The Beaver is Doing the Richardson Dance

So, I have made my move to the great state of Oregon.  Both myself and my roommate are moved in and I'm pretty much loving it so far.  I found out that the roomy is actually 18 years old and doesn't have a driver's license, but that's not really a big deal.  The good news is that he's a computer (science) nerd and is pretty mellow.  So basically, we're both just socially capable enough to hold a decent conversation, but just socially awkward enough to leave each other alone most of the time.  It's pretty awesome.

The rest of my likes and dislikes I'll be putting into list form, so here you go:

Dislikes

• My apartment is in the middle of little Mexico.  Seriously, very few of my immediate neighbors speak English.
• The walls of my apartment are nothing but lumber, drywall, and air.  You can hear everything that goes on within 20 feet of your apartment walls, on any side.  Most this goes on in Spanish.
• Along these same lines, the door to my bedroom doesn't currently close... at all.  Neither brute force nor gentle persuasion will make it go to its home.  We'll see how quick they are on my maintenance request.
• More generally, the university is apathetic to the concerns of student housing.  Living in the 1-mile radius at BYU made rent slight higher, but it also provided some protections for students.  Namely, BYU ensured that student housing included furniture and mail keys for their students.  Since I've arrived here, I've had to spend a boatload of cash on furniture and I haven't been able to check my mail.
• The university and surrounding entities are profoundly liberal.  I went to a GTA orientation this week in which one of the presentations was on "The Diverse Student Populations of Oregon State University."  My dad suggested that this particular brand and level of liberalism was best described by the term 'pure collectivism,' with which I can hardly disagree.

Likes

• The people in my ward are pretty freakin' awesome.  I've never been quick to make legitimate friends, but it's been happening here so far.  
• There are more women than men.  During my Memorial Day trip up here, I figured that the ratio was about 60/40.  After attending this week, I'd estimate it's more like 55/45... either way I see plenty of women without feeling like I'm swimming in the estrogen ocean.  When you're an engineer, that's a nice change of pace.
• As I mentioned already, my roommate is pretty cool.
• The university has really nice accommodations.  The nice thing about going to a state school is that no one's all that apprehensive about spending the taxpayers' money.  As a grad student, I get my own desk and shelf space with my own computer.  It's pretty legit.
• Even in a disastrous football year, the students have spirit.  At BYU, students often walked around in other universities' apparel and wore pink and brown horizontal striped shirts to football games even when the team went 11-2.  I would always vomit a little in my mouth when I'd see someone wearing a USC shirt on campus (or even worse, the University of SpUtah.)
• I have my own car here.  Honestly, I'm sure how I survived 4 years as an undergrad without at least something resembling a motor vehicle.

 So far, I've been thinking that the state of Oregon and Oregon State University are pretty cool.  This might be really put to the test when I head down to the DMV to get my car registered in Oregon, but I'm going to need to actually be able to check my mail before that happens.  ;P