Fish: Gefilte and Raw

This weekend marked my much-anticipated Sioux City Day! Nick and I hit up some of the stinky city's hot spots including: Congregation Beth Shalom, a local foods market, the mall, and Fuji Bay sushi restaurant. We also ventured across the bridge to Nebraska hoping to find a flea market, but instead finding a main street filled with so many Mexican and assorted Asian stores that I felt like I was in East Austin, or Queens.

Sioux City has a very gritty feel, and the stench of meat processing plants definitely adds to the aura of hard work and slight downtrodded-ness. Despite that, I was really impressed by how much interesting stuff there is to do, even if the sky is black and your time is dotted by periodic downpours. The Jewish community was kind and welcoming and made me miss home (a little). The sushi was absolutely delicious and reasonably priced. The local food market was housed in an old firehouse and felt slightly haphazard, but had a great variety of foods (mustard gift pack!) and a very Iowan enthusiasm for keeping things local that hasn't quite migrated across the South Dakota border yet. The mall was... a mall! But I did some necessary summer shopping, so there you go. And I bought Seed Magazine at the Barnes and Noble which provided some fascinating and well designed reading about China and space, among other relevant scientific topics.

Back in Vermillion it was a typical weekend of bingo, chicken coop cleaning and half-hearted room tidying/packing. I CANNOT WAIT until the time that I do not have to move once a year. Although, judging by my previous packing misadventures, the longer I stay, the more impossible it is for me to get my stuff out. This year I do not have the option of toting any belongings in garbage bags, so hopefully I will be better than I have been in the past. Hard to believe that a year ago Smita and I were wrapping up our post-collegiate mini-road trip and I was flying home from Chicago with a garbage bag filled with random items, scissors and trash that had ripped and was being carried in a Dunkin Donuts bag. When will I learn?

Bingo didn't help me win the big bucks, but it did provide me with the opportunity to feel like I was glimpsing into another universe where even the colors feel like a step back in time. The International Order of Odd Fellows hall, where Bingo is played, has the operation down, complete with cordless mikes for the callers and roving board checkers. I was impressed, can you tell?