Holy Fucking Iowa

So, the good news is, I got a job offer - for a job where the work I'll be doing is likely to be right up my alley, and in a situation that I have reason to believe isn't going to make me feel as though I'm being paid to manually masturbate various farm animals for a half-decent salary (I know, I know, my standards are so high). I've accepted. I don't have a start date yet, but it's likely to be soon.

The bad news is, the offer is in motherfucking Iowa. Eddyville, Iowa, which is about an hour and a half southeast of Des Moines, a town of about 300, with exactly 0 stoplights in town.

Most of the people in the plant in Eddyville live up in Oskaloosa, which is a town of about 13,000, roughly half the size of the town I'm living in currently; so, you know, I thought I'd had it rough before, but I ain't seen nothing yet.

I'm glad to have a job offer, and was pretty surprised at the fact that my job search seemed to consist of the following two steps:

1) Post resume on monster.com
2) Answer phone. A lot.

Apparently electrical engineers with 6+ years experience are in demand.

The good news is that it's Iowa, and not Texas, and if it's a small town in Iowa vs. a small town in Texas, I'll take Iowa any day of the week and twice on Sunday (what the fuck does that saying even mean, anyway?) While all small towns, as a rule, are "churchy", the Iowa culture does not breed in an insanity factor quite like Texas does. For example:

1) In rural Texas, it is almost impossible to meet a single woman over the age of 25 who has fewer than 3 kids with fewer than 2 last names. This is unlikely to be the cas in Iowa, which doesn't quite have the "marry young and start spawning" culture.

2) Just this morning, I had people ring my doorbell at 10 in the morning asking me if I go to church. I said no. They said they'd like it if I could come to their church, not surprisingly, one variation of Baptism or another. I said "Not gonna happen" and sent them on their way. This is less likely to happen in Iowa.

3) I've been in Texas for three years now and have met exactly no one down here that I would consider to be a close friend. This is directly related to the previous two points. I somehow doubt that that will happen in Iowa.

Still, I'm nervous as all hell about the move, as it will be my first experience ever in selling a house, and I have to figure out exactly what it is I'm going to be doing for housing up in the land of caucuses and corn. My guess is I'll try to find a house to rent. I just don't necessarily feel like I need to do this owning-a-house thing, particularly when the contract in Iowa would only be for a couple of years.

I'm antsy as hell, having a bit of a hard time sleeping, but feeling good that I'm about to enter back into the realm of the employed once again.