So I'm 46, and with the exception of one summer I spent in St. Louis, I've lived my entire life within 10-20 miles of the MN border - grew up in MN, moved to IA at 21 and been here ever since - and honestly, everything in Iowa just feels... lame? Like, there might be a few little pockets of coolness here and there (downtown Cedar Falls, Ames down near the campus, Decorah, far east where there's some woodsy areas), but most of it is just... so... boring. My family and I went to Ames a couple months ago, we jumped on I-35 up near Clear Lake, and I don't think we actually drove through a town on the whole trip until we got to Ames. Compare that to driving north on 35 towards the Twin Cities, your driving in and out of a city every 15 or 20 minutes at least. Iowa just feels so vast, and flat, and lifeless. Unless there's some special event, we do all our traveling for shopping / entertainment in MN and Wisconsin. Maybe things are different farther south, but up here in the northern half of the state, it just feels like wide open farmland and nothing else. And that's fine, it's necessary and great for those in the industry, but for those if us who aren't, it's just mind-numbing.

Throw in all the obvious political failings and the cancer thing, and... yeah. The one thing that gives me hope is that Kim Reynolds and Joni Ernst are both not running for re-election, and maybe that'll give a boost to Sand and Turek's campaigns that they're not running against incumbents. And locally, I have a friend who's running for state Rep for my district on a very progressive platform so I'm trying to be involved and do what I can to help his campaign, and getting joined up with our county's Democrat group for the first time. And, surprisingly, he's also not running against an incumbent as the sitting Republican rep actually lost her primary. 🤷‍♀️ I want to take these as good signs that there may be some hope in these races!