Floooooo Riiiiiiiiii Duh

I'm feeling a need for background info. Last year, I met Oscar. Side note: when a food is labeled Oscar, as in Chicken Oscar, it means there's asparagus with it. I like my chicken with asparagus, so I'm interested in keeping Oscar around. My asparagus is heading off to grad school in August and I've agreed to go with him. But now here's the hard part. Where will we be? He's applied to Ohio State, Indiana U, Purdue, Pitt, UT-Austin, GA Tech, Florida State, and Florida. For now, I'm going to get a job because the idea of school...again...right now....is not something I'm all that interested in. But, I definitely want to keep grad school as an option, so I'm checking them out as well. In the end, we'll decide which school/city has the best options for both of us. Right now, I'm in Tallahassee, visiting FSU.
So, Florida? Florida State University... Tallahassee... Check out this skyline.

This is why I am not interested in Tallahassee. I don't want to live in the shadow of a giant penis.
I spoke to the chair of the printmaking department, Kabuya Bowens. She seems nice. Motherly. Her work is ethnic and feminine, from what I've seen. I think she didn't know what to do when I told her I'd be moving with my boyfriend. She called him my 'friend' at first, saying it'll be nice to have a friend when I get out in the real world. Then she switched to partner. Then, from Jupiter or Neptune, she pulled down 'fiance.' I didn't say anything about marriage. I mean, that's where this is going, but not now. We've got a couple of years to go.
FSU's printmaking facilities are a bit better equipped than USC's. They have 3 working intaglio presses, and several working litho presses. They had 8 or 10 silkscreen tables, but they weren't vacuum tables like USC's. I liked the student silkscreen monotypes that I saw. For the most part, the student work was good...I mean, nice. I mean mostly innocuous, which is better than bad from someone who was just strolling the halls. I then walked to the student union. Eh, it's a college campus. Everybody was talking on cell phones or listening to iPods. At one point, I was walking behind two guys, one saying to the other, "I could talk shit about anybody. Well not you, but name anybody and I could totally talk shit about them." I was in awe. I'm sure this happens at USC, but I'm not judging USC as a future option. Finally, I found the union, and it had an Art Center, which was a glorified frame shop/paint your own pot shop. There was also a real gallery, which was really reassuring.
Later in the day, I went to the grad student "warehouse." It's the Old Navy of college. But no. It's just a warehouse space that they've divided into grad student studio space. Which is way better than the 4 grad students crammed into one classroom at USC. I very nice lady--girl/young woman/female I don't know how to label because she's my age or younger--walked me through their grad student maze. Her work was really cool. She cuts designs out of ornate fabrics, glues them to a canvas, then paints over them. It's got a really great textural quality. Very thick. Apparently, there are no printmaking grad students as of now. I could change that, but really I hope I don't have to. This warehouse, by the way, is pretty far from campus. There's a bail bonds shop in the plaza in front of it as well.
As far as Tallahassee goes, all I can tell you is phallus. I've seen basically three streets worth of it. Tomorrow there will be more ventures into TallC. I hope I can find some kind of focused area of interesting commerce. I know where the mall and large franchises are supposed to be, but I want to find replacements for Blue Cactus, Thai Lotus, Papa Jazz, City Art (even if it is over priced), etc. It's kind of intimidating because I don't know where to start, and Oscar's busy all day with grad school wining & dining. But I think I'll start easy and find Target. Maybe I'll buy a map and mark it up. Maybe then I can use it in a project later this semester.