Yes, we DID!!!

See "Obama sweeps to victory as first black president"

I can't believe that I am actually tempted to get on the internet and email all my overseas buddies that I am proud to be an American for the first time in almost a decade. This from the girl who used to introduce herself to her English classes "Hi, I'm Kim, I am from America, sorry about that." I am so proud that the people of this country made such a brave and bold choice. I spent last night at a Democrat party watching the polls roll in. I don't think that I will ever forget the moment when my beloved West Coast came in and announced that Obama will be he next Commander-in-Chief. Thanks guys!!

(Look for me in the top right corner of that picture!)

Go Phillies!!!

I managed to win St. Luke's College's "Who Will Win the World Series" game by being the only person to correctly guess that the Phillies would win. This is very exciting to me as a) I don't think that I have ever really won anything, b) I don't follow sports and basically picked a team out of a hat and c) well, um, that's it really.

Please, get out and vote on Tuesday. A lot of lame people I live with are saying that there really isn't a difference between the candidates. I can't really respond to this as I have been to busy to watch the debates so I can't really give concrete examples of how they differ. I will say this however: this was the same BS that people were saying in 2000 about Bush and Gore. Eight years later, one man has started an illegal was that has killed hundreds of thousands, and the other has spearheaded the movement against annihilation of the planet though global warming. No difference my ass.

As they say in Chicago: "vote early, vote often!"

Nothing... nothing.... nothing... then I miss THIS?

Check this out:Man survives four-story plunge from apartment

Argonaut Apartments is where I live. The picture in the article is right outside my back door, where our laundy room is. No, I didn't know the guy that jumped out the window (I try to have as little to do with my neighbors as possible) but this story didn't really shock me. I am just praying this this happy family gets evicted.

I missed it because I went to see Prince Caspian. It was okay, but I would probably have been more amused by a guy jumping four stories out a window and surviving. The only good parts of the movie was when they didn't bother trying to follow the book-- like when the Narnians stormed the castle, a scene not penned by the great C.S. Lewis. Not that I don't like the book-- quite the opposite-- but I think that the scenes were better because they were designed to be in a movie, while the other scenes were designed to be in a book.

No matter how good her acting (which isn't really that good) the cinematic Lucy can never show how strong her love for Aslan is as the literary Lucy. This is why I pretty much feel that this movie proves that Hollywood (and Disney in particular) should make thier own damn movies instead of ripping off the plotlines of authors (unless the book happens to be Fight Club, but that's a different story.)

This includes Harry Potter (which finally got kids to read) and Lord of the Rings. Although I agree with Randal Graves (of Clerks 2 fame) on both the LOTR books and the movies: "Those fuckin' hobbit movies were boring as hell. All it was, was a bunch of people walking, three movies of people walking to a fucking volcano... Even the trees walked in those fuckin' movies."

Sioux City still sucks. I did have a good time at the Marti Gras festival yesterday (yes, I know it's July) where we had a "parade". I put "parade" in quotes because actually all it was was a bunch of guys in identical shirts throwing beads to the crowd. A few had large Macy-day type balloons which probably could have used a few more tanks of helium. The fun part was screaming out "Beads! Beads!" while clapping your hands like a deranged seal in the hopes that a necklace would be hurled your way.

A Sampling of Great Sioux City Minds

Seven percent Give Or Take
Overheard discussion on fashion models in a Briar Cliff University stairway:
Girl 1: ... are so unrealistic. I mean, no one looks that way.
Girl 2: Yeah, totally.
Girl 1: I mean, I bet that, like, less then 10% of women look like that.
Girl 2: I bet it's more then that. I bet it's like 7%.
Girl 1: Yeah, 7%.
Girl 3: I bet it's more then that. I mean, what about all the starving people in Ethiopia?
Girl 1: Oh yeah. Well, 7% plus them.


Vocabulary Building
Overheard discussion between family of four (mom, dad, 5 year old, baby in stroller) while walking to work:
Man: ... messed up. I mean, he won't be going anywhere near there again. I took that dude down! [unintelligible] ... some bitch.
5 year Old: Bitch! Bitch!
Mom: ...

Birth Control Really is a Lovely Thing
I was sitting next to a classmate that was moaning about the difficulty of a nursing class. She asked me if I thought that the class was hard.
Me: Well, I have an advantage. I don't have kids to distract me.
Her: You don't have kids at home?
Me: Nope.
Her: Do they live somewhere else?
Me: Uh, no. I don't have any kids.
Her: Grown kids? [Note: grown kids aren't uncommon for a 32-year-old here.]
Me: No, no kids at all.
Her: Wow. Don't you even have stepkids?
Me: No. I'm not married.
Her: Are you divorced?
Me: No, I've never been married.
Her: Never? How old are you?
Me: 32
Her: Are you still a virgin?

Water Water Everywhere

Actually, there isn't any flooding in Sioux City... we just got some really pretty thunderstorms and that was about it. The Little Sioux boy scout ranch is a ways away and we weren't hit.

I felt raelly guilty, actually. I was really hoping that something would strike down a lot closer. The hospital got put on a “Sky Alert” and I was disappointed that I wasn't there to help move everyone into the halls. When I heard about what happened the next day, however, talking to the doctors who helped really drove the point home that something like this isn't all excitement and is all tragedy. Because the hikers were kids who didn't carry any type of ID, notification of families was delayed and 12 horus later one boy's family still hadn't been told. That image really hit me hard-- of a mother who didn't know if her boy was alive or dead, or where he even was. So the next time that I look at a dark cloud it won't be with anticipatory excitement but with that image in my mind.

Funny to think that I used to be terrified of lightening and tornados. I guess I used to be afraid of a lot of things.

The flooding in the news is on the Eastern part of the state, and so we've only been affected in that a lot of our doctors and nurses are heading over there, leaving a shortage here. I wish that I could go and help-- the fact that I have classes sounds like a pretty lame excuse even to me.

Hey! Leave Them Streets Alone!

Nothing new to report, really.

A few weeks ago I was awoken by some yelling outside my window at around 6AM. I live in a rather "colorful" part of town and the yelling was "Hey! You're a @#$%ing drug dealer! Get out of here, you @#$%ing drug dealer!!" I peeked out my window to get a look at the @#$%ing drug dealer and saw that my car was the only one parked on the street. So thank you, Mr. @#$%ing Drug Dealer, you prevented my car from getting towed as an hour later there was no longer a street outside my apartment.

I spent the day watching the men tear things up. Now I am not one to oogle workmen (for more reasons then one) but it is an attestment to my geekhood that I found the machinery-- especially the Excavator very graceful. They were like huge dinosaurs tearing up the street, moving so smoothly that it was easy to forget that they were controlled by humans and a few gears. If you ever see one, you should stop and watch it for a bit.

The streets in Sioux City are so bad that even George W. Bush-- who is in a bad position to complain about anything American-- pointed out that the city was wonderful but needed the potholes fixed. Like most statements made by Bush, I disagree. The only redeeming qualities that Sioux City has to offer are for the most part being dismantled by the Republicans (such as the library funding.)
Anyway, I am hoping that they take all summer to fix the street as while there isn't a street there aren't any drug dealers screaming up to people at my window. It's been a quiet summer.

The Sioux City Walking Tour

I thought that this weekend would be a good weekend for the Sioux City Walking Tour. At the museum, I found a few brochures that had maps and “historical areas” in Sioux City. It was cold at the time, so I filed them away for a sunny say. The weather finally turned decent recently-- after snow on April 25th, I was starting to wonder.

So I took the maps off the shelves, dusted them off, and had a look. My first thought was that wandering around looking at what really is a bunch of identical buildings wouldn't be very interesting. I looked at one in particular on the corner of Nebraska and 3rd and thought “Hey, wait a minute, I have been to this corner about a zillion times and I have never seen that building before.” It was then that I noticed the fine print: “Buildings in italics are no longer in existence.” Great. Of the 16 buildings that I am supposed to trek around the city to look at, only 5 of them exist and one of those is the warehouse district-- famous, yes-- famous for it's smell.

And let me give you a sample of the “historical” narrative that this pamphlet boasts. Here is the listing for one of the remaining buildings: The Warrior Hotel on the corner of 6th and Nebraska.

Warrior Hotel, 1955 Constructed as the Fontenelle Hotel in 1930, it was known as the Warrior Hotel by the time it opened in 1931. Omaha hotel magnate Eugene C. Eppley purchased the Warrior during the mid-1930's. Eppley hotels sold the Warrior to the Sheraton Corporation of America in 1956, after which time it was called the Sheraton-Warrior. In the late 1960s Sioux City contractors Jospeth and Frank Audino purchased the hotel and renamed it the Aventino Motor Inn. The building has been empty since 1972.

Oh sure, Kim, you are probably thinking, pick the most boring listing and of course it looks bad.Sadly, the rest of the listings are like this: a history of who bought and sold the building and a history of the various names and owners of the property. Some of the more exciting entries talk about elevators being rebuilt, but that really is the extent of it.

So, in other words, the best that Sioux City can do is to lead me on a tour of the city looking at where a bunch of rather drab and boring buildings used to be before they got torn down. Wonderful. Sign me up. Underground Tour, Seattle, watch out-- you've got some real competition here in Sioux City.

where the F@&! have u been?

That was the greeting that Sonia left on my Facebook wall this morning, Sonia having apparently forgotten the virtues of email. (True, I can't really talk.) It's a fair question, actually... A question that I have more or less been asking myself.

Sioux City continues to be a rather sizable disappointment. It's a living testament to why Wal-marts are a bad thing. Seriously, Micheal Moore should come here to shoot his next documentary on large-business centralization and the havoc that it can cause on the character of a town. After visiting the rather pathetic Sioux City museum, I picked up a few "walking maps" of the "historic" 4th and 6th streets. The fact that they are historic is really the only thing that is going for them, as every possible business has either closed or is in the process of closing as more and more people are getting into their cars and driving to the malls outside of town.

The social scene isn't much better. Walking home the other day, someone threw a rock or something at me while they were driving past. I keep falling on the ice and the bystanders keep watching with bored interest and no concern. Sarah pointed out that if we were 19 or had kids it might be different-- as things stand right now, people aren't quite sure what to do with us. And don't get me started on the dating scene. Since the men seem to have a tendency to knock their girlfriends up I have been sticking to girls, but all the lesbians here are catty, gossipy, and mean.

Another reason that I have been away is that work is hell. There is some sort of flu plague that has hit Sioux City and everyone and their grandmother seems to be landing on my floor at the hospital. I heard on NPR the other day that everyone who bothered getting a flu shot might have well been injected with water-- the strains that they predicted would strike this year were wrong and as a result we were all inoculated with the wrong dead virus. As a result, I've been forced to hand out about ten complete bed baths a morning as the hospital refused to crawl to a temp agency to give us a few more techs.

So, two years of nursing school (two years minus two months actually) and I am outta here. Sarah's trying to leave earlier then that-- she's a big help. I suggested that she dump her three year program and join me in my two year AAN program and get her BSN later and she just laughed at me.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you to all of you that wished me a happy b-day and demanded that I update my blog. I didn't think that my life was that interesting, and it's nice to know that you guys disagree.