Saturday, October 10, 2009

Random thoughts on random things

Hello, dear blog readers. It's snowing, which is really no surprise since this is Colorado. Even after four years of living here, it still amazes and delights me to see snow so early on. Granted, I do get sick of snow after about a month of it around, but for now it makes me feel alive and like a little kid.

It's funny to me how many things are different in Colorado than in Missouri. For one, it rains a lot less here than it does in the Midwest. This can be both good and bad. The good thing about it is that there's a lot less humidity during the spring and summer than there is in St. Louis, as well as less tornadoes (I am led to believe that this summer was an exception...). The bad thing is that the rain in Missouri was soothing and familiar - with less of it here, I have this tendency to get restless. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not helpful at times either.

Another thing that I find to be different is the cost of living. I've lived out here for four years now and I still can't get over the fact that everything costs. In St. Louis, the zoo was free, the science museum was free, and the parks and wildlife centers were mostly free. It was easier to do things because they were cheaper or free. It seems to me that Colorado expects people to ooze money, when the majority of us can't.

Restaurants are different too. Back in the Midwest we had Steak-and-Shake, White Castle, and the Sonics had these things called Cheddar Bites that are basically fried cheese curds. Here, we have places like Gunther Toody's and Tokyo Joes (which has really good spicy tuna rolls - if you have not tried them, you really should...). The Sonics out here lack the fried cheese. And there are no White Castles. You can only get them from the frozen food isle at the grocery stores and they are disgusting.

That's another difference here - the grocery chains. In St. Louis there are Deirburgs and Schnucks to supplement Wal-Mart. Here there are King Soopers and Safeway. They are the same basic stores with different names.

Anyway. Dispite all of the changes between here and there, I have come to the realization that I have no desire to move back to Missouri. I like Colorado dispite the crazy weather patterns and the fact there are bears and mountain lions (I will not tent camp here because of that - at least in Missouri all I had to deal with were raccoons.. ( : ). I now see it as my home and as my future home. I can't imagine leaving the mountains for anything.

Well, except maybe the ocean, but that's beside the point.

Until the next time, dear cyber readers...