Second Effort

I’ve been meaning to write all week but as you can imagine, things have been a little hectic. I’m still not feeling inspired, but I have several anecdotes to share that can no longer be put off. First of all, quite obviously, we have a place to live.

It’s a good thing we happened upon this place, cause we’re moving tomorrow (Saturday) and needed a place to put our stuff. I’m pretty excited about the new place, it’s a duplex which means we could have fucked up neighbors or we will BE the fucked up neighbors. I’m not sure which is better for us. But that’s a two stall garage you see on your left, which I think of as my passageway to manhood. I can start accumulating tools, auto parts, fishing gear and other various shit that will be endlessly re-stacked and organized without ever being useful. Ahhh, manhood. We also have a basement, and upoon seeing this pic, the following conversation was had with our friend Mattbot:

mattbot says:
two things
mattbot says:
damn, you gots a house
mattbot says:
damn, you use flickr!
TB3 says:
duplex
TB3 says:
is that bad?
mattbot says:
whatever, i’m sure you could kick the other tenants asses if it came to it
mattbot says:
flickr rules
TB3 says:
I have liked it thus far
mattbot says:
it’s very hot among those that care about the hotness of such things
TB3 says:
well, I like being accidentally hot
TB3 says:
intentional hotness is so lame
mattbot says:
right, it’s like you accidentally picked out uggs last winter because you thought they were warm
TB3 says:
right on
TB3 says:
so anyway, yeah, I have a two stall garage AND a basement
TB3 says:
I can kidnap people and make cloaks from their skin, no one will be the wiser

mattbot says:
so often i hear that people use their two stall garage and basement for such a purpose
TB3 says:
exactly
TB3 says:
first priority though, ping pong table

You have to have goals, you know?

He was clearly more interested in my blog photo service than he was the place we are going to begin building our lives together. Side note: breaking news has it that Mattbot and his fair maiden are about to experience a similar shake-up in their lives as he has been offered a summer internship in, as he referred to it, “Dallas effin Texas.” He will be working with a large company that I fully expect will get Sara and I a very good deal on our travel expenses for the honeymoon. Hint. Hint. Congratulations are in order even if he does stiff us.

So I also showed the picture to my Uncle Drake (who has, incidentally, completely bailed as far as moving help goes). You will recall him from several earlier posts, one in which his middle finger was prominently jutted skyward. Another, you might recall from the first of this year, in which I got ripped at his house during the Iowa Bowl game and molested his teenage daughter’s boyfriend. That’s what he was referring to in this little exchange:

drake says:
LOOKS PRETTY GOOD
TB3 says:
yeah, not bad, and 8000 percent better than anything else we saw
drake says:
I CAN’T WAIT TO TAKE A GREASY SHIT IN YOUR STOOL AND PUKE OFF OF YOUR BACK PORCH
TB3 says:
you’re more than welcome, I would do the same for you…wait, I have, many tiems
drake says:
OR IS THAT TAKE A GREASY SHIT ON YOUR PORCH AND PUKE IN YOUR SINK? I ALWAYS GET THAT CONFUSED
TB3 says:
we’ll get you some instructions when you visit
drake says:
NO NEED, I WILL MAKE UP MY OWN RULES
TB3 says:
they need to be notorized and submitted for approval 24 hours before arrival

Bitch bitch bitch. So I threw up a few times and desecrated their toilet…he should be thankful I didn’t repeat a performance from my Uncle Brian’s place back in the day. I think I was 19 and he took me out for prime rib and much gin as I could drink. In the morning his guest bathroom looked like a cow had exploded. Rare prime rib, nothing like it.

Then there’s ScatASS Iverson, who really has an eye for detail.

Associate Scott Iverson says:
did the house come with that tree or did you pay extra?
TB3 says:
mucho dinero for that 1″ circumference tree
Associate Scott Iverson says:
how about the dish?
Associate Scott Iverson says:
you get to keep that?
TB3 says:
we’re putting it on the lease

There are a couple things worth mentioning from our trip to Webster City last week to get things lined up. First, Sara and I went and looked at what was advertised as a townhouse. It was not a fucking townhouse, there was one wall unit air conditioner for the two floors and it was on the ground floor. My sweat stains would have soaked through our new extra super duper mattress in two weeks. Plus the “Manager” of the place had clearly been lying on his couch smoking a doobie when we showed up for our appointment. I am not exaggerating when I say that swarms of gnats got out of his cheap cologne stink as we were walking to the unit. The place was pretty depressing, and the rent was low for a reason. You know those kids that lived down the street that walked around your neighborhood in diapers with snot streaks through the dirt on their faces? You know, the kids to talking into eating a “sand pie?” Well, this apartment complex seemed to be fully stocked with them. Not to mention a spooky would-be neighbor of our that had a huge rack. Did I mention that he was a skinny dude? Yeah. With a huge rack. He shouted encouragement to the Manager, “Move them in next to me, Dave.” I got the feeling he mostly wanted to listen to us through the wall. I’ve had one roommate like that; it’s a story for another time.

So after our semi-retarded (Sara insists he only has a speech impediment, but I differ. In any case he was a really nice guy and I’m sure I’ll call on him often to come over and “fix our pipes”) showed us the duplex, we were sold on it and needed to round up an envelope and give the new landlord our deposit. We hit the local Big K-Mart and had another funny little run in. There were these two three girls, all with muti-highlighted hair and skintight clothing, the oldest of which looked 25 and the youngest of which looked about 6. Sara didn’t catch on, but as they were standing in line in front of us with their Playtex super-pack and a box of hair dye (I’m not making this up) the middle of the three girls referred to the oldest as mom. Now, this woman, who honestly could have just been a slightly older friend of the one calling her mom, may have been the mother of the youngest girl too, but I’m betting we were looking on three generations of Webster Citians in our very first visit to the Big K. Three generations, sharing a wardrobe, a Playtex super pack, a box of Clairol, and all within 12 years of each other …no more.

Now, so far I’ve had a lot of fun mocking our new home, but I’m really going to try and put a stop to it here. This is not a bad community, it’s just not Iowa City. We’ve grown pretty fond of our surroundings in IC and that’s the hardest part of leaving for a town like Webster. But I have always maintained, and I know this is incredibly cliché, that everything is what you choose to make of it. If we got to Webster City tomorrow just longing for the culture we will miss in Iowa City, we’ll be miserable. We will discover new favorite haunts, we will be in a new place with great jobs, we have a new actual home-like atmosphere to live in that will be luxurious to us. There are a lot of positives to focus on, and I don’t want to take away from them by focussing on the one drawback. I will really miss the Iowa City ho-season, though.

So on the way back from Webster, we stopped off at the Owski ranch for a chat that turned into dinner. Moms have a way of making that happen. Speaking of Mom, for those of you that don’t know she works for a hospice house in Waterloo. And for those of you that don’t know what that is, you’re lucky. Her job revolves around some incredibly sad and depressing situations, and as such, she is very educated in the various stressors that can influence people’s lives.

Just as a cheerful topic of conversation she happened to mention a little bit of trivia to Sara and I as we were enjoying some spring breeze and a cool brew in the back yard. It seems that in the past month, Sara and I have experienced 4 out of the 5 major stressors that can fuck people up over a lifetime. Except they have fucked us up over the last month. I don’t remember the order, but we have the move, the job changes, the wedding planning and a death in the family. In the last month.

So yeah, it would be really easy to feel sorry for ourselves just knowing that, but I actually feel pretty good about it. First of all, we are excited about the move. I’m convinced that while it may be really rough for a month, or even 6, this will be a very good thing for us in the long run. One of the biggest positives about uprooting right now, or at least one of the things I have been rationalizing this decision with, is that we are proving to ourselves that we CAN. We can do this, we can adapt to a new and unfamiliar place, and we can thrive. Then we can do it again and move somewhere kickass.

Also, I feel great about the fact that Sara and I have gone through all of that shit, gone through it together, and only tried to strangle each other like 7 times. I didn’t need any more proof that we were right for each other, I never would have shelled out half my income for a ring if I did. But dealing with all these things even before we get to the wedding has made me realize how much I love and need her at my side, and how rock fucking solid we are as a team.

I started this update saying I didn’t feel inspired. I think I found my muse. I also think I just made myself cry a little.

The developments in our lives have been fast and furious, hence the long delay since my last update. The big news is this: Sara and I are moving in the very near future to Webster City where she will take a fulltime reporter job at the Fort Dodge newspaper and I will be the new sports editor of the Iowa Falls publication.

For the most part this is happy news, but it has our heads spinning as suddenly we are leaving an area of which we are very fond and moving to a trio of cities we know nothing about. Here’s the story of our Iowa City exodus.

When Sara finished her Masters in December, we had every intention of staying in IC as she had basically been promised a fulltime position with the owners of our two current papers. After twice meeting to discuss the job, she went in for what she thought would be a final hash out of the details including salary and benefits. Instead, her boss dropped the bombshell that he could, after all, not afford to hire her. It turns out in the long run that was the best thing that could have happened, though at the time we wanted to strangle the life out of the tiny little man with a garden hose.

Since that time Sara has been looking for a job around the area and sometimes beyond. Finding one job is tough enough, but two in the same field in the same vicinity is a major pain in the ass. She interviewed once with the Iowa City newspaper, which passed her over for an internal hire after about a month of keeping her on hold. About a week later they called back and said they “might” be creating a new position and would like to talk to her about it. About this time she spotted the two jobs that we would eventually take and applied for hers. I, being the career-driven guy that I am, put it off.

The following week Sara first met with the IC paper’s editors to discuss the hypothetical job. It went well, and hopes were very high that it would come through. Soon thereafter, she went to Fort Dodge and had a halfhearted interview that eventually got her the job. While she was there I figured it was time to get my ass in gear, so I e-mailed the Editor in Iowa Falls and passed along my résumé, cover letter and some photo samples. They called me later that day and requested an interview.

So last week on Wednesday, I ran up to Iowa Falls and got a glimpse of what it would be like to work for a real newspaper. I hate to slight my current job, but this paper is a bazillion times better. Technologically, aesthetically, and overall professionally, I am so excited to take over the sports section there. It’s a twice weekly with a website, though you have to subscribe to read the paper online. I will have a brand new I-Mac, which had me pretty much drooling on interview day. I will have a staff that includes two other writers and a photographer. Because they have a radio station in-house that does a lot of athletic coverage, I may even be able to dabble in that medium. I won’t have to do layout anymore, which was probably my weakness, because the have a staffing of people to do just that. On computers, like it’s supposed to be done, as opposed to the cut and paste bullshit we do in Tipton. I will have color front pages, so photos actually look nice. There’s a lot to be excited about with this job.

So that brings us to Thursday, the day after my interview, when things truly went nuts. Sara had already been offered the Fort Dodge job but had them on hold to wait on my position. I got a call in the early afternoon and was offered the IF job with more money, paid moving expenses, better benefits AND they are going to buy me a membership at the country club. I was blown away, now we really had to start thinking abut this. Plus, they wanted to get both of us into Iowa Falls, so they offered Sara a temporary job and said they could likely get her hired on at Ellsworth, the local Community College, as an English or journalism teacher.

As if this wasn’t enough to confuse us, the Iowa City paper called shortly thereafter and said the hypothetical job had come through and they wanted Sara to do it.

Ordinarily, I would think this is a decision that should require at least a week of hashing over, especially considering the variety of our options. But Fort Dodge was already waiting on Sara, and Iowa Falls wasn’t going to wait forever, so we had the night to talk it over.

I’ll spare you all the pros and cons and just say this, the Fort Dodge job is a better one for Sara because she wants to write news, and she will get to do that there. She got them to increase their original salary offer to better than the Iowa City position, and with everything else thrown out the window, this meant both Sara and I had a chance to move up in the world. That’s all it really came down to. We called and accepted our new jobs Friday morning and made plans for our first foray to Webster City on Saturday. We are both slated to start our new jobs on the 25th of this month, which doesn’t leave a lot of time to get all of our affairs in order.

Now this has been a pretty dry and humorless blog to this point, but I assure you, there’s still some fun to be had.

Saturday morning we arose and trekked in the direction of our new home. For those of you to lazy to figure out exactly where it is we will be, Iowa Falls, Webster City and Fort Dodge are consecutive cities along Highway 20 east of Cedar Falls. We will live just a little more than an hour east of Waterloo, only about half an hour north of the lowly Ames (which could be a problem if my readership is made up of Cyclown fans), and the way I figure, not too much more than two hours from the Twin Cities. When we first arrived in Iowa Falls, I gotta tell ya, I was surprised at what we found, this is a really nice town with more culture that you might expect for a community of a little more than 6,000. They have coffee shops and decent restaurants. It was very appealing and I’m looking forward to working there.

Next stop was our new home town of Webster City. The news was less good here. We stopped first to pick up their local paper and check the classifieds for a home. I think there were a total of 6 listings for rent. We cruised around looking for a place to eat and when we finally settled on a place called Paco’s Pizza, or something like that, which was really the only place in town that appealed to us, we were greeted by the most telling sign one can expect not when they AREN’T ins Kansas anymore, but rather when they are getting CLOSER to it.

Shirt and Shoes Required, said the sign just inside Paco’s door. I should have taken the camera.

I don’t want to come off all stuck up, but Sara and I are pretty accustomed to living in places where you don’t need to tell people to wear a shirt or shoes. Those things are pretty much cultural staples until after 10:30 on the ped mall or in the stands at Kinnick. You might be saying, “But No. 3, didn’t you go to high school back in the LPC?” the short answer to that is yes, I did, and I remember the charms of small town life. It definitely has its upside. But so does a dinner with a choice of wines or beers on tap and a chocolate cake that is cooked specifically to match the entrée you ordered. There will be a transition period, I can adapt back to my country boy ways and Sara can learn them, but it will take some time.

So after an admittedly very decent meal at Paco’s, we set out to find a dwelling. It didn’t take long to be again rudely confronted with our new surroundings. On about Sara’s second call for a two bedroom apartment, this is how the conversation went:

Sara: High, I’m calling about the apartment you have advertised in the paper.

Dude: Oh yeah, it’s a two bedroom…(other non-descript and hurried details.

Sara: OK, well, we are just in town for the day, is there any chance we could take a look at it?

Dude: Well, I tell ya what, I’m having a little bit of a diarrhea problem here today and can’t get too far away from the bathroom, it’s open though, so you can just go ahead over there and look at it.

Sara: Looks very frightened.

After getting the address and directions, she tells me what the guy said. My response is probably very much the same as yours right now: “He did not fucking say that.”

But he did, and I guess we can at least credit the guy for being the most honest man in the history of humanity. Alas, the apartment was a dump and so was the other one we looked at last Saturday, so with an abundance of new leads we head back up there on Friday to hopefully secure a place. Right now a duplex is with a two-stall garage is sounding like heaven. Hopefully with our new massive income we will soon be able to look into purchasing our first house together.

So from Webster City we moved on to explore Fort Dodge, which seemed like a pretty nice town. It’s only 20 miles down the road from us, so along with Iowa Falls, it should be a nice get-away. It’s much bigger than the other two, population of 20,000 or so. We had a nice dinner and spent the night there before going to my grandmother’s surprise birthday party in Des Moines the next day. I know, a surprise birthday party for an 80 year-old seemed a little risky to me too, but it went well and she enjoyed it without suffering a massive coronary.

That pretty much brings things up to date, we move back and forth from being excited to being a little sick to our stomachs. I have loved working in Tipton and not a lot of people can say that about their jobs. We will both miss Iowa City endlessly, and Sara is a little leery of moving further from her parents when her brother is just about to be shipped out to Iraq. Back in December we never imagined we would be leaving, so we signed a lease for the next year and will be held to it through July 2006, so if anyone is moving or knows anyone else looking to move to Iowa City in the next month, we are in desperate need of a sub-leaser.

Overall, this is a pretty scary prospect for us, but we are determined to make it a good thing. Your comments and show of support would be greatly appreciated right now. Volunteers to help load and unload the U-Haul are also welcomed. I’m also trying to recruit a replacement here in Tipton, here’s the posting: You could be the next No. 3! Pass it on to your sports media minded friends. It really is a fun job.

Oh, the Pope died, he was Polish too.