As much as she did go out and drink she still couldn’t keep up with us, but then again she was a girl and Adam was a professional drinker. I've seen him take a sip of beer in his sleep. I wasn’t quite at his level anymore but I knew if it ever came down to it I could always puke and keep going. Not something I was aiming for, but you could do worse in terms of last resorts. Adam was a big fan of killing brain cells at night while cultivating them during the day so he wanted to see some history or anything of interest in the area and lucky for us Courtney was happy to oblige. I was thrilled to have her around because if Adam and I were on our own not only did I doubt we’d find much of interest but I knew we’d end up drinking during the day. And that would only lead to bad things. She even brought her dog who acted and was treated like more of a person. He frequently reacted to things outside the window and would howl which caused Courtney to respond in some way to him, usually
by having a long or short conversation with him based on what she thought he said. Adam made me promise to leave it at that. Courtney took us to the state capitol and I was surprised Adam wanted to go inside because even though I had recently been by a number of them I had never actually wandered into one. I’m not even sure why. I guess I always somehow found something that I figured would be inarguably better or entertainingly worse. It actually was worth seeing but at the same time kind of disappointing. All of the capitols are designed to mirror the national capitol in Washington DC which in and of itself is mirroring ancient Greek and Roman architecture and I didn’t understand why a state wouldn’t work to make themselves identifiable and different. It seemed like such a waste. Why construct a building that will always be nothing more than an imitation of an imitation? Nonetheless, the building itself was impressive in a lot of different ways. Just walking around and taking in the surroundings was enough to give you a sense that this was an important place. The architecture as well as the art that was placed throughout made it feel like it was both a museum and a palace at the same time. And the yellow lighting made everything look like it was glowing. If anyone ever doubted that there was such a thing as Iowa pride all you would have to do is come here and you’d get all the Iowa pride you could handle. As ever though Adam was focused on details like the wall for fallen soldiers of Iowa. It didn’t seem like much but those little touches really did humanize the place and made it feel like less of a palace. It made you feel like this place was actually a part of the real world which was important when you’re looking at incredible paintings and domed ceilings. Maybe there was something to focusing on such things after all. I wonder why I hadn’t gone into any of these capitols before? They were certainly relevant and easy enough to find so really I had no