Houston, Seattle, or Illinois?

[Jdvn1]

i'd feel safer going to school in Texas.

We're a big NRA state. Though, I guess that makes you as likely to be shot as you are as likely to be protected by someone with a gun.

Maybe it evens out.

Roaches, well, personally I've only seen five in a year and a half, but one does hear stories. My own sightings are split roughly evenly between the little domestic guys and the big Texas-sized ones, which fortunately don't hang around indoors except when they need to get out of the rain, which they don't handle well. The latter are the creepiest things I've ever seen in my life, not counting one of my sister's ex-boyfriends. Keeping a clean apartment will keep the domestic ones at bay but there's nothing you can do about the big tree roaches.

I don't get very many roaches in my part of town--2 in a year?--but I certainly agree that keeping a clean place makes a significant difference.

Would you believe I completely missed Owlcon? I was a bit sick, but mainly it was that there was practically no buzz on campus about it and so I wasn't aware it had arrived until it was nearly over.

I imagine at Rice you don't get any buzz about it except from FastWarp, (some) gamers, or (some) gaming stores. It's only partially run by FastWarp, and gets a lot of help from outside community members who are just passionate about the con. I think the proportion of gamers on campus is such that buzz doesn't really get around except maybe for particular circles, and lots of people not connected with Rice are the majority of con-goers. I guess that's true with any niche market, though.

 

[Jdvn1]

It's hardly isolated. Champaign is less than 2 hours from Indianapolis, less then three hours from Chicago, and less than 4 hours from St. Louis, with easy interstate travel to all three. Weekend roadtrips to big city attractions are not uncommon. Champaign has an airport and daily trains to Chicago.

I really can't say much about any of the places other than Houston here, but in my opinion, if going to a city requires weekend travel, then you're isolated. In Houston, you can see just about all of its attractions in 30-45 minutes if it's not rush hour, and I imagine the same is true with Seattle. City attractions aren't weekend roadtrips or even daytrips.