Hopefully all the OSU fans who were up here for the women’s NCAA basketball regional in March had a good time. A pretty good amount of orange showed up!

Back to downtown — there are many very large employers downtown, including Principal Financial Group, which is headquartered here, along with Wells Fargo Financial, Allied Insurance, and EMC Insurance. In all, people who count these things say that 70,000 people work downtown.

There are also many new loft, apartment, and condo options available so more and more people are living downtown, although there needs to be more lower cost options for the younger set.

Anyway, here’s a couple of other links if you want to check out Des Moines a little more:
– http://www.downtowndesmoines.com/
– http://live.downtowndesmoines.com/video_contest.php (some hokey videos here, but some okay ones too)
– http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/travel/02journeys.html

Take a drive north sometime, we’d be glad to see you — and yes, it’s dry here — the floods did not reach downtown.