Lena Dunham’s character on the HBO series “Girls” has been accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. This may be inspired by the fact that one of the show’s story editors has an MFA from the workshop (NSFW-ish, both for the explicitness endemic to most discussion about the series and a picture of said editor in hipster glasses).
I would bet that even Iowa City is going to be a culture shock for the character. I wonder if there will be scenes set there.
ISU’s fourth Sweet Sixteen ever!
Wow!
UPDATE: Of the teams in the 2014 Sweet Sixteen, the only one with fewer appearances than ISU there is Baylor with three.
It’s tournament time, and I have been/am sick, so I don’t have much. So, for the weekend, here’s a nice story from the Ames Tribune on Hallie Christofferson. When the women’s season ends, it will really close the last chapter on Exira High School.
UPDATE: No other word for that 55-44 loss but “brutal.” (Maybe “discombobulated.” Or “AAAAHHHHH.”) Christofferson got a long standing ovation. ESPN columnist Mechelle Voepel was at the game, possibly in anticipation of 2-seed Stanford playing in front of a hostile crowd Monday. Sigh. (Making things worse, there’s 1-3 inches of snow in the forecast. We bought your movie, Elsa; make it stop!)
The good news is, the Cyclones did not go out in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and tied the mark for most points in the tournament so far with a 93-75 win over NC Central.
End good news.
Niang’s injury is a 5th metatarsal fracture on his right foot.
— Cyclone Basketball (@CycloneMBB) March 22, 2014
The unwavering patience of the damned, indeed.
UPDATE 3/23: Does this count as an SI jinx?
The last day (or half-day) of vacation was uneventful. I had some time, so I finished a gap on US 6 and angled northwestward to travel from the east end of IL 92 westward to the Quad Cities. IA 927 was closed west of Walcott, so I cut my plans to travel old 6 short.
Route: IL 251, US 6, IL 89, US 34, IL 92, old IL 92, I-88, I-80, I-280, old IA 927, Y40, I-80
West end of I-88 in the Quad Cities, with IL 110 sign on the side.
This I-80 sign gantry was replaced after US 61 was rerouted, but excludes 61 on the right so as to indicate that only 80 and US 6 are “straight ahead”.
Every year, college sports columnist Pat Forde makes a “dream/nightmare” scenario for each NCAA tournament team. Usually these are in good fun, but for whatever reason, he has it in for the city of Ames.
This year, in the best case for Iowa State, the Cyclones win a national championship(!)* and Ames “is so grateful it devotes millions to making itself less dismal.” In the worst case, a loss in the first round**, “Ames will remain dismal for the foreseeable future.” He did miss a couple things that would truly make it a worst-case scenario, though: Kansas winning a national championship over Greg and Doug McDermott’s Creighton team.
Forde also slighted Ames two years ago in his best/worst list.
*We have a 1-2% statistically significant chance!
**I will NOT bow to the Orwellian “second/third round” gibberish. Look, NCAA, you officially call it the “Round of 64/32” with the play-in games always called “First Four” and no harm no foul. But implying that 60 teams get byes is ridiculous.
July 6, 2013: Detail of stone carving over entrance to original Stanwood school building.
KCRG has the story, which is also embedded below.
This move by North Cedar does something that hasn’t happened in a long time, if at all: The district will close the high school building and make one of its other buildings (Clarence) the new high school. North Cedar will still have three attendance centers.
The Stanwood building is a typical Iowa pre-WWII brick symmetrical multi-story structure with additions in later decades.
Peru, Illinois, Oct. 6 — If I had to get a day when I spent half the time in pouring rain, this was it. The Ohio Turnpike was under construction, and the rain kept falling with one brief respite at the state line until Elkhart.
Route: I-280, OH 795, I-80, OH 49, US 20, I-94, I-65 to north end and turn around, US 30, I-80, IL 7, US 30, IL 59, US 52, IL 251, I-80, I-39, US 6, I-80
Instead of the Indiana Toll Road, I took US 20 across most of the state. After South Bend, the sky cleared up dramatically.
Beautiful button copy at the OH 49 interchange, very near the state line. The final toll plaza in Ohio is just east of the exit.
One remainder of the Lincoln Highway through Indiana is that although US 20 now has a south bypass of South Bend and Elkhart, it remains north of the four-lane IN 2 between US 31 and I-94. The two routes even “bump” each other. Swapping the routes between the “bump” and South Bend seems like a no-brainer at this point.
I could’ve, and maybe should’ve, taken 20 a few more miles, but this gave me the “easy” part of the route in the state. After getting on I-94, I took I-65 to its north end at US 12/20, then turned around to go to US 30.
Shortly after the exit for I-90, I-65 comes to end at a stoplight.
This part of US 30, between I-65 and I-57, was my last untraveled segment in five states. In Dyer, just east of the state line, is the Ideal Section, a four-lane marvel in the early 1920s that today is just a run-of-the-mill suburban four-lane arterial route. Commemorative markers are still on one side of the road. I stopped for pictures, including my 25,000th photo since June 2001 (see previous blog entry).
The Ideal Section monument is also in memory of Henry Ostermann, who died in a car crash along the Lincoln Highway in Tama County in 1920. I missed this marker nearby, though. The Federal Highway Administration has a lengthy writeup about the Lincoln Highway.
Ideal Section monuments (the arch is a separate piece)
West of I-57, US 30 is now four lanes; the last time I was here it was under construction. I checked out some new LH markers and billboards and got to the 30/80 interchange at 4.
Here’s where I made a major miscalculation. If I had resolved to hop on I-80 and do nothing else, I could’ve (but likely wouldn’t have) ended my vacation this night. Instead, I thought I would try to follow more of the Lincoln Highway in suburban Chicago, only to find out that traffic on a Sunday afternoon was just as bad as any other time. In an hour and a half, I barely covered any ground. I surrendered in Plainfield and fell back on following US 52 west of I-55.
Shortly before darkness, I stopped in Peru, and hit 3500 trip miles.
Dyer, Indiana, Oct. 6, 2013
After adding my fall 2013 vacation pictures to iPhoto, and culling the bad, duplicate, and out of focus ones, this photo earned the designation as the 25,000th in my collection. It’s a good encapsulation of most of my collection.
Cyclones are Big 12 Tournament champions!
Cheers coach, that one was for you. pic.twitter.com/Kyfo5RNmPw
— Fred Hoiberg (@ISUMayor32) March 16, 2014