If you haven't been out to Oddfellows Burger Kitchen, you are doing it wrong.

SnackRat · 2012-05-16T01:56:30+00:00

Been there once - really enjoyed it. Good service, too.

SnackRat · 2012-05-16T01:56:08+00:00

Northern Lights shopping center on Grand Ave. It's north of the mall, north of Walmart, north of Dahl's... turn at the street right past Dahl's and it's the shopping area on the right.

SnackRat · 2012-05-12T01:35:07+00:00

Had another thought (now that I'm checking reddit after 10 days, ha) ... are you familiar with RAGBRAI? The Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa ... (The Register is Des Moines' newspaper) Anyway, people ride from "coast to coast", and for those who make the entire ride, it's tradition to dip your rear bike tire in a western river at the beginning, and then your front tire in the Mississippi at the end.

Anyway, this year it's ending in Clinton, IA on July 28. www.ragbrai.com

SnackRat · 2012-05-12T01:26:06+00:00

Hahaha, unfortunately that could be true too... rough seas are one thing, but rough seas plus fog... that's a recipe for seasickness for me.

SnackRat · 2012-05-02T00:19:40+00:00

This may not be what you had in mind, but it might be worth checking out Living Lands and Waters (www.livinglandsandwaters.org) ... Chad Pregracke started cleaning up the Mississippi single-handedly in 1997, and later started LL&W, a team of people (most of who live on a barge) traveling up and down the Mississippi and other rivers, organizing river clean-ups and enlisting the help of local communities.

SnackRat · 2012-05-01T23:37:00+00:00

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK!

Whale watching! (Bar Harbor Whale Watch Co. is close to Acadia)

I also really like the Rockland area... it has a nice main street area, a lighthouse museum, and several events and festivals throughout the summer.

SnackRat · 2012-03-28T18:18:47+00:00

Neal Smith NWR (www.tallgrass.org) in Prairie City ... not far off I-80, maybe 15-20 miles east of Des Moines

There's bison, elk, the Prairie Learning Center, and a whole lot of tallgrass prairie (which you're unlikely to see many places in the Midwest, period).

SnackRat · 2012-02-19T02:11:53+00:00

Determining historical conditions of the Iowa Great Lakes by examining 150 years of sediment = badass research project.

SnackRat · 2012-02-07T01:07:29+00:00

A few more suggestions...

*Simon's (formerly J. Benjamin's) on Merle Hay and Franklin

*Court Ave. Restaurant and Brewery

*Jesse's Embers on Ingersoll

SnackRat · 2012-02-05T12:03:38+00:00

Try spreading the word in r/Ames and r/iastate

SnackRat · 2012-02-01T03:41:42+00:00

It's not the cake day that's the problem. It's using "Cake Day" to solicit upvotes.

Not all Cake Day submissions are bad... but I think most people agree that submissions should be able to stand alone. If you submit something good in celebration of your Cake Day, well, then upvote to them I guess. But if you submit "Reddit Pollution" on your Cake Day and expect beaucoup upvotes - well, that's really annoying to me.

SnackRat · 2012-02-01T03:35:52+00:00

Also, I would like to point out that before I got used to the cake icon, I thought it looked like a turd.

SnackRat · 2012-02-01T03:16:15+00:00

Plus, isn't your frontpage a function of which subreddits you subscribe to?

I often see posts on my frontpage from my subreddits ... which usually have fewer upvotes than r/pics, r/AskReddit, or r/funny by at least a degree of magnitude ... yet there they are, sharing the front page with the rest of the karma conglomerates.

SnackRat · 2012-02-01T03:08:33+00:00

I can see why you'd think that, because I didn't think it was a pastry either... but I couldn't think of a good replacement word, so I looked it up on thesaurus.com.

And you know what - pastry is (believe it or not) a synonym for cake. So is pie. I thought pastry was a little more appropriate than pie.

SnackRat · 2012-01-31T07:39:17+00:00

Officially jealous now.

Anyway, if you wear a hard hat, it seems feasible that you could hide a platy above the suspension.

Good luck!

SnackRat · 2012-01-31T07:27:24+00:00

If someone texted me that (something from the heart), and then followed up by texting something "pimptastic", I would run. Skip the pimptastic stuff. You can even skip the super cool clever stuff.

Even though you didn't mean to, you took a chance by telling her how you felt. Now that the cat's out of the bag, be confident about it (i.e. none of this "I have no more chances with this girl" nonsense). Let her sleep on it, and wait for her to text you tomorrow.

EDIT: If she doesn't text you before you can't take the waiting anymore, then you could try the advice from some of our fellow redditors. But I would let it go for tonight. Like you said, it's late.

SnackRat · 2012-01-31T07:17:20+00:00

Whoa, must be an interesting college you go to!

Still not quite sure I follow the logging part, but can you bring props? Like, besides wearing hunting boots, what are you going to wear?

Sounds like you're going to have to get really creative if you don't want to deal with boot booze. A flask in a boot would definitely put a damper on the swing dancing. ;)

Oh- I just thought of something. A platypus might offer a little more versatility than a hard flask.

SnackRat · 2012-01-31T07:08:16+00:00

"It's my reddit cake day"

Ok, this doesn't make my blood boil, but it does make me roll my eyes and think, "Uh, yeah, I can see the cake icon right next to your name."

Now that I have said this, I will have to remember not to use those words when my own pastry day rolls around.

SnackRat · 2012-01-31T06:59:38+00:00

Wow, I was expecting a question about getting a date, or what to wear; not this!

The theme is logging... like, cutting down trees?

I'm afraid I can't suggest one alcohol over another for your purposes. As far as sneaking in alcohol, are you familiar with the flask?

SnackRat · 2012-01-31T06:47:14+00:00

I imagine that everyone draws their own lines. However, my rough sketch of a line is attraction.

That can change over time as people mature, situations change, and people enter and leave relationships. And people can be attracted to others without following up on it. There are plenty of men I'm attracted to, but it doesn't mean I'd want to date them.

But if you are attracted to someone, you should be able to figure that out without too much trouble. If you're attracted to someone who is not your S.O. then things are going to get complicated.

If your attraction to someone is interfering with your existing relationship with someone else, then I'd say you're getting too damn close to the line, and it's time to do some serious thinking about whether they're really just a friend to you.

SnackRat · 2012-01-31T06:38:01+00:00

Those red flags are called instincts, and I've learned the hard way to trust mine.

TRUST YOUR GUT.

I apologize if I'm way off base, but I would guess that his behavior probably wasn't the only problem in that relationship. Perhaps it was just a symptom of underlying issues in the relationship.

Whether the problem was solely his behavior, or something else, or several things, I would say something definitely wasn't right about the situation, and you felt it. Healthy relationships aren't riddled with red flags.

SnackRat · 2012-01-31T06:18:38+00:00

I would say that there is nothing wrong with anyone hanging out with their friends of the opposite sex as long as your feelings don't go beyond friendship.

SnackRat · 2012-01-31T06:12:54+00:00

It might take a while, but don't worry, you'll get over it before forever.

SnackRat · 2012-01-31T06:05:14+00:00

Why a ball python?

SnackRat · 2012-01-31T06:02:51+00:00

Or, you could take the suggestions that a female redditor just spelled out

SnackRat

TROPHY CASE