Grab bag and Office Lounge
Tricks and treats
It’s just before Halloween, so here are some miniature (i.e. fun-size) items along with Collaborative housekeeping.
Treat: October Office Lounge Zoom call
The last Friday of every month at noon is the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative Office Lounge. It’s an opportunity to interact with members of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. If you are a paid subscriber to a member of the Collaborative, you will have access to the lounge.
Robert Leonard will host this month’s Zoom meeting, and he’ll be joined by about a dozen members of this group. The link is behind the paywall on this post.
A new member of the Collaborative joined earlier this month. Sarah Scull lives in Creston and her site is called “Piecemaker: Musings & meditations of a Midwest maker.” She’s been writing on Substack since August.
Treat: Class 1A volleyball seed preservation
In Iowa high school boys’ state tournaments, 8-or-so-team districts play in a bracket and then there’s a substate match to go to state. On the girls’ side, there are 16-or-so-team regionals, and the regional winner goes to state.
This year, four of the top teams happen to be in the Iowa Star Conference. North Tama, BCLUW, Janesville, and Don Bosco finished ranked fifth through eighth in the final poll, and they’re all an hour or less from each other. The IGHSAU kept these teams away from each other by creating regionals that function as double districts. The setup reveals itself when the districts are mapped out with the “top” and “bottom” of each bracket.
The regional semifinals take place Monday. An east-central Iowa cluster will play a west-central cluster, and two northeast clusters will play two southwest clusters, in regional finals at neutral sites next Wednesday.
North Tama won the Iowa Star Conference tournament before regional play began. Go Redhawks!
Trick: This Halloween house
One house in Ely has at least 18 representations of Jack Skellington in a “The Nightmare Before Christmas”-themed display, maybe more.
The homeowners map out a drive-through option (go counterclockwise). Among the inflatables is, for some reason, the mascot for Buc-ee’s, a mostly Texas-centric chain of travel centers — extremely large travel centers. Location announcements make the local news.
Treat: Iowa Writers’ Collaborative party
This year’s Iowa Writers’ Collaborative Holiday Party will be Dec. 13 at the Harkin Institute on the campus of Drake University in Des Moines. The party is for paid subscribers to the Sunday roundup, IWC columnists, and donors to Iowa Capital Dispatch. Additional guests can attend for a donation (to be given at the event). If you are interested in attending, please fill out this form.
Trick: 269, the number to fear
This mockup is implausible, given how things are going in Omaha, but not necessarily impossible.
How’s that for a jump scare at the end?