Are you kidding me? This name RULES. It's hilarious, true to Iowa, and... well it's the IOWA CHOPS, haha. How can you seriously not like that?

I'm already tired of all the groaners. How many times since they announced the name 18 hours ago have I heard "no wonder Iowa has a bad name" and "this doesn't represent Des Moines" or "why not the Iowa Hicks?"

They are called the Iowa Chops, not the Des Moines chops. What does Iowa do well? Farm and educate. We could've been the Iowa Schoolers I guess...

"it's a good name in the tradition of the brewers, packers, pistons, etc," said my friend MH. Great point.

So anyway, I'm obviously stoked.

Ticket prices are cheaper, The logo rules, the name is hilarious, and we're an …

Holy Freaking Weekend. Steph finally came to visit, which was awesome. We haven't seen her in over a year, wtf. Lindsey also stopped out for a minute or two, which was good while it lasted.

So, Friday was "girls night" or whatever. Which basically meant, the girls went to dinner while Nick and I got pizza. Afterwards it was just a few dudes outnumbered by girls for the rest of the night, yesssssss.

Saturday, we got lunch at a brewery, then drank beer at a non-brewery, haha. Later, we went to the Stars/Rivermen game. It was Shooter's birthday (the mascot). So in between one of the periods they had a broomball game with a bunch of mascots. It was pretty hilarious. Other than that though, great great game. I'd like to go to …

This weekend brought a lot of hockey back into my life. Friday, we met Nick and Nicole at Wells Fargo Arena to watch the Stars game. It was really nice to watch. I've only been to 1 hockey game since I moved here... I love it so much.

Saturday we got a lot of stuff done. Kari cleaned, I developed web sites like mad, figured some money stuff out, cleaned more homebrew bottles, and figured out that the turbo is definitely shot in my car.

Afterwards we got invited to this rollerskate party. Some Drake Law students rented out Skate West. Nathan knows one of them, got an invite, then he told me about it, so I invited people and we basically crashed the party. But, it ruled. Nathan told me to bring my hockey stick which made me …

On Friday, my friend Cedric had the day off, so we emptied his cube. We also moved boxes and a printer in and labeled everything with "Charles Brown" moving tags.

On Saturday, Kari and I went to a Des Moines Buccaneers Hockey game. They are in the same league as the Cedar Rapids Rough Riders... (First of all, I'm not one of the super cool fans for teams full of 18-20 year olds, but they are definitely fun). I have gone to quite a few Rough Riders games over the past 4 years, and had a lot of fun. The facility is really nice, the fans are nuts and always funny, the team is pretty decent and there are cool things in between periods. Since I moved to Des Moines, the state's capitol, I figured that the games would be just as cool, or …