Iowa, oh-oh-oh-oh, Iowa, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-I, Iowa

Three guesses where I'm flying tonight.

October 26th is my grandmother's 85th birthday, so the fam is convening in Dubuque, Iowa, oh-oh-oh-oh, Iowa, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-I, Iowa. Sorry--every time someone says "Iowa," I sing the word in my head like that. Good times.

No one is from Dubuque, so I'm a little intrigued to find out why they picked that as the location. (I've heard something about a boat (?), which makes me sad because I'll be far outside my local cell phone coverage and therefore unable to stick to my normal "Becky, I'm on a boat!" protocol.) My grandmother and aunt-and-uncle live in Decorah, Iowa, a college town in the north-east corner of the state, which I assume is somewhere near Dubuque.

The last time I was in Iowa was when I helped my grandmother move from Illinois to her new digs there. The part of the state in which they live is much different from what you might picture when someone says "Iowa." While they live (kind of) near the site where Field of Dreams was filmed (and, yes, I made us go out of our way so that we could stop there when Grandma moved), there's little-to-no corn nearby, and instead of being flat, the land looks an awful lot like Virginia.

Our whole family hasn't been together for a while (and by "whole," I mean my grandma, mom, aunt, uncle, and two cousins--my great-aunt isn't making the trek from Chicago), so it *should* be nice (and by "nice," I mean trying) to have everyone together.

I gave myself a haircut last night for the occasion. I think (actually, I know) I took too much off the back, and so I sort of have layers now. I'm hoping no one will notice. Of course, they'll be more likely to notice all the weight I've gained, but so's life, I guess. I'm excited to start using the gym in earnest next week. There's a great-sounding exercise class that meets during lunch on Monday; it's a cardio-dance-video class, i.e. Janet Jackson-esque moves and stuff. I hope it'll be fun so that I can start getting my butt back into shape to take "real" dance classes at some of the amazing studios and with some of the incredible companies around here.

Have a great weekend. I hope I'll survive mine! My mom and I are meeting up in Chicago, so that'll be fun at least.