Here’s my estimate of the water line at my new/old downtown Cedar Rapids apartment:

I lived on the second floor of the Suchy Building, above the HD Youth Center just south of downtown Cedar Rapids for about a month before the flood.

Yesterday I went to pick up more things from my old/new apartment and noticed both the sign and blue awning had been removed.

Here are some photos from the HD Youth Center’s Flood Photo Page, before the sign and awning were removed:

I’m in the market for a new truck. Mostly because trucks are awesome. I’m currently trying to decide between these three trucks; each more awesome than the last:

• http://thefuntimesguide.com/2005/07/ford_f650_truck.php
• http://www.dailytech.com/SUV+Not+Big+Enough+for+You+Try+an+XUV/article10626.htm
• http://thefuntimesguide.com/2005/10/cxt_super_truck.php

Perhaps I’ll just get all three…

I’ve finally found an image that shows me how high the water got in the Suchy Building in New Bohemia, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My apartment is on the 2nd floor, above the HD Youth Center.

I spent a bit of time helping with the cleanup of the HD Youth Center today. It reminded me of a past summer I spent working for the Des Moines Wastewater Treatment Plant.

My cats were rescued on Thursday (June 19, 2008). I’ve been displaced for 10 days now, and I’ll be moving back to the apartment complex I left before moving downtown (but not the same unit) on a month-to-month lease until I can (hopefully) go back to my downtown digs.

Here are photos of my 3 cats in my hotel room just after I picked them up from the animal rescue center at Kirkwood Community College:

Turk

Oscar

Winga

Thanks to Angie T of Violet Island fame for the photos!

Since I’ve just moved to the outskirts of downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I was evacuated from my apartment early Wednesday morning (June 11, 2008) because of record-level flooding. I’m currently staying in a hotel on higher ground.

I hope to rescue my 3 cats tomorrow and bring them to the hotel with me.

If I cannot go back to live in my apartment by this Thursday (June 19, 2008), my cats may go to Iowa City, and I will hopefully be staying at a coworker’s house, mm-hmmm.

Since I recently made this blog public, I think I will begin writing as if one hundred people are reading. That should improve things around here.

Today I went for a good October walk through the Sunday streets of Iowa City. It was quite nice and Octobery. Or autumnal, if you will.

I went for the walk to warm up in the sun after freezing my hands and feet off in my apartment. I won’t turn the heat on yet. I’ve been trying to use a big three-wick pillar candle for heat/light in order to cut down electricity bills, and it’s been working alright. Like a bonfire. But I had to go outside to warm up.

As I walked around, many sparrows were flying in front of me and toward my face and eyeballs. This reminded me of an interesting sparrow experience I once had in Brooklyn:

Whereas—

You know how sometimes when you’re driving along the interstate on a windy day there is some bird directly above the road flying against the wind and getting nowhere?

Whereas—

And it’s just floating there forever?

Whereas—

Well, one day I was walking on a windy Brooklyn sidewalk, and this sparrow was flying against the wind in a similar fashion.

Whereas—

Just floating in front of my foot!

Therefore, let it be known—

I could have kicked it back into the sky. I did not, however; as I am an environmentalist.

So I haven’t been looking for work much lately. I think I’m getting scarily comfortable with my current night stock job at the Hy-Vee. As I stay on longer, they give me more new things to do.

Yesterday I was actually bossing a coworker around, which is hard for me in the first place, and this guy is in his forties, much older than I. Then he asked me if it was okay to do something. I was like sure, dude—shit!

How is some 40 year old guy getting permission from me? This was happening at my webmaster position last year, also. I was supposed to tell these web developers with 7 years experience how and when to code. When I had 1 year experience and did not know what the hell I was talking about.

Yesterday I went to the Iowa City Public Library, which is a damn good library. I think it’s even better than the Brooklyn Library I was going to a few months ago. I picked up the following “def” cds:

Souls of Mischief

93 ’til Infinity

The Brand New Heavies

Heavy Rhyme Experience: vol. 1

Ice T

Original Gangster

The Cranberries

No Need to Argue

Some good classics which I haven’t heard enough of lately. I’ve been called gay for liking that Cranberries album, but what can I do? Souls of Mischief, Digable Planets, and A Tribe Called Quest are some of the jazz oriented rap groups I’ve been getting into to counteract all that crazy Brooklyn shoot your ass off rap. DJs can create some LARGE beats from some jazz loops, and I would be listening to those beats going, “Ummmgph.”

Here’s an itemized account of my 9-11-01 day, as you already know about all the other disgusting events that happened:

8:45am

Head to work on the F train. F train is slightly delayed because of “a fire in the World Trade Center.”

9:40am

Get to work at 53rd St. Work for 10 minutes as coworkers and I get news about what’s going on.

9:50am

Everybody leaves work. I walk through Central Park with a coworker to her apartment uptown until I figure out how to get home because all transportation is screwed up.

2:00pm

Start walking to the 59th St bridge (one of the only open bridges) from West 86th St.

3:00pm

Get on an N train at Queensboro Plaza once the trains start running and go back through Manhattan to 34th St. where the F train eventually and eventually takes me home.

4:30pm

Get home, try to make some phone calls, go to Key Food, watch the news, etc.

Not too much compared to the days of many other people, that’s for sure. All I saw was smoke when I looked toward where the World Trade Center used to be. It sucks that those buildings are now completely gone. It really sucks that so many people died. My mom wants me to move out of New York. And I’m worried about all this “retaliation” talk.

I’ve been recently realizing that nobody sees this blog, so it is doing the job I hoped it would do. And that is to serve as a journal that has the possibility of being seen. For you see, the last time I wrote in any kind of a journal, it was hell to read through because I was writing as if it would never be seen by anyone. And for me, that creates shitty writing.

And my spider seems to have died after sucking all the blood out of some huge insect. Maybe the blood was poisoned or the spider ate too damn much.

My internship just turned into a full time Webmaster position. So now I am an entry-level webmaster. Shit. Who ever heard of an entry level webmaster? This job is doomed.