Oktoberfest

I woke up yesterday to find a strange symbol on my cell phone, and it would neither turn on, nor get rid of this symbol...which is never a good sign. It had been acting funny for a while, and I knew this day would come. Thank goodness it was our day off and many of us decided to take a trip to the local mall for shopping and movie partaking.

I have now procured a new camera phone (to the tune of $270), but it is so much better than my old phone :). Make lemonade out of those lemons! I also bought a spiffy new watch (I realized when my phone died, that I should probably have another way to tell time other than my cell phone), and the crew and I caught a matinee of Tim Burton's CORPSE BRIDE. It was enjoyable, but a lot of the bits seemed to be stolen from Burton's earlier movie THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (one of my FAVORITES) and the music wasn't very good or consistant throughout...was it a musical? or did it just have a few songs? I was expecting more from Elfman, since his music and singing were amazing in NIGHTMARE. The best part of the movie, for me, was the previews...Harry Potter looks SOOOOO good, as does the new Wallace and Grommit movie! I've been watching Wallace and Grommit for years, and finally they have a feature film! Very exciting.

The best part of yesterday was Oktoberfest, an annual celebration in Des Moines. When we arrived at the main entrance, we could hear the distant sounds of a polka band being piped through the speakers. I quickly bought a beer ticket and skipped towards the "oom pa pa" coming from a near-by tent. I grabbed Patrick, and we spun around the dance floor with the other polka lovers (one man even had an Iowa Polka Club black satin jacket--Patrick was jealous). After our dance, I ventured through the crowd with Jordan to scope out the Iowans. We were taking a little survey for the blog: What do you like about Iowa? What is so great about it? We got a couple interesting answers...the prettiest women in the country, the nicest people, lots of corn...we met a group of wonderfully friendly Iowans (see pic above) who we stuck with the rest of the night. Thanks, guys...for a really fun night. Hope you get to check this!

When it was finally time to break the seal I headed indoors for the restroom to find (suprise, suprise) a very long line. My escort, Randy, was in and out, and I was still waiting in line. Another gentleman coming out of the men's room suggested, "why don't you use a Kybo? they're all empty." "Ky-what?" "She's not from Iowa is she..." Kybo is another name for a port-a-potty. I did use one, which was much preferable to waiting in line for 30 minutes. No one could tell me, however, where the name came from. I found this definition on Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia:

A kybo is a small building around a pit that is used as a toilet. Synonyms include outhouse, pit toilet, and privy. The word is popular within the Scout Movement in Canada and parts of the United States. The word is believed to have originated as an acronym for "Keep Your Bowels Open".
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kybo"

You learn something new everyday.