Should We Just Make Friends with the Bugs Already?

These are our bugs that come around everyday, these pictures were taken by me only one day after the maintenance people swept and they have also sprayed twice now. It really is disgusting. As you can see there are a few huge ones .

Road Kills

First of all, let's all congratulate Allison for her first blog post! Yesterday's post was good, funny, and insightful. So if you haven't yet, go and comment on that post!

So, there's not a lot of roadkill here in Oklahoma. In fact, I've seen more dead animals on the side of the road in San Diego county during the same time period. The thing that's disturbing, is that in the almost two months that Allison and I have lived here, we've seen three armadillos dead on the side of the road.

It's a weird thing to see an armadillo anyway (I mean, seriously, these things are rather alien looking), but to see them dead every couple of weeks? Disturbing.

And provided here is a picture of the latest on that we saw (this morning on the way to Church). Don't look if that kind of thing grosses you out.

The Things I Miss

So this is my first blog entry, although I have contributed to the experiences that Jordan often writes about, I haven't actually posted anything myself. Before I start, here is a small disclaimer or warning: If I don't make sense in what I am writing that's because I am left handed, or at least that's what Jordan tells me. Anyway, I wanted to make a list of some of the things I miss about California (besides family because that's obvious and uninteresting :))
Golden Spoon Frozen Yogurt- it is the best and it's good for you, my favorite flavors are cake batter and chocolate malt. If you have never experienced the power of this deliciousness you are definitely missing out.
Spicy Mexican Carrots- They are just carrots in vinegar and jalapenos, so spicy, soooo good. I can eat so many of them. At the local Wal-Mart, which is a huge deal here, they only have canned spicy carrots. They are not as good as the ones I used to get a Colimas in Oceanside. Jordan even went around to all the Mexican food places in Stillwater and they hadn't even heard of them.
My cat Cheeka- I miss her so much, she loved me and for the longest time when Jordan and I were just dating I wouldn't tell him her name. I would say it really fast and he thought I was saying Jenga, like the game. Her real name is Jackie but somehow her name evolved into being Cheeka. But if you know anything about my family it's that we give each other and our pets many different names. For example my mom calls my brother Jason, George or Georgie. She has called me Monkey, Dorothy, and now its Sissy. We had a cat named Fred and we called him Bean, and eventually changed that to Pete. Yep, so I miss my cat Cheeka.
Palm Trees everywhere- I took them for granted but they really are a cool tree. There are a lot of trees in Stillwater. It is very green, probably because we get really scary thunderstorms every other day.
California Accents- I think California is accent-less for the most part but not here. People say weird things like pop instead of soda. If someone doesn't hear you instead of saying "What was that?" or "Pardon?" they say "Do what?" It is very strange, I pointed this out to a co-worker of mine and he agreed that it doesn't make sense and everyone including him says it.
Smaller Bugs- If you know me at all you know that I hate bugs. Some bugs here could be mistaken for babies they are so big. Cicadas are everywhere. They are huge fly like things that make rattlesnake noises and when there are thousands of them it is quite scary walking outside.
Ok well these are just a few of the things I miss about California. I am not a Southern belle and never will be.

I hate football.

Let me clarify: I hate what football does to people. I am not kidding when I say that Stillwater basically shuts down on game day. Allison couldn't even park at the library last week because the parking lot was set aside for game parking. This morning, the local grocery store was allowing customers to park for only one hour ... unless they had a ticket to the game. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! On a game day, everyone walks where ever they want, crossing in front of cars even when they are moving. I usually simply say that I don't care for football, but for now, I hate it.

School Daze.

Hey, so, I'm still here. School's been somewhat tough, but not so bad that I can't take a few minutes to post something. You may not have noticed, but I've decided to have a 3-times-a-week schedule. It's something that may completely fall apart next week, but it's something that I'm trying to stick to for now.

School is going well for me (at least the first week). I have American Government first on the MWF circuit. My teacher is young (he looks about my age) and I think this is only his second semester teaching, based on a few things that he's said. He also likes to show off his vocabulary when defining words for the class, which I feel defeats the whole point of defining the word.

Next is Spanish. I'm doing great so far. This is the only class that I have that meets every weekday, so I'm exposed to it a lot more often. Of course I've had plenty of exposure to it growing up, so I've only learned a few new things compared to other students who this is completely new to.

Then I have English Grammar. Nothing too bad, yet but I've only had one assignment (and thanks to everyone who helped with that!) We'll see how things go as the semester continues. Did you know that for a long time, double negatives were totally acceptable? And English was spelled Englych? I didn't.

Finally, I have my only class on the TR circuit: Advanced Composition. All I know is that I have a lot of writing to do. A lot. It's going to be time consuming, but hopefully fun.

Anyway, hay catorce horas en escuela. I think.

Orange everywhere!

Now, you're probably a patriotic person. You love our nation and are happy to be a citizen. You may even decorate your house with the colors of the flag on Independence Day or where red, white, and blue on Labor Day or something. But would you do these things year round?

Stillwater is orange. Seriously, everything in town is supportive of the school. Which is fine, of course, it's just that the school color is so . . . ugly. I think that orange is a fine color when used properly. Orange explosions are not so good.

And everybody wears orange! Maybe I notice it only because it's a color that is usually used in moderation, but even Allison's work requires her to wear an orange OSU shirt on Fridays.

I think part of my problem is the mascot doesn't match the color. When OSU was founded on Christmas day in 1890, it was originally Oklahoma A&M and the mascot was the tiger (I learned that from the hold music whenever I call the office. Guess how often that happens). Orange tigers I can get behind. Orange cowboys; I can't get behind that.

I'm freakin' out!

School starts tomorrow. If we don't update here for while it isn't because we hate you all or anything, it's just that we'll probably be extremely busy. Hopefully things won't be too bad, but we may not post again until winter break. Learning!

Me "preparing" for school.

"Stonking"

In my last post, I mentioned that tuition is high and that I'm annoyed where the money goes. I wrote that "tuition is pretty stonking high already." One of my readers pointed out to me that "stonking" isn't a word. The exchange (which took place through email) went something like this:

(It may help if you imagine us with British accents, for some reason)

Reader: Good sir, I have the utmost respect for you and your skills as a writer, but I believe you may have accidentally included a typographical error in your last entry on your internet website. I am sure that this was not intended and I wanted to point it out in electronic mail as to not embarrass you publicly.

Me: Gentleman, I am convinced that you are filled with the wisdom of the ages, but alas, I have gone through with both a visual inspection and the use of a "spell checking" device and have found no errors present. I am sure that you meant nothing offensive by your message and I assure you that no offense was taken, though perhaps in the future you should be certain of others mistakes before pointing them out.

Reader: Most gracious sir, while I do respect your brilliance as a writer, you used the word "stonking" and that clearly cannot be right. Perhaps you should go and edit your post.

Me: Kind reader, if you are under the impression that I meant "stinking," I promise you that I chose the word "stonking" on purpose.

The above conversation may or may not be verbatim as to how it actually happened.

Anyway, I looked up "stonking" at dictionary.com. It means "excellent, very impressive" or "extremely, also called stonkingly." My reader may simply not have known that "stonking" was a word, just as "stonkingly" is. In my defense, "stonking" is recognized by Firefox's spell check, but "stonkingly" is not.

Also, my readership is limited to family, so you know the reader. I didn't mean any offense by this post, I just wanted to rewrite the conversation in hoity-toity Brit-speak. Oi!

Hidden Fees

I get to ride the bus for free in Stillwater! Well, that's not true. I do not have to pay any additional fees to ride the bus. I was going through the cost of tuition for attending school, and there are a lot of things that I'm paying for, whether I want to or not. Things like the Academic Excellence fee ($360.50), the Academic Facilities fee ($147.00), the Student Union Renovation fee ($60.90), the Student Activities and Student Activities-A fees ($35 and $42, respectively), and the parking and transit fee ($32.20).

I guess my problems with it is that tuition is pretty stonking high already and then they glob all of these extra things on top. The Student Union looks nice, but why do I have to pay for the renovation that (as far as I can tell) already happened? I do like that by showing my ID I get to ride the bus for no (additional) charge, but what if I didn't have to ride the bus? And why is called parking and transit fee, if we still have to buy a parking pass? And why are there two student activity fees? Why not just have one fee at the combined price? That one's just weird to me.

Maybe my problem isn't the extra fees, it's knowing what they go to. Tuition I don't have any argument with because that's for my education, but if I knew how much of my tuition went to stocking the faculty lounge with donuts, I'd probably be telling a different tale.

Iron Chef America

Allison and I have discovered that Iron Chef is a very entertaining show. Well, the first 5 minutes anyway. If you haven't watched Iron Chef America, watch it. The actual show is decently entertaining as the chefs work on their dishes, but the best part is the revealing of the "secret ingredient" (I'm convinced that they know what it's going to be before hand). The chairman is ridiculously cheesy as he screams the ingredient. "Halibut!", "Hamburger!", "Artichokes!" It's all so funny. After that, Allison and I may watch the rest of the episode, or may not. We've already seen the best part.