Professor Peruvian

I am a big, big, big fan of animals. I'm a complete sucker for most of them. Maybe notsomuch for snakes and other things that are the embodiment of evil.

Over the summer I got really, REALLY lonely and came VERY close to adopting a kitty from Petsmart but was thwarted when I found out you have to be 21 to do it. It was a good thing that I couldn't because I do want to wait until I'm settled for a longer period of time than just the next few months to make that kind of a commitment. And in the end it would be a lot of money... adoption fee, start-up stuff, vet bills, $150 pet deposit for my apartment, an additional $30 for rent... it adds up quickly.

I did the fish thing for a while and last summer it worked out REALLY well. Those guys lasted for a good long time. But since then all the fish I've had have been dead within a few weeks. I went through too many fish this summer.

I was still pretty desperate for some sort of animal companionship, but I was done with fish and couldn't afford a cat. So I came up with a happy compromise.

A guinea pig.

It's not small and creepy like a hamster; it's not going to die in two weeks like a fish; it's not a massive financial commitment like a cat or dog. It's a cuddly cage pet and the perfect solution.

My grandma was in town this weekend and she was nice enough to spring for the piggy and I bought his cage and set-up things and my roommate bought him some extra fun stuff. So far we're both thrilled. He's still adjusting so he's a bit nervous still, but he's very friendly when we hold him and makes adorable little squealy noises.

We named him Professor Peruvian. Someone (my grandma, I think) tossed out the name Professor which kind of stuck, and then we added Peruvian because guinea pigs are native of Peru. Though, we should probably call him Professor PeesALot since he likes to take a leak in my roommate's lap.

Pelican Festival

I have more mascot experience than I care to admit. My first job was at Chick-Fil-A back home in Colorado and one night I had to dress up as the CFA cow and do the chicken dance during half-time at the Colorado Nuggets basketball game.

Then, if you're a frequent reader (and you're probably not unless you're my parents, my friend Ryan, my boss, or the mysterious person at Meredith who has been hitting a lot lately... shout out to you all) you'll recall my Curious George experience. in 2007 I had to dress up as Curious George at the Blank Park Zoo during their Halloween event and that was all sorts of interesting.

A few weeks ago was the Pelican Festival at Jester Park Lodge. Evidently, pelican migration starts in late summer and early fall and hundreds and thousands of pelicans come to rest at the massive Saylorville Lake. So people come and gather and watch pelicans and learn some stuff.

I volunteered to help through my internship at the DNR. So I got there and was told that they needed me to be the pelican greeter, Scoop. Scoop, as it turns out, is this massive pelican costume that's just all sorts of ridiculous. Thankfully, by this point in my mascot career, I'm experienced enough and didn't need help getting into the costume.

So I dressed up as a massive pelican and I'm walking the best way I know how with toddlers on my ankles. Meanwhile other toddlers were shrieking at the sight of me.

Although, one very cool thing happened. A little boy pointed right at me and said "bird!" And his parents started freaking out because that was his first word. It was pretty special to share that moment.

And, because I evidently have no problem further making public my already public humiliation, I'm putting in a picture.

1/3 over

I realized recently that this semester is already 1/3 over. Granted that means I have about 5 weeks under my belt, but when you're feeling like things have just gotten started, thinking of it like that is really kind of shocking.

But things have just been so slow lately. I keep telling myself not to complain, but I can't help it. For instance, my magazine capstone... we're still making important decisions and only yesterday got actual writing assignments. But the book has to be to the printer BEFORE Thanksgiving break. Holy heck.

So I'm sure it'll all hit the fan here pretty soon and I won't be able to keep up with hardly anything. It's the calm before the storm, I suppose.

This week I also had my first entomology exam and that was weird. I don't remember the last time I ever really had an exam. Considering that I haven't had any sort of biology class since literally freshman year of high school and therefore am at a considerable disadvantage compared to the other students who are grounded quite well in the basics of things like biodiversity, morphology and evolution, I think it went fairly well. I can tell I generally know the info, but there were definitely some holes in my explanation of things. That doesn't change the fact that I love the class and the professor is one of the greatest I've ever had. Seriously. Keith Summerville. If he teaches it, take it.

In a couple of weeks the classes for next semester will be posted already and my roommate and I are both extremely excited. Generally I feel like we're both not terribly thrilled with classes this semester and getting to pick out new ones is really exciting. It's particularly exciting for me because I only have to pick 4 of them (yay for a 12-credit semester!) and it'll be my LAST. TIME. PICKING. Holy heck. It's crazy.

Senior Year

So it begins. Senior year. I'm mostly excited, although I admit things are going kind of slowly, which I'm not really used to. Not as far as school goes, anyway. But I should enjoy it while I can because I'm sure soon enough I'll barely be able to keep my head above water. Not that that's a bad thing. I enjoy that sort of challenge. So here's the class break down:

1. J122 Magazine Capstone. This is it. My last journalism class at Drake. And probably ever. Kind of boggles my mind, really. Each magazine class does their capstone project, which is an issue of 515 magazine. They do everything from start to finish. Content, design, advertising, web presence, editing... you name it. We recently had to interview for staff positions and I should hear about which position I've been offered tomorrow. The class is taught by Lori Blachford who is all kinds of amazing. I'd take anything if she taught it. She's knowledgeable and funny and generally just a great person to have in class.

2. Personal Finance. Eh. It's not as bad as it could be so far, which is good. And it's all important info to have. Budgeting and financial goals and all this business. Although, it may be presumptuous of me to assume I'll have an income to manage after graduation. Lol. But it's ok. And the professor's name is Daffodil, so what could go wrong?

3. Creative Non-fiction. I seem to be in that class with largely non-English major underclassmen. In fact, most of them seem to be pre-pharm. So that's different. Not bad, though. I enjoy creative writing and the stuff we've had to read so far is really engaging. Actually, probably some of the best I've read in college.

4. American Lit. It's an upper-level so this class has a lot of English majors and honor students and whatnot. The stuff we have to read is also fairly easy to move through, comparatively speaking. And I've had this professor before last semester and my first semester as a freshman for my FYS class. So we go way back. He's brilliant and funny, though I'm not sure he always means to be.

5. Entomology. A non-required science class. Amazing, right? Entomology is the study of insects and even though I'm the only non-science major in the class (lots of environmental science, pharm and pre-pharm, biology and chemistry), I seem to be keeping up fairly well. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Weber, my seventh grade science teacher, for teaching me what a phylum is. We get to go collect bugs and then identify them and all sorts of cool stuff. It's good to get a break from writing and challenge a different part of my brain.

Considering it's senior year, I'm not feeling anxious like I was expecting to. I'm not worried about finding a job after graduation. I'm smart and bold, I've gained a lot of valuable experience in not a lot of time, and I'm good at my job. And I've largely come to terms with the fact that it's not likely that I'll be working in publishing after I graduate. But that doesn't mean I won't be working. I'm good at the alphabet so I can file like nobody's business. And if that's what I have to do to pay my rent for a while before I can sneak in to the magazine business somewhere, then alrighty. There's no shame in it.

Iowa State Fair

This weekend I hit up the Iowa State Fair and I enjoyed myself and all, but I'm sad to say I didn't have nearly as much fun as I had last year. Of course, last year everything was new and terribly exciting and I wanted to do it all and see it all and take pictures of EVERYTHING.

Notsomuch this year. I got to the fairgrounds around 8:30 and by 2 I was pretty much done. I don't know if it was the weather (kind of a steamy, overcast sort of day that tricks you into thinking it might be cool outside) or the crowds, but I just felt fair-ed out.

I couldn't go home, though because I was volunteering for Drake from 4-6 (which is a lot of fun) so I had to kill two hours. I sat and watched the talent show where I swear I heard about 30 10-15 year-olds singing Miley Cyrus' "The Climb" (oddly the younger ones seemed better).

I hit all the fair highlights like the 4-H building (I love what those 4-H kids do), the VI building, the Ag building, and the barns with all the animals. Last year I spent two or three hours in the barns alone, but this year it just seemed like there were so many people there. Maybe my excitement blinded me to the crowds last year, but this year I just couldn't deal with it. And don't even get me started on strollers! Oy! I swear, I'm not taking my kids anywhere until they're 10.

It's hard to deal with so many people EVERYWHERE you go. I tried going 100 different places to take a break from the crowd, but there's NO reprieve. Anywhere.

It's not that I didn't enjoy being at the fair. After all, after a summer of living in solitary confinement, it was good to be out in public and feel part of a group again... but it was kind of a lot of public to deal with at once.

I went to the fair again on Sunday, this time to volunteer at the DNR building (for 6 hours!!!) and I found that much more enjoyable, somehow. I was running the cash register at the DNR store and talked to SO many people. It was nice to actually interact with people and talk to them instead of simply being with crazy crowds out on the grounds. I met a lot of really nice people who had some really cool stories and a lot of them told me how much they love the DNR magazine, which has inspired them to go out and do or see something. It was really cool to hear about it.

I suppose it's a good thing I liked my 6-hour DNR shift so much... I have two more next weekend. Yay, I think.

Iowa Outdoors

This summer I have an internship at Iowa Outdoors Magazine, which is a publication from the Department of Natural Resources. It's a great magazine with cool stories and amazing photos. And readership is 150,000. It's really cool.

It earned some cool points this past issue because it featured the journalistic stylings of, well, me! I had four different articles in the new Sept/Oct issue and I'm really REALLY excited about it. I've never been published in a magazine before. Not a print one, anyway. And being published in print is just a waaaaayyyy cooler feeling. Online is good, but there's nothing like looking at a stack of magazines you know you're in.

And they aren't groundbreaking works of staggering genius or anything, but they're a start and, even better, they're mine :)

The storm

I've probably mentioned once or twice that I am not a fan of storms. Last summer there were some insane thunderstorms that I spent a lot of sleepless nights panicking about. This summer seemed much less active as far as severe weather goes. I don't know if it's a slow year for storms, or this is more average for a typical Iowa summer... I only have one summer to compare it to and that's when half the state was under water.

Anyway, we had a killer storm yesterday evening that shook me to the core pretty badly. It was weird because I looked out the window at the ominous clouds and I was like "oh, gosh, looks like it might storm." And as soon as I finished the thought, all hell broke loose.

My big thing is that I can't handle these huge storms alone. I just seriously can't. Last summer there was a tornado or a funnel cloud that missed the city by what felt like inches, but I didn't panick nearly as much because I was an RA and had to take control of an emergency situation. It's weird how that happens. Ordinarily I would be curled up in my bathtub with a picture of my family conviced I was going to die. But my brain kind of skipped that step and went into "take control" mode. I didn't mind it, of course.

But this summer I have no residents and I find that when it's just me alone in my top-of-the-building apartment, I really tend to freak out. Oddly, as far as I know, there were no threats of tornadoes with this storm, but it was still one of the scaries thunderstorms I've ever seen. I looked out the window and at one point I couldn't see anything at all because the rain was so hard, visibility was zero. And when I could see, it didn't look like rain was falling at all, rather being blown around in massive, horizontal sheets. I could see it blow off the roofs of other buildings and fall half way to the ground before it shot straight back up into the air again. All the debris in the tri-state area seemed like it landed in the pool. Branches were falling left and right, lightning was right on top of us. I stood at my bedroom window and put my hands on the glass and could feel the window flex in the wind.

There's always one man I can turn to during times like these. Channel 8's John McLaughlin. He's the best and I love him. Except that my cable tends to freeze or something during really terrible storms. It doesn't go out, exactly. Either the picture freezes or I get a black screen saying "this channel will be available momentarily" for a couple of hours. I have yet to determine if this affects my internet because my computer can pick up wireless signals from my neighbors... so if someone has functioning internet that isn't password-protected, I can still be online. But the problem is the signal is usually fairly weak so weather sites with a lot of interactive, moving maps take much too long to load.

So... yeah... it was all rather traumatic. But, as with most storms, it left as quickly as it came and an hour later there was hardly any evidence that it was there... oh, except for the damage to my apartment which includes a roof that leaks in four places (opposed to only two earlier this summer), a chunk of ceiling that fell onto my living room floor, my bedroom window that was cracked from a stray piece of hail and another window that clearly leaks (hence the puddle of water on the sill and carpet under it).

Yay.