More than Just a Slice

Happy February, my dear readers!  Before I start, I want to say a big thank you to everyone who follows this blog religiously.  Thanks for checking back regularly.  I try to make this as entertaining as possible to keep you smiling, so I hope I'm not failing too badly at that!  I was also recently checking my stats for this blog, and I realized that I've had 35 page views from Russia.  Yup, you read that right.  Russia.  As far as I can remember, I don't know anyone from Russia.  So I checked out all the sites that my blog's traffic comes from, and what do you know!  One of them is a Russian news site that (supposedly) advertises my blog.  While I find this a little bit creepy and unnecessary, I'm flattered that they're interested in my life!  Thanks, Russian readers!

And now let's get back to the main point of this post.
So the other night, my Granny told me that I'm an "analyzer."  What does that even mean?  I asked her what I analyze.  Her answer was less than satisfactory, so I'm still completely confused as to what being an "analyzer" actually entails.  But, in an attempt to live up to this new title I've been given, I'm going to analyze some song lyrics.

Slice by Five for Fighting is a song that frequently pops up on a couple different playlists on my iPod.  If you're not familiar with this song, or you just haven't heard it in a while, check it out.

If your computer is going crazy and won't let you see this video, click here to watch it directly on YouTube.  Or if you're in a quiet zone (like a library or a nursery), you can read the lyrics here.

So this song is basically about music and how it brings people together and creates a soundtrack to our lives.  At least that's what I get from it.  (If I'm wrong, don't tell me.)  But I'd like to analyze a few of the lyrics and discuss how they relate to my life.  So here we go!

How Slice Applies to My Life

"There was a time a long, long time ago
Chevys and levees played on the radio.
No cell phones, just 20,000 lights
Swaying on a Saturday night, alright."

At almost every concert nowadays, when the band starts to play a slow song, the entire crowd whips out their cell phones and iPods and waves them in the air, lighting up the arena.  It wasn't always that way, though, my young friends!  Instead of phones, people used to use lighters.  What can I say?  Times have changed.  Other than the fact that glowing screens are much less of a fire hazard than thousands of little flames, cell phones and iPods are just way more popular and trendy to have on your person at all times.  But if you still want to go the classic route and wave your lighter in the air at the next concert you attend, fear not.  There's an app for that.

"Have you read my blog today?
300 million little USAs.
Your doorstep is just a click away,
We'll get together one of these days."

I'm going to break this stanza down line by line.  "Have you read my blog today?"  This is a pleasant way of putting the way I plug my blog on a daily basis.  It's usually something more like, "Do you read my blog???  It's at tasteofsiouxcity.blogspot.com!!!  You should read it!  You'd love it!  It's all about SIOUX CITY!!!  Did you want me to post the link on your wall?"  You know you're an avid plug-machine when you start telling your fish to read your blog.
"300 million little USAs."  I'd like to think that there are 300 million people all over the United States reading my blog.  But alas, the lyrics to my version of this song would be "5 USAs and 2 Russias."  (Clearly I have a huge fan base.)  Not only does that not rhyme, but it's too many syllables to fit in there.  I guess that's why Five for Fighting used the original lyrics.

"Your doorstep is just a click away, we'll get together one of these days."   

I'm always telling my friends back home that we should really get together when I'm in town.  Unfortunately, that's usually as far as it gets.  We rave about how we're dying to see each other, but then we never do.  Welcome to the wonderful world of Facebook.

Ok, I realize this is getting long, so I'll just analyze one more line.  :)

"How can you be as nice as me and not from the same slice as me?"

I like to think I'm Minnesota nice.  Everyone at home is!  But coming to Sioux City has made me realize that lots of Iowans are equally as nice.  They don't have a cool title for it, but they really are genuine.  How is this possible?  They're not from Minnesota!  This is one question that I have a feeling I will never find an answer to.

I would also like to point out that Five for Fighting (which is actually just one guy, not five) gets its name from a hockey penalty.  Take that, Iowa!  Hockey is a big deal.

And that'll do it for my analyzing.  I hope my Granny is pleased!
Being someone who thinks that less is more, I apologize for the insane length of this post.  I'll try to make the next one shorter and include a bullet-pointed list.

Shout-out to my brother.  Happy 17th.  :)

Here Comes the Sun

Friends, family and random creepers: My weather app says that it's a solid 64 degrees here in Sioux City right now.  The sun is shining and the squirrels are running around campus.  My roommate just left for class wearing shorts.  The snow is almost melted, and it's an absolutely beautiful January day here in Sioux City.

And you know what's really adding to the beauty?  My three new fishies!  My roommate and I saved them after one of our RAs held goldfish races as a building function.  These are my first pets ever...can you imagine how exciting this is?!
The two fish that jumped out of the water and scared us when we first got them live on my desk, thanks to my roommate.  The chill one lives on her desk.  Go figure.  :)

This is John.  He lives on my desk.

                                                   

Paul also lives on my desk.  I had to put a Kleenex box between him and
John so they wouldn't make mean faces at each other.

George lives on my roommate's desk.  He's pretty chill.  Kind of like a hippie.

Of course John, Paul and George just wouldn't be complete without Ringo.  He lives down the hall with our neighbor!

Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles live on.  :)

I never realized how much work it is to take care of fish!  Aside from actually remembering to feed them twice a day, we have to change their water a lot.  And when you have to clean three bowls every time you change the water, it gets to be a pretty big event.  I feel like my roommate and I have three little, orange, aquatic kids.  But I'm not complaining!  These kids don't talk back.

Check back often for more updates on my happy, shiny life.  :)

Life is a Show :)

Happy Friday, my dear readers!

So I recently told you that I'm taking a class called C&C.  This isn't just your ordinary composition class, though!  The theme is "Reality Bites Back," which means that everything we learn and write about involves reality TV.  Needless to say, I've been analyzing every reality show I've been watching lately.  This isn't a problem for me, though, because I'm kind of a reality TV junkie.
I've also been starting to think that my life is a lot like a reality show.  Every morning when I wake up with my roommate and head off to my first class, I feel like I'm a designer on Project Runway making my way over to the workroom for the day.  And sometimes when I'm just chilling in my hall, talking to a neighbor or two, it feels a lot like an episode of Big Brother.  Let's not forget that the entire concept of a stereotypical Minnesotan blindly moving to Iowa is great material for a TLC show in and of itself.  Yeah, that's right.  My life is a reality show.  :)

In other news, today is National Chocolate Cake Day.  In honor of this holiday, I left a chocolate cupcake on my neighbor's desk while she was out of the room!  That's how we celebrate here in the Cornfields of Opportunity.

That's really about all I have to say for this post.  But I have been thinking a little bit about some changes I'm going to make to this blog for next year.  Not to get ahead of myself, but if I actually follow through with some of these brilliant ideas, we're all in for an awesome time.  (In other words, keep coming back and reading my semi-weekly rants, and tell all your friends.)

For those of you who are young enough to appreciate Canadian teen drama shows,  click here to listen to the song that inspired the title of this post.

Finally, shout-out to my good friend back home who just celebrated her sweet 16 yesterday.  :)

And the Blinds Came Crashing Down

I realize it's been almost a week since my last post, so my deepest apologies go out to anyone who looks forward to reading this blog on a biweekly basis.  Let me summarize my week to you in a lovely, yet most likely completely predictable, bullet-pointed list.

This is how my week went down:

• On Wednesday morning, as I was opening the blinds to say hello to beautiful Sioux City, the blinds came crashing down.  Don't worry, they didn't land on my head.  Instead of worrying about how I was going to get them back up, I took a picture of them and put it on Facebook.
• Since my roommate and I didn't want to sleep next to a window that anyone could see into at any point during the night, I used duct tape and a fleece blanket to create my own blinds on Wednesday night.  Once again, I took a picture of that and put it on Facebook, because I like to document all the highlights of my life here in Sioux City.
• On Thursday afternoon, there was a manly knock on my door.  And guess who it was!  None other than our beloved maintenance guy.  He came to put our blinds back up, and told us to let him know when our next problem occurred.  He is officially my knight in shining armor.  Even though his armor is not shiny at all.
• Friday approached, and I was lucky enough to have a guest from my homeland of Minnesota spend the night with me for scholarship weekend!  Happily, we got along very well, and I'm glad I got to host her.  Shout-out to my next door neighbor, who let my guest sleep on her top bunk.
• On Saturday, among sleeping in and experiencing a Mexican fiesta, I was introduced to orange floats.  It's basically like a root beer float that uses orange juice instead of root beer.  Let me tell you--my life will never be the same!!!  Ok, well I guess it probably will be the same.  But I would highly recommend an orange float.  :)
• Nothing much happened today, other than a lot of homework and a pretty decent night at work.  I got to call two people from Hawaii at work tonight, and one of them actually answered!  I had a nice long talk with him about everything under the sun.  I was also able to talk to a lady from Omaha who majored in the same thing I'm majoring in, and that was awesome!  She was so supportive motivational.  After talking to her, I felt like I could go climb a mountain or something. Props to her for getting me so pumped up.
• Finally, it started snowing tonight while I was at work.  While I returned to my dorm covered with heaps of snow, I'm pretty glad it's white outside again.  I need to get more use out of my winter boots anyway.  :)

That's about it for today.  Another shout-out goes out to one of my very good friends, who finally turned 18 today.  Welcome to adulthood, little buddy.

Two Minutes in Canada

Before I start out, I should mention that my room did, in fact, warm up.  A couple days after I posted about how cold it was, my roommate and I found the towel that was previously attempting to cover our window to keep the cold air out folded nicely on our chair.  We're assuming that the maintenance guy came and fixed whatever was wrong while we were in class, because the gust of freezing air that was coming in from the closed window was no longer.  After a day or two, our room was back to normal.  So this is my shout-out and giant thank you to the maintenance guy in our building!

Anyway, I just wanted to give you all a little bit of insight into what my new classes are like.  First of all, I think it's pretty awesome that my C&C (C&C is my school's fancy way of saying Composition 2) professor has told us that she'll be texting us as a regular way of communicating, because she realizes that that's a more reliable way of getting in touch with 19-year-olds than emailing them.  Needless to say, she seems like a cool cat, I'm really looking forward to her class.

Now, if you already read the titile of this post, I bet you're wondering how I'm going to tie Canada into this.  Fear not!  I have a story for you, my beloved readers.  :)
So today in my American History class, my professor decided that it would be a good time to tell us how Canada is not nearly as advanced as the United States in [insert random area here] and [insert another random area here].  Fifteen minutes or so later, a guy in my class admitted to her that he moved here from Canada a couple years ago.  (Take a moment to just imagine the outburst of laughter from the entire class, as well as the glowing shade of red that my professor's face turned.  It was absolutely priceless.)
After apologizing for all the insults she had just thrown at my classmate's homeland, she made us all take two minutes out of our day and shout out all the great things we could think of about Canada.  She literally set her timer and made us keep the compliments coming.
So, since I probably owe you all a bullet-pointed list by now anyway, let me share with you some of the lovely things we discussed that come from our northern neighbor:

• Wheat
• Hockey
• The 2010 Winter Olympics
• My contact solution!
• Cold...

We really couldn't come up with much more than that.  As you can imagine, it was a very long two minutes.  But I thought it was pretty adorable when, at the end of the two minutes, my professor shouted out, "We love Canada!!!"
And those two hilarious minutes were a major highlight of my day.

With that, I'll leave you until next time!  Cheers.  :)

Dorm Life: Cold is an Understatement.

Alright, friends and family.  Remember how I told you that it's nice and warm here in sunny Sioux City?  I take that back.  As of yesterday, it's officially freezing down here!  Not only does my face turn redder than the Chinese flag every time I walk to the cafeteria, but there's not even a nice blanket of snow on the ground to make it all worth it.  I must say, I'm very disappointed with Iowa right now.
However, the great outdoors is not the worst part of this frost-bitten weather!  Unlike the rest of the rooms in my hall, my room is colder than...well, here's a bullet-pointed list of the things that my room beats in coldness.

My Dorm Room is Colder Than:

• The giant freezer in the basement back at home.
• Santa's workshop during a power outage.
• Narnia under the White Witch's reign.
• Pluto.  (I had to Google that one.  It's pretty cold over there.)
• The Grinch's heart before it grew three sizes that day.

If that doesn't get the point across, let me just say that my room is like an ice box right now.  To quote my roommate, "It will be like sleeping on an ice cube tonight."  Well said, roomie.

While my cold room is a bit of a downer, I have to admit that over all, life is pretty good here in Sioux City!  I've started my classes now, and it's looking like this is going to be a fun semester.  That being said, I think I'm going to go put on some mittens and wrap myself in several layers of blankets now.  :)

Stay tuned!

Cornfields of Sunshine: Semester 2 Kickoff

Alright friends, it's time for another semester here in Sioux City!  By some crazy miracle, I arrived in town this morning at about 10:30.  There's really not much to report yet, other than the fact that there is absolutely no snow here.  I can't believe it's the middle of January and I don't even have to wear a jacket outside!  I keep looking out my window to make sure it hasn't spontaneously started snowing...but nope!  It looks like a beautiful spring day in the Cornfields of Opportunity.
Speaking of cornfields, I would just like to point out that the ones in southern Minnesota weren't looking too shabby this morning!  I slept for most of the car ride, but I remember waking up at (precisely) 7:57 because I could tell that it was starting to get brighter out.  I opened my eyes to find that I was surrounded by cornfields illuminated by the morning light.  The view was just short of breathtaking.  So I guess I learned my lesson--never take the cornfields for granted!  They just might surprise you.  :)
In other news, I had a lovely Christmas break filled with lots of hockey, shopping and Rock Band.  It was fun while it lasted, but I'm glad to be back in Sioux City.  I'm jumping right back into a regular schedule tomorrow!  The sun is shining, I'm back with my good friends again, and it really is good to be home.
Here's to another awesome semester!