I had a rural Iowa experience over the weekend. I was trying to remember, and I don’t think I’d ever stayed on a farm before. At Cousins’ Week we used to go out and visit my grandfather’s farm, but we always came back to town to spend the night. But not this time!

DC and I took Friday afternoon off work and headed out to southwest Iowa, his home zone. A friend of his was getting married, so we got there in time for the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, and some related shenanigans. The wedding was held at Henry A. Wallace Country Life Center, which was a nice, recently re-done barn and green space. They had a tent for the reception, which gave us a good idea about how many people can fit under one. I don’t know how many guests were there, but most of them didn’t hang out under the tent; they milled around the grounds and hung out by the bar.

It was fun. I danced up a storm. The band they hired was good; I had a nice chat with one of the band members (he’s from Yucatán, Mexico), and we’re thinking about having them for ours. That’s not for sure yet, though.

We left on Sunday after church (!), but not before I had a really disgusting sandwich. It was not accurately portrayed on the menu. Nobody said anything about a giant pool of molten cheese food. Yuck.

So, now we’re back. I did a lot of work over the weekend on my Features and Usability report, but I think it paid off, because the group I was presenting it to (including my superboss) really liked it. One of the committee members said it represented an unprecidented high quality of user testing in the University environment, and another said it was so good she wanted to hire me for her lab.

This was good to hear, since work was really stressing me out lately and I wanted to quit. It’s nice when people recognize that you have been freaking killing yourself over something. I don’t think I’m going to get the raise I asked for, just because of budgetary limitations, but I’ll probably be considered the next time money becomes available. Oh, and I’m getting upgraded to a better office.

So, yeah. It’ll be ok.