go out to eat and get full off of $6, I'm happy.

(note: photo borrowed from the Cedar Rapids Gazette website)

Interspersed throughout the weekend were trips downtown to listen to some live jazz and to eat some wonderful food. Oasis had a stand setup, but I didn't stop there... They were doing plenty of business, and I wanted to eat something that I couldn't get on any normal day. So Friday night I stopped at a place that had gumbo, and was glad I did. With a little hotsauce, it was tasty. Yesterday I opted for some ice cream. Sitting on the grass of the Old Capitol building, eating an ice cream cone, and listening to some excellent free music is something that I will always love. It's also something that I will really miss about Iowa City. (not that Austin won't have plenty of this, I'm sure I could probably do something similar every weekend of the year. But still...)

Another thing I will miss is running into people that I know everywhere. Iowa City's small enough that I can see someone I know almost everywhere I go. Just ask Captain Crab, I think at some point in our adventures he asked me if I knew everyone in town. Almost, Cap'n, almost.