lazy Iowa Sunday

I’ll help my parents take Cairo the dog for his usual Sunday walk in a sprawling nature park a good drive from where they live.

And happy birthday to my mother today! We’re taking her out for brunch at her favorite place.

The part of Iowa City where I’m staying consists largely of university buildings hammered by the 2008 floods. (I’m nearly up against the river.)

Hancher Auditorium is apparently condemned, as is the Art Department (currently housed in the former Menard’s department store until they build a new facility). We’ve probably seen the end of university buildings along the river, except that the library is still there (they successfully sandbagged it).

2008 was supposedly a “thousand year flood” but I have a gnawing suspicion that global warming had something to do with it, and that it won’t be a millennium before the next catastrophic flood hits the area.