Today I drove the rest of the way to Billy's place. Iowa City is a small college town, quite suburban on the rural side. It's quite warmer than the last three states, about 47F when we arrived at 14:00 local. Billy and Denise and Sal live in a nice house, well, it's one house converted into two dwellings and they live in one of them.

Their place is two stories, with the first floor having two bed- rooms, a library, and a bathroom. The second floor has the living room, kitchen, den, and a bathroom. Quite a nice place, designed to get a lot of sunshine and heat in the winter. Bill says the rent is $700 a month, which is less than what I pay for my one bedroom.

Thanksgiving dinner was quite delicious. Sweet helped to pour out the turkey drippings and set a dishrag on fire. Pick then tried to lift the turkey with a big two-pronged fork and broke it. But after that it was fine. There was turkey, mashed potatoes, the traditional stuffing, peas, squash, turnips, and cranberry sauce. We were all quite full afterwards and talked for a while, catching up on current events.

Afterwards we walked to the nearby cemetary where they showed us this statue of an angel. Apparently some sort of notable landmark since there were a dozen other people there looking at it. The story is that this woman's husband died, and he wanted an angel statue at his grave. She commissioned it to be made, but didn't like the resulting statue and so she didn't want to pay for it. The courts ruled against her, and so she paid for it and as long as she had paid for it she had it put up at the grave. But since she didn't like the statue she refused to be buried there. So at the bottom of the statue there's an inscription for the husband and one for the wife, but no death date on the wife since she isn't buried there.

Once we came back we had some pie, pumpkin and apple. Then we played a game of Empire Builder. Billy and Denise started in the east and southeast, Pick started in the central, I started in the southwest, and Sweet started in the north central. Sweet and I spent most of the game trying to get our routes to work, Denise had a run of bad luck, which left Billy and Pick to duke it out. After a few hours Pick won; he built a long line from Seattle to Atlanta, with extensions to nearby cities. I came in last, but had good track in the west, expensive to lay because of the mountains. I didn't touch the east since everyone else had track there and so I was shut out of most cities.

After that we retired for the night. I got to sleep on the sofa- bed while the Daves had sleeping bags. It's a warm house so I was comfortable even without a blanket. I haven't mentioned Nikki, their dog. She's quite happy. You can throw her tennis ball and she'll chase it down, not as quickly as she used to because she can't get good traction on the tiled floor. But Nikki is quite friendly and eats whatever she can get to. She is rather quiet, though energetic. She doesn't bark and only growls occassionally. Quite well behaved too, she responds to commands quickly, unlike Murray who doesn't know too many tricks.