Thursday, July 12, 2007

Who wants nachos?

We’re back from Chicago, after a two-day drive through America’s heartland. We decided to drive home by way of Kansas City, which turned out to be a rather boring town. I’d read in my Rand McNally Deluxe Road Atlas – with guide to 81 destinations and a road guide to classic American foods (what? My atlas has a guide to classic American foods?? I didn’t even know that… I just saw it on the front cover…) – that Kansas City (one of the 81 “destinations” profiled) has more fountains than any city in the world except Rome. Well, that sounded rather interesting. So I was looking forward to seeing a couple of these prolific fountains. However, after wending our way to the hotel past what can only be described as the “neglected and abandoned” part of town, nary a fountain was in sight. Yeah, that’s right – nary.

The hotel itself was situated in a very nicely-maintained part of Kansas City, directly across from the Hallmark Card headquarters and next to an upscale shopping center. But, like I said, to get there and to get back to the interstate, it was necessary to drive through several streets full of empty buildings and boarded-up storefronts. It looked as if perhaps this was once a hip, trendy, fashionable part of town that business owners had left in favor of hipper, trendier, more fashionable cities. It was all just waiting for someone to come along and begin a Kansas City revitalization project. But in the meantime, the streets look rather sad and forgotten. Now, granted, we didn’t drive into DOWNTOWN downtown – we just sort of skirted the area. So I’ll have to give it the benefit of the doubt and say perhaps downtown Kansas City is a great place. And maybe that’s where all the fountains are…

Much of our drive home was through Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma… and I just have to say – Iowa really loves corn. I mean, wow, they REALLY love corn in Iowa. I’m not sure we drove past a section of highway that wasn’t bordered by a cornfield. And Kansas had lots of fields, as well… although I wasn’t sure they were fields of corn. And after a stop on the turnpike at a McDonald’s decorated with sunflower paintings, I remembered that Kansas grows a TON of sunflowers. Another month or two, and those fields of green stalks will be covered with giant yellow flowers. And Oklahoma’s claim to fame is its red dirt – I don’t know why, but much of the ground in Oklahoma is covered with red-tinged dirt. The banks of every river are full of red mud. In fact, the border between Oklahoma and Texas is the Red River – so-named, I’m assuming, because it really IS a red river. Gosh – green corn stalks, yellow sunflowers, red rivers – it’s like an environmental bowl of Lucky Charms out there…

Anyway, so now that we’re back in Austin we’re playing the “waiting to hear about the Chicago job” game, at which Dell is a very good opponent. We thought the whole thing was just about wrapped up, until we heard that the guy who has the job now – a guy who’ll be moving to Michigan soon – is really pushing to keep his job and handle everything remotely. So now we’re left wondering – will they tell him he can keep his job and decide they don’t even need anyone else in Chicago? Will they allow him to keep the job temporarily to give him more time to find a new job, but hire someone else for Chicago in a few more months? Will they allow him to keep his job AND hire someone new for Chicago (a possibility, I’ve heard, because the poor Chicago reps are very overworked and need some help)? Who knows… no one seems to be talking right now… which means that Rick and I are left wondering IF we’ll even need a condo in Chicago, and/or WHEN we do, if the few places we saw that we really liked will still be available. And if no one new is hired for a few more months, that would mean we’d be moving to Chicago just as winter was starting to rear its ugly, snowy head.

Oh well… life is so much more fun when it’s full of surprises. And corn. Lots and lots of corn…

No comments: