Warm Hugs Around My Heart (Even if its Frakking Cold Outside)

Despite the dropping temperatures and insane and blustery winds, we made our way further west into Iowa today (Chas will post soon on the Columbus and Chicago parts of the journey, and update the photo galleries accordingly). We stopped over in Iowa City on the way to Des Moines in order to visit a very special friend of mine ... Mamarose from my Livejournal friends list. We've known each other online for many years, and this was the first time meeting up in person. I mean, its not often that I go to Iowa when the weather is barely 50°F and there are winds gusting at 35mph, making the temperature feel a lot colder. :P

But it was worth the stopover in Iowa City for a few hours ... we grinned from ear to ear, and hugged immediately, something we both needed, as soon as we saw each other. Definitely a highlight of the day.



We had good conversation in the House of Aroma coffee shop, and then headed to a soup and salad place to eat a somewhat belated lunch (yum!), still chatting, showing pictures on the iPhone of our trip as narrative to the storytelling going on. Then we piled into the van to go to another part of town to see the Hamburg Inn (as seen in the picture above) where they have the "coffee bean caucus" as portrayed in the TV show The West Wing. Chas voted (but we're not going to say for whom yet).

It was a great afternoon with an absolutely wonderful and amazing person, and I wish we'd had more time together. If we had realized how short the distance between Chicago and Des Moines really was, we would have tried to make plans to stay in Iowa City instead. It would not have affected to drive to Lincoln next all that much either. In any case, I am just glad we got to meet up and spend some time together ... glad we could put a few hours into this little extra trip. Not only did she give me the beautiful scarf she was wearing that she’d made, but she gave me some great memories as well. My heart feels warm inside, and I feel happy and tingly that we met and had such a nice time.

*BTW, it is 36°F with a 10 degree windchill making it feel like 26°F out right now. Brr!!