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Iowa Mississippi running

And so it begins

[Monday 10/18: 3 miles; Thursday 10/21: 3 miles; Saturday 10/23: 5 miles (race)]

I took Friday off and we drove to Council Bluffs for the Yippee-Ki-Yay 50k , Half Marathon and 5 mile race. Mrs ran the 50k. I ran the 5 mile.

I did Ok, but I’ve been just getting fatter so I’m slow. My goal was to be under an hour and I did that. If I were in any kind of shape I should have been closer to 50 minutes. But I’ll take it.

Mrs finished the 50k with an epic push at the end. She came close to her goal of 8 hours with an 8:18.

The race was on Saturday. We stayed over to Sunday and got a somewhat late start out of town. I had not been in downtown Omaha much in my life, usually just zoomed through on I-80. It was an interesting experience.

Anyway, we got started and made it to Des Moines about 1:30 pm where we had a nice visit with my sister and her family, saw her newest grandchild. And my folks were there and I really wanted to see them again. Then we came on home and arrived about 7 pm.


Today my wife put some of the furniture on Facebook Marketplace and sold the two old antique sofas we’ve owned since, like the day after we moved into this house. So the front room is a bit empty.

I’m cleared by my employer to move to Mississippi. We’re sending the tenant a “buy it or move out” notice. We hope he will tell us soon which he plans to do. [We had earlier warned him that he needed to be moving on this. Our capital gains deadline is coming up in July and we don’t have the inclination to continue with long term leasing. But now that we are moving back, we either need the money or need the space so time to decide.]

As I understand it, my current position should work for some time after the move. But it may be that I’ll I need to shift to a different role instead of the group I am currently in. That’s actually what started the conversation: they had sent out an email about a need in a related group. And that group had already taken the leap of using some remote employees. So I asked if these new positions could be remote. That evolved into a conversation about wanting to move, and then finding out that the current group may accommodate remote for awhile but probably not forever. Somehow my current group boss “overrode” shopping me to the other group. I’m not sure if that is maybe a compliment.


I feel bad leaving my elderly parents and moving again farther away. But my in-laws are in about the same boat, so maybe I can be of some help there. I was down there a few weeks ago and talking to my father in law about the shape of their deck. It needs an overhaul. So maybe we can work on that.

My wife says the winters are just wearing her down, and I believe her. She has arthritis in her feet, which is not from running, and she can manage everything OK except when the cold and slippery is added into the picture. So we do the best we can to meet everyone’s needs.

We aim to be back in Mississippi soon after the turn of the year.

I need to get that porch project done. There are a couple of other projects I need to finish also.


I like Iowa. It feels like home to me, as much as any place. The people in Mississippi are nice. I don’t like the weather there, but I know I can survive it. I like wearing clothes: long sleeve shirts and long pants. There’s almost no point in owning a long sleeve shirt in Mississippi. Those “Cooter” shirts with the sleeves ripped off… yeah, those actually make a lot of sense.

I have to remember that this world is not my home. I’m going to see a lot of beautiful sights no matter where I go.