What kind of person sets up a blog, tells everyone about it, posts only a few times and then goes MIA for a few weeks? I know, I know... but I promise I have good reason for it. Since my last post John and I have moved to Des Moines and are now officially situated in his sister's basement. Now, if you're like me, you probably hear "basement" and think dark, damp, and filled with creepy crawlers. But our little set up down here is quite the contrary. The room is painted and carpeted and all that, and if you didn't know any better you'd think it was just a room downstairs. So, we're nice and cozy and incredibly thankful of John's sister and brother-in-law for being so welcoming and allowing us to invade their home until we get a place of our own.

With John starting his new job this Friday, we thought it would be a good idea to tag along with his parents and go visit his sister in Minneapolis for one last weekend get-away before returning to reality. Plus, since the Travel Channel makes it look so awesome, I've always wanted to go to the Mall of America which is in Minneapolis also. It's pretty much just a regular mall as far as stores are concerned, except every store you've ever seen in any mall is right there all in one place. Also, if you have gargantuan feet and are in need of a new pair of kicks - this is apparently the mall for you. The extraordinary thing about this mall, much to my surprise, isn't the sheer enormousness of it, but rather the fact that they've shoved an amusement park right smack dab in the middle of it all. And I'm not talking about a roller coaster and a few kiddie rides - this place has enough rides, for both kids and adults, to warrant the purchase of an unlimited ride wristband. It's both ridiculous and fantastic all at the same time, really. Naturally, I was too chicken to ride any of the rides, but John and his sisters had a great time.

Since we had the free time, John and I decided to stay an extra day in Minnesota after his parents went back to Iowa. We had all sorts of extravagant plans to go on a river walk and climb some fancy tower to see all that you can see, but due the the rain that lasted the entire day we didn't get to do them. The day wasn't a total loss though. We ended up spending a good amount of the day driving around looking at different areas of the city and then exploring the downtown skywalks. I'm pretty sure they're exclusive to crappy weather areas, but these skywalk things are actually kind of neat. From the outside they look like hamster cage habitrail-ish walkways linking the downtown buildings together, but when you go inside of them there are all sorts of stores and food courts and whatnot. They even link to apartment and condo buildings, so if you lived and worked downtown you would never ever have to set foot outside if you didn't want to. I'm slightly facinated by them, to be honest. Here's a picture of me running in one. Despite the rain, we still explored enough of the city to run into several different statues of various Charlie Brown characters. I guess since that Charles Schultz guy is from the area, they figure they should put a character in every possible location. They even put one in the skywalk!

So now we're back in Des Moines and all settled in for John's first day of work on Friday. I'm still applying for jobs and have an interview next week, so hopefully I'll be employed in the near future. But, for now, I'm still enjoying my abundance of free time and my cozy sweat pants!

I leave you now, with the feeling of insane jealousy that we are only paying $2.59 for a gallon of gas!