Half Way Through November? Already?

It is crazy to think that we have lived here for four months now.  Megan and I are both in crunch time as our semesters are rapidly coming to a close.

In honor of Ricky Perry, we decided to come up with a list of our top three things we like the most about St. Louis:
1) The three of us are all here together.
2) Everyday is an adventure.
3) uhhhh.......ummmmm.........uhhhhhh.........the EPA?


For Halloween, Gizmo was a professor.  Her Aunt Amanda was kind enough to make her that awesome tie!

Yeah.....it was one of those weeks.  Even Gizmo was pooped out by Friday.  We are all ready for Thanksgiving break and for our families to come out and visit.

"Gizmo! Its 10 o'clock!  Time to get out of bed and be productive with your Saturday.  Now go lick your butt or jump on Luke's computer while he is working or something..."

The days are still sunny and warm enough that Gizmo can enjoy her mornings and afternoons relaxing outside.

You will never guess where we ate tonight...

Here is some raw footage from our the rest of our night...

Until next time.

Life in the Lou' Continues...

So it is official, Megan and I made it through the first half of our semesters!  October was a pretty awesome month overall.  We both had our birthdays, Megan's mom came out to visit, our friend Ona dropped by for a quick visit as well, and the Cardinals won the World Series.

I will quickly say that downtown St. Louis on the night the Cardinals won was insanely awesome!  The city came alive and it was awesome to see so many people downtown, happy, and proud of their city.  I had flashbacks to when my Dad pulled us out of school to go downtown after the Broncos won Super Bowl XXII for the parade.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to find all of my favorite brews from back home, which by the way are sold at the grocery store.

We also went to this really awesome restaurant with Megan's mom called the Bridge.  Their beer list was incredible for two reasons: 1) It was full of fantastic beers, including the best from back home. 2) They don't carry ANY Anheuser-Busch products.

My Octo-beard entertained my students a lot more than I had anticipated.  I don't think a day went by when I didn't receive a comment about it such as: "You look Amish Mr. Finney,""Mr. Finney are you growing your beard out so you can be Wolverine for Halloween?"  But my personal favorite comment came from the test I gave on Friday.  I always have a section on my tests where my students can just tell me whats on their mind, what I can do better on in the class, or tell me what they like/dislike about class.  One of my student's wrote the following:

With Halloween being tomorrow, the staff's theme is super heroes.  Since not a week has gone by where I haven't been called "Peter Parker" or "Spiderman" by my students (or even complete strangers for that matter) I felt it is only appropriate that I dress accordingly:

Gizmo is still being her super-adorable self.

Donors Choose!

In other news, I am trying to get some supplies for my classroom through a donation website called "Donors Choose."  I provide each of my students with a file folder for all of their class work.  I have been storing these folders in cardboard boxes which are quickly falling apart.  I set up a Donors Choose project to get some file folder holders for each one of my classes since the cost of personally buying these folders is pretty steep.  My project is hosted at the following link: http://www.donorschoose.org/we-teach/1042204.1657302239 for people to come and donate money to it.  I am about $100 dollars away from having my project completely funded and being able to get these resources for my classroom.  If you or anyone you know would like to donate my students and I would greatly appreciate it!


We hope everyone has a great Halloween!

Luke, Megan, and Gizmo

We are all getting older.

 Well, I have been with my bipeds for 1 year this month! They celebrated by putting me in a sweater and taking pictures. I didn't know they were celebrating because I wasn't having fun.

Megan's mom was in town for a couple days.

 She visited the bookstore and got this jacket.

Bipeds went to city museum but they didn't check the times. Silly bipeds don't know about the internet for these things, it was closed when they got there.

 Instead they went to this place. I heard they had good beer and good food but I wasn't invited.

 This is probably the closest to baseball fans we will get. 

Another treat I didn't get to try.

Sorry I've been busy...

Sorry that neither myself nor the bipeds has updated in a while, we have all been quite busy.

I have been helping Luke with all of his lesson planning and grading.  Look how much fun he thinks it is!

Yeah I nap with my baby blanket, don't you?

Some times, I piss inside.   I just get so excited when the bipeds come home and hang up their coats!   

Occasionally, they leave me alone for too long.  This time, I made some confetti and put it all over the apartment.  There wasn't any construction paper handy, so I made it out of toilet paper.

- Gizmo (taglines are so two weeks ago)

Sightings

Just a couple things I've seen.

1. This is Luke's rat tail. He is still thinking about picking out a name.

2. This rose was silent auction item at a local church. Read carefully, "(broken) pieces can be glued." How did two people bid on this?

Hot Sauce.

Aside from our crazy weeks, the weekends provide us the opportunity to work at a little slower pace and recharge our batteries.  Megan and Gizmo have recharging their batteries down to an art.

We were unable to find any Tabasco sauce when we first got here.  This made meals not nearly as enjoyable until we got a care package from Megan's parents with a super-sized bottle in it. 

Since we lack a T.V. and a coffee table, our version of "Dinner and a Movie" is a little unconventional.

After four weeks of grading, I have used half of the ink in this pen.  I have never used ink so fast in my life.

 Megan and Gizmo normally look on and laugh at my misfortune when I'm grading.  But at least they're cute when they do it.

Megan spends a lot of time at her desk pouring through legal texts, assembling outlines, writing papers, and watching the occasional FailBlog.org videos.  The desk is off limits to anything with a pulse except for Megan.  Occasionally I sit at it when Megan isn't looking.

Labor Day Weekend

The weekend did not start off good for me.  The bi-peds tricked me with loads of treats into taking a bath.  

I forgave them quickly though because they have been working really hard.  To reward them for all of their hard work, I decided to take them to Forest Park for a picnic!

The park is about four miles from where we live, so we drove there.  I lost the privilege of having my own rolled down window after I jumped out of the car on 136th ave. in July.  I don't mind though because now I cruise with my head over Luke's shoulder.

So many things to do at the park.

At the park, they had all the essentials: yogurt, tricuits & cheese, peaches, and pretzels & jalapeno mustard.

I tried to look as cute as possible in hopes that the bi-peds would give me some of their food.

It didn't work out. It appeared they were having a good time so I indulged them a little and took their picture (this is difficult without thumbs).

Haters Gonna Hate. Corgis Gonna Corg.

-Gizmo