Tag: saint louis

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This is it…

Yeah, very shortly, I will be attending classes at Saint Louis University, “officially” making me feel like a graduate student (the summer thus far hasn’t been much besides a “job,” of sorts…now I actually have to study and such…). This is both exciting and rather scary, the former due to the fact that I get to finally delve in to my chosen profession…the latter because…well…it’s graduate school… Likely this will be my largest challenge to date. The really odd parts follow:

    — I am going to school at a new place with new people and new professors.
    — I am at the bottom of the food chain again, much like I was five years ago at Truman.
    — I don’t have as many friends/bar buddies in this town, so I won’t be as socially active as in recent years.
    — Along with that, I’m married now, so my roommate won’t be able to help me in my classes as in recent years…on the other hand, it’s easier now that I don’t have to make time to go to my girlfriend’s place to hang out with her once and awhile…she’s conveniently at my place all the time now… 😛
    — I no longer have “responsibilities,” such as attending AXE meetings, Wesley House functions, or working for ITS. It’s school and home. That’s it.
    — I have to drive to class every morning. Snow or not. And fight for parking.

So yeah, completely new shenanigans to deal with. Really, I’m the same old person in a completely new environment…making me wonder how I’ll deal with the situation. Will I study as much as I should? Will I make it to class on time? Or at all? Will I be able to manage money better now that I’m married and on my own? Will my personality remain the same, or should I expect another paradigm shift as what occurred in college? …or will I wake up tomorrow and still be in my bed at the old apartment in Kirksville?

…as Spock once said: “Life…is not a dream.” And as he also said, in a different movie, I “will perform as according to one’s gifts.” Hopefully I’m as prepared as I can be for the flames I am to be thrust in to….’cause it’s going to be close to five years that I’m roasting in them…

“Sounds like fun.” (…that was Kirk, this time…)

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Updates and shenanigans…

Well, Kristen left this morning after visiting for a few days. A good visit, in all, yet seemed somewhat rushed at times. Apparently, certain museums in this town are closed on certain days and some don’t open until certain times, so that threw a kink in things…however, we did make it to the zoo, the Missouri History Museum, got some shopping done, went to Union Station and made a valiant attempt at going to a Cardinal’s game…but the game was so full, there was only standing room available…and I wasn’t about to pay to stand there and watch a game… 😛 Hopefully we’ll get to see a game sometime soon, though…

Anyway, I’ve got some errands to run over the next few days…nothing terribly important, but errands nonetheless… I’ll be heading to Kirksville this weekend to get some AoE II action on, so I’m looking forward to that. Regardless, I guess I’m looking forward to classes starting in a few weeks…although, it’s gonna get pretty hard, I’m afraid…

But on the plus side, I decided that I want to build a poker table… 😉

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From the files of Police Squad…

“It’s like taking a spoonful of Drain-O: sure, it’ll clean you out, but it’ll leave you hollow inside.”
— Lt. Frank Drebin; The Naked Gun

What a great movie… 😉

Well, the little sister is visiting for a few days in St. Louis, so I’ll be busy entertaining her for a bit, hopefully getting to see things here that I haven’t gotten to yet this summer, such as the Zoo, Contemporary Art Museum, City Museum, Card’s game, etc. Sadly, those two museums aren’t even open until Tuesday/Wednesday…for some odd reason, they aren’t open on Mondays…shenanigans…

Any other suggestions on things to do between now and Wednesday?

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I'm poor now…

…or something like it… As some have heard, Brooke and I got a car…a 2003 Hyundai Elantra GT…had 30,000 mi on it, so it’s somewhat used (more of a “program car,” technically), but in great condition and we got an incredible deal on it, so it was hard to pass it up. But yeah, we’re hoping this car will last us a good 5 years until I’m in the workforce (…assuming that ever happens…).

Otherwise, 3 weeks are done in my first of four lab rotations…things are going quite well, actually… As of last Thursday, we finally got the camera system to work properly such that it can record a signal sent on axons in the turtle cerebellum…which rocks tremendously, considering that I’ve spent 3 weeks on it… 😛 Anyway, I think this grad school thing will work out alright as long as I stick with it…I guess that means I’ll have to study, too…grrrrr…

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I’m poor now…

…or something like it… As some have heard, Brooke and I got a car…a 2003 Hyundai Elantra GT…had 30,000 mi on it, so it’s somewhat used (more of a “program car,” technically), but in great condition and we got an incredible deal on it, so it was hard to pass it up. But yeah, we’re hoping this car will last us a good 5 years until I’m in the workforce (…assuming that ever happens…).

Otherwise, 3 weeks are done in my first of four lab rotations…things are going quite well, actually… As of last Thursday, we finally got the camera system to work properly such that it can record a signal sent on axons in the turtle cerebellum…which rocks tremendously, considering that I’ve spent 3 weeks on it… 😛 Anyway, I think this grad school thing will work out alright as long as I stick with it…I guess that means I’ll have to study, too…grrrrr…

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…busy, busy, busy…

Yeah, I’ve been pretty busy lately… This past weekend, Brooke and I drove to Sedalia for Anne Gumbel’s wedding…it was lovely, of course, but I didn’t get to see as many folks (i.e. Alex, Gavin, Jess, etc.) as I would have wanted to. Tony was along, so that was semi-entertaining… 😛 On Sunday, Brooke and I went with my parents to Lohman and showed some wedding pictures to my grandmas. I think they were happy to see us…but probably somewhat amazed by the technology I brought along (they’ve never seen a laptop, so far as I know…). I’m close to getting some pics up on the wedding website for download, but for now, many of them are viewable through this part of my website.

Otherwise, Brooke and I are looking into replacing one of our cars in the near future, I’m thinking… Both our cars are over 100,000 miles and we’ve had some issues with Brooke’s car recently, so it may be wise to get a better, lower-mileage car to use for driving to Columbia and Hannibal… So yeah, if you know of any cars under 50,000 miles that don’t cost too much and are semi-reliable, lemme know… 😛

But yeah, St. Louis is treating us well… Still keeping busy at work, but not doing anything particularly special right now. We got another shipment of turtles in today, so we’ve got more to “play” with in the coming weeks…hard to believe that tomorrow marks the halfway point of my summer lab rotation…

…on the other hand, Thursday marks my first payday…w00t… 😀

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…of tropical storms and homeless people…

I’ll try to make this mostly brief…but there is lots to tell… First of all, there are pictures posted in the Photos section now; click on “New Apartment” to see pictures of our mostly-set-up place and “New Orleans” for our trip down south… There are some pictures in “Hermann” of the B&B we stayed at a few weeks ago…

So yeah, we got down there in the middle of Tropical Storm Cindy…and needless to say, there was lots of water… There were over 250,000 people without power on Wednesday morning; thankfully we still had power, yet no cable…grrrrr… Anyway, the next day we walked around the French Quarter and explored a bit…went to a cafe, had some French food, etc… Essentially, we just explored a bit that first day…and it was gorgeous out, surprisingly… On Thursday morning, we went on the Nat’l Park Service historical tour, which was quite cool. We explored some more and then took the afternoon off (nice and humid), then went and got muffalettas (a New Orleans specialty…something like a Schlotsky’s sandwich, I think…but with lots of pickled olives)…which were also incredible… The cool thing about Thursday night was that we went to Preservation Hall and saw some really, really good jazz music…go buy a CD…it’s worth it… On Friday morning, we went on a cemetary tour, lectured by the guy who maintains the historic tombs. These tombs were above ground, so that was kinda cool…this is done for religious reasons, but also because the water table is very, very high in New Orleans. We also chilled Friday afternoon in the A/C and then went out to a nice place for dinner (mmmm…jambalaya…) and then walked around Bourbon Street for a bit…

Anyway, overall, the trip was good…the weather could have been a bit better, but I guess we did decide to go a). in hurricane season and b). when it’s really humid. It was certainly interesting to see people preparing for Hurricane Dennis; some people cared and others didn’t… The one thing I wasn’t expecting was all the homeless people. I mean, I’ve seen them before, but have never seen so many in a concentrated area and certainly had never walked by them before on the street…really kinda sad… Apparently, Louisiana has 1 in 4 people below the poverty line… Regardless, I guess it was a bit more shocking than I expected…

So yeah, check out the pictures…they’re online and all pretty-like… I’ll write more later…

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Happy 4th

So yeah, went to the Fair Saint Louis festivities last night…saw Switchfoot live…saw lots and lots of people… The music was excellent and the fireworks were awesome…

…however, there was a little bit of irony… The guy sitting in front of us under the arch and in front of the main stage had a Confederate flag as his cell phone plate. Now, this could be excused, but then he was also wearing a Confederate states seal on his back. Now, I don’t tend to care too much about people wearing clothes that make a statement about…well…something…but seriously… This guy was wearing a shirt with a Confederate seal…at a United States Independence Day celebration…and to top it off, he was videotaping the fireworks… What idiot watchings fireworks on their TV?!

…I guess hypocrisy just annoys me on occasion…what can I say… 😛

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Time for a BBQ

Well, Brooke and I went to Hannibal yesterday for Tom Sawyer Days…yes, they have a festival about Tom Sawyer… They had some interesting stuff going on and it was gorgeous outside, so it was a good day overall…just really long… Regardless, we made it back here late last night and we’re checking out a new church this morning…hopefully I can play some drums sometime in the near future, eh? This afternoon, we’re gonna BBQ a bit and go down to Fair St. Louis…Switchfoot is performing tonight and then, of course, fireworks…

On a side-note, Friday went pretty well when I went to SLU to investigate professors to work for. Dr. Ariel does some fascinating stuff with turtles, so I will probably work for him, but I’m still meeting with another guy Tuesday morning. Now, the catch is that I can’t start work for another week (July 11th), which leaves me quite open for this week…therefore, I think Brooke and I are going down to New Orleans as a semi-honeymoon-type deal… We’ll probably leave Tuesday late-morning and come back on Saturday. We found a couple hotels within a block of the French Quarter, so this should be really cool (actually, quite warm, sadly…).

Oh yeah, apparently, some Japanese guy set a new record and memorized and recited 83,431digits of Pi…seriously, some people have way too much time on their hands for their own good…

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Moved(?)

So yeah, we spent all day yesterday moving to St. Louis…the hard part’s done, I guess… Brooke and I didn’t stay up too terribly late last night unpacking, but got up relatively early this morning and moved most of the boxes out of what is to become “the office” (complete with 6′ table for the computers and a twin-size bed (i.e. “couch”). We walked around the complex and found the laundromat, exercise equipment and swimming pool, and there are quite a few trees around there, making it a very pretty place to be. The next hurdle involves learning all the roads in St. Louis, etc… I went by Missy/Sharon/Shannon’s place today and it took me a good 30 min…pretty sure I could have driven to their old places last year in Kirksville in under 3 min…but whatever… 😛

Anyway, I added a few pictures from the move to the Photos section of the site, listed under “New Apt”…check ’em out… After we get settled in St. Louis (after June 27th), we’ll take more pictures and post what the place is supposed to look like…

I’ll be in Columbia until Friday, and then I’ll be heading to Hannibal for the rehearsal and dinner…and getting married in T-minus 6 days… Married life, here I come… 😉 Regardless, gimme a call if you’re around Columbia and wanna hang out…