Webarnold.net

We’ve had a busy few weeks at the Arnold household. Kirsten’s birthday was last Thursday and we celebrated by going out to dinner at the Montage, our favorite restaurant in downtown Cedar Falls. Kirsten’s sister treated her to an hour and a half hot stones massage at the Aveda spa earlier that afternoon. When I got home from work, I had her open her birthday present from me, Rock Band for the Nintendo Wii. It was amazing. We played a little before dinner and Friday night we played until one in the morning. It’s is rather addictive.

Then this past Sunday, after an excellent church service, we went to see The Dark Knight in Waterloo on the ULTRASCREEN. This screen is 60 feet diagonally across - what a monster. The movie was amazing. Best movie of the year by far, in my opinion. Heath Ledger turned in a solid, terrifying, performance as the joker. All the talk of him being nominated for an Oscar posthumously is deserved. I hope he is nominated and wins!

Then last night we went over to Kirsten’s future boss’s house for dinner with him and his family. They have a lovely family and a lovely house. We had a wonderful time and great discussion. It constantly feels like a blessing to Kirsten and I that she found a law firm to work for with such nice people at it. It is an encouragement to her as she studies for the bar exam and a motivation to keep going.

We leave for Des Moines this Friday after work to get settled at our hotel and find our way around. We’ll bring some groceries as we have a nice suite booked, and we’ll settle in for some more study/review time and an early night’s sleep. I’ll post updates on the test as she’s going through it. I plan on finding a nice coffee house downtown with free Wi-Fi. More to come soon!

Hello, all!  Kirsten here.  Happy to be here as a new writer.  Unfortunately, my posts will likely be few and far between for the immediate future. I am currently in the proverbial thick of studying for the Iowa bar exam. I take the test on July 28-30. Ben and I will head to Des Moines on July 25 to stay at the Savery hotel through the end of the exam. How is studying going, you ask? Terrifying. Overwhelming. Many other negatively connotated -ing words would be appropriate here. I have a stack of materials to some how cram in my head, and I’m not sure how it’s all going to fit in there!  I wear earplugs to make sure none comes out while I sleep. And only 2 weeks left to get it all in there!?!

 I hate to be all negative, however. I am obviously no longer in school, so that is fantastic. (Ahem, that’s Kirsten Arnold, B.A., J.D.  Sweet.) Ben truly knows how to pamper me (breakfast in bed today, dinner at Montage on Monday, . . . you get the picture). The poor guy should get an honorary J.D. for putting up with me and helping me study during law school, and now he’s having to deal with the bar review! I will soon nominate him for some sort of award (or just help him pick out an excessive entertainment system).  My mom has sacrificed and rearranged her entire dining room to set up a serene and spacious studying spot for me.  My brother and sister-in-law have informed me that I have a complete pass for being mean for the remainder of the month (though I’m trying not to go there), in addition to giving me all of their study materials from last year. (They both successfully took the bar exam last July and truly empathize with my situation). My sister regularly brings me venti decaf americanos from Starbucks in addition to just being awesome.  And Tiki (the dog) distracts me enough from studying to keep me close to sanity. :)   I’d certainly appreciate everyone’s prayers as I get up to the big day. I certainly can’t do this without God’s help!

Okay, it’s time to get back to studying.  Criminal procedure is mind numbing depressing sooooo interesting, I can’t bear to be away any longer.

That’s right folks, we’ve added a new writer here in the halls of Webarnold.net headquarters.  My wife Kirsten will be adding entries to the site from time-to-time as inspiration strikes her.  We are going to be converting this website mostly to be about the goings on in our lives, with the occasional commentary on technology, current events, et al.

So, look for her name on the posts in the coming days and months.

(Secretly I hope this will help me reach my resolution of averaging fifteen posts a month on this site throughout 2008 )

My wife and I happen to live in Eastern Iowa and both of the towns we currently have residences in were affected by the flood, albeit, one not quite as much.

I’m currently living in Cedar Falls, IA, and we had it easy compared to Cedar Rapids and Iowa City/Coralville. Tuesday, June 10th, we received word in our office that UNI would be closing early due to the impending flood. Doom and gloom abounded as people hypothesized that the levies would not hold. Railroad cars were parked atop the rail bridge that crosses the Cedar River near down town. That night, I went and helped with the sand bagging effort for about four or five hours. There were hundreds of people there with me working at two locations - trying to protect the downtown and trying to protect the water treatment plant. Our efforts were successful. The Cedar River never breached the levy to spill into down town Cedar Falls. The north part of town, however, was not so lucky. They were directly in the flood plain and took the brunt of the damage.

As flood waters rose further north and the rain continued to fall, the water level in the Coralville Reservoir rose to unprecedented levels and started to spill forth over the top of the emergency spillway. Of course the release of this extra water played havoc with the river levels of the Iowa River in downstream Coralville and Iowa City. Historic flooding levels occurred there too, affecting a large portion of the campus of The University of Iowa. My wife and my apartment in Coralville is on high ground, thankfully, so the remaining items we had there were not affected. Access to and from the downtown, the campus, and even Iowa City/Coraville/Cedar Rapids itself was affected, however, as interstates I-80 and I-380 both had segments closed due to flooding. Thursday night, June 12th, we decided to have Kirsten try and get out of the area before things got worse. She took northbound I-380 and made it through Cedar Rapids before they closed portions of the road the next day.

Water levels in Cedar Falls have been receding and downtown has reopened. My friends and old co-workers down at Iowa City have been affected for this entire week as the UI campus is on an “essential personnel report to work only” plan. I feel for them especially those whose homes were affected.

I’ve always heard about “the flood of ‘93″ from those who live in Iowa as being really bad. Now I’ve lived through flooding that has been much worse, in a lot of cases, than that in ‘93. God help us in getting all the affected Eastern Iowans up and on their feet again.

The weather would make me believe that we live in Seattle, not Iowa. We had over three inches of rain in twenty four hours yesterday here in Cedar Falls. From what I’ve read, the Iowa City/Coralville area is worse off.

I spent the majority of the weekend working around my mother-in-law’s house. Trimmed her giant hedge down to size, cut off low hanging (i.e. sagging) branches from her spruce tree, cleaned gutters, affixed new and longer down spout pipes to direct water away from her foundation, and even cut up my large tree branches into firewood for her outdoor fire box. Overall, it was rewarding work. It was even nice out on Saturday, hot and sunny at times.

Then Sunday hit and it was one heavy rain shower after another. The weather didn’t keep us from having a fun meal at Pizza Ranch in Waverly, Iowa, with friends and family. Although not the most auspicious showing for the establishment, bad service just can’t hide the fact that they make very tasty pizza.

This past weekend Kirsten and I were invited, by a local pastor and family friend of her mom, on a canoe trip to the Turkey River in NE Iowa. We left the church parking lot with three other couples from the church around 10:30 AM and arrived in Clermont, Iowa, around noon. We ate at the campground from where we launched and then prepared to delve into the river.

My first thought was, “wow! that water is moving fast!” The above-average rainfall this year in our neck of the woods has really made the rivers surge. We launched our canoe successfully down the steep embankment and were off on a race down the river. We were able to slow down and pull off to the side, clinging to a log jam and waited for the remainder of our party to launch.

We made it down the 3.48 miles of river in about two and a half hours with two stops. One for a devotional on a sandbar and another to swim in the cold, swift river water. The first stop is where I pulled out my lower back muscles as I bent over awkwardly to pull our canoe from the river. Yikes! What a bad idea! I’m still paying for that move.

Overall, we had a really good time. It was Kirsten’s first canoe trip and she’s already talking about a second and she even wants to try kayaking! For a girl who’s not too keen on “the outdoors,” or “nature,” she did pretty darn well! She’s a canoeing natural!