our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain

I've probably used the blog post title before, but for those of you who aren't aware, it's the Iowa state motto. Way better than 'Eureka', right?

Today, I went to Des Moines with the intention of having lunch with my Uncle Mark, running errands, and writing a significant amount. I succeeded in two of those three goals. I made it downtown in time for lunch -- and Uncle Mark took me to a restaurant called Latin King on the east side of Des Moines. You may be surprised to know that 'Latin' in this case means Italian, not Latin American. And it was *awesome*. I had a sausage sandwich -- made with hot Italian sausage and mozzarella. Mmm. It was fun to see Uncle Mark, and he gave me a book on Victorian England that he'd picked up from a book fair. He also gave me a tour of his office -- he's an administrative law judge, and I have to say that the state of his office building (which, while architecturally interesting, is rather run down and slated for demolition) reminded me, as always, of how good I had it in California. I'm sad because I can't eat at my favorite sandwich-making cafe for free because I'm 1800 miles away, but now I'm even sadder that the only food offerings in my uncle's building are hamburgers out of a vending machine. Ugh.

After parting ways with Uncle Mark, I dropped some stuff off for my parents, and then took back a couple of the things that I bought last week and realized I didn't want/need. I took the 'proceeds' and bought some 'necessities' at Sephora and Target, then went to Borders to write. But I didn't stay there all that long; I wrote less than a thousand words before being grossed out by this guy sitting across from me. He looked like what Gollum would look like if Gollum gained eighty pounds -- really pasty, stringy hair, oversized creepy pale blue eyes, and such disregard for propriety that he was openly digging in his nasal cavity while talking to his friend. Thank goodness he wasn't wearing a loincloth, or else I might have thrown up.

So I came home, where I recovered nicely by watching the new episode of 'Moonlight'. They're banking all the fortunes of the show on the attractiveness of the main character; the rest of it is completely ridiculous, but it's entertaining. I also found out that my mom was one of the people who voted for it for 'Best New Drama' at the People's Choice Awards, partially because it was one of the only CBS shows in the running and she didn't know any of the others -- but 'Moonlight' actually won, so clearly there are a lot of people out there (myself included) who think it's awesome.

Now, I'm going to bed. Take a look below -- I've finally posted pictures! Now that it's getting a bit greener, I may feel more motivated to take photos, rather than sitting inside (although the fact that it was 45 degrees in Des Moines today did not make me happy).