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Ok. Time’s running out. Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and you still haven’t come up with any gushingly romantic plans for you and your sweetheart. In fact, you still haven’t found that perfect gift to show just how much you care, and you don’t even know where to start. Maybe it’s your first year to ever have a Valentine, and you’re getting a bit lost and confused in the commercialized sea of red, pink and white. Never fear, we’ve done some Valentine scouting to help guide you through the last-minute shopping craze, so that you can concentrate on making Friday a day of love instead of a night of “I’m sorry honey” over wilted floral left-overs and Golden Corral buffet lines. Why not say “I love you” the conventional way - send your sweetheart a bouquet of flowers. We checked out some of the local floral shops for prices, packages and special offers. If you don’t plan on having them delivered, and you want to save a few extra dollars, order them from the Brookshires floral department. Two dozen vased roses will only cost you $39.99, as opposed to the best delivery option we found from United Market Street. Ordering one dozen roses delivered from them will cost you $49.99. Other floral shops around town ranged anywhere from $65 to $75 per delivered dozen. If you want to spice up your arrangement, each flower shop had amenities, such as stuffed bears and other animals, boxed chocolates and balloons you can add for additional fees ranging from $9 to $20. And each shop had other flower arrangement choices as well. Tulips and daisies are usually cheaper, and they aren’t as expected as the usual red rose. (A word of caution: Don’t send carnations. That suggests cheap, a relatively unromantic message.) Maybe you want to send something a little less conventional, you know, a little “outside the vase thinking.” If you have your heart dead-set on delivering your token of love to your Valentine, United Market Street offers Be Mine Soft Drinks, consisting of a 6-pack of his or her beverage of choice with a package of Russell Stover candy, decorated in ribbons and balloons. These highly decorated Coke cans cost $21.99. Or call The Basketcase. They deliver a Box of Love for $21. When your true love opens this cute, white box, a happy little balloon floats out to greet him or her, uncovering the chocolates inside. For a really hairy twist, call EMB Goodies. Place any order for $40 or more, and it will be delivered to your sweetheart’s door by a giant hot-pink gorrilla. This shop offers goods such as sweet candy, romantic candles, chic jewelry and gourmet foods. For him, they offer customized golf baskets and personalized BBQ sets, just to name a few. Then, there is always the last minute gift certificates. Since these can be seen as fairly impersonal, make it count. Wichita Falls has a few good day spas that offer a variety of packages. And if you want to give your significant other something you both can enjoy together, Spa Bella European Day Spa and Brook Street Day Spa both offer couples packages. To make your celebration of love complete, a special dinner is in order. Beware the crowds. To avoid getting stuck in the limbo of restaurant wait lists, plan ahead, at least for one day. Either go to an early dinner and plan a romantic activity for later, or do something first and go to a later dinner. Try to avoid the peak times from about 6 to 8 p.m. since only one of the nicer places in town takes reservations, or call-ahead seating. Just remember, the best received gifts are those given from the heart, and the best gift of love is just to show that you care. Happy Valentine’s.
Do you feel it? Stress. That sneaky little thing that seems to creep itself into every student’s life about this time each semester. What better way to treat yourself, or your loved one, this time of year than to a nice, soothing massage, right? There’s just one thing, amidst the tests to study for and projects to start on, there is just no time to spend a day at a salon that is too pricey for your budget anyway. Why not get the gift that keeps on giving all year round, a full-body massaging mat? Homedics makes a five-motored massager that gently soothes those study pains or Valentine heartaches away with heated waves directed to your shoulders, back, waist, thighs and calves. The best thing about this product is that you can control the intensity of the massaging pads, low, medium and high. You can also decide which parts you want on or off with a quick flick of the switch on the control panel. And it’s portable, so you can roll it up and take it wherever you go. Maybe you or that special someone in your life needs some time to rejuvenate or to work out those stiffened neck muscles due to pouring over books and test reviews for hours on end. If you hate studying in an upright chair, try putting the massaging mat in the chair while you study. (Just don’t get too comfy and fall asleep. That would tend to defeat the purpose.) Or maybe you’re just tired after fighting the Valentine Day dinner- and-a-movie crowd, and you just want to unwind. Grab the mat, put in some soothing music, dim the lights and settle in for a delightful treat, although you might need to turn the volume up to hear the music over the hum of the massaging motors. The only thing I found unpleasant beside the constant humming noise was the price. I bought the massager at Wal-Mart for about $38 plus tax, but I didn’t feel like it was worth that much. I enjoyed the massaging affects, but it didn’t stack up well against the real thing, especially if we talking Valentine’s Day gifts here. It’s always nice to receive a good massage from real person, rather than a black, padded mat. All things considered, I decided the gouge in my pocketbook was just too big a pain that the mat just couldn’t massage away.
Student
Web site offers love for all Have you been
looking for love in all the wrong places? Are you frustrated because
you haven’t found that someone special at Graham’s or Stage West?
MSU senior James Ratcliff may have a solution for you. The computer
science major has created MyLoved.com, a personal dating service
Web site specifically designed for MSU students and Wichita Falls
residents. “I was very frustrated at Yahoo and many of the other
personals that had gone to pay sites,” Ratcliff said. “There are
not a lot of places online that are easy to use to find people
in specific areas like (MSU and Wichita Falls).” When a user logs
on to MyLoved.com, he or she can register his or her name and
interact with other registered users. Ratcliff said the response
has been good so far. “We have just released the site, so not
everyone knows it exists yet,” he said. “Less than 100 have registered
so far, but that is strictly from word of mouth, and my word of
mouth doesn’t reach as far as it used to.” Some Internet users
may worry about their protection when they use personal dating
Web sites such as MyLoved.com. Ratcliff said he was concerned
about it, too. “There is a lot of worry over cyber-stalkers and
such on the Internet, and I personally receive a large amount
of spam to my e-mail addresses,” he said. “To handle this, when
registering, (the site) doesn’t display any personal information
such as phone numbers and e-mail addresses. I designed an in-house
reply form so that mail is sent through our server to the address.”
Ratcliff, 25, pays $100 a year to keep the domain name MyLoved.com,
which he says is low cost and worth it. “Some domains are cheaper,
but this one has proven to be very well taken care of,” he said.
Ratcliff is actively searching for monetary sponsors to help foot
the cost to maintain the site. “To do larger projects and to put
full effort into a Web site does require a lot of time,” he said.
Ratcliff has created other successful Web sites with HerbsDelivered.com,
his greatest success story yet. “I made quite a bit of money on
that one and enjoyed a little better lifestyle,” he said. “It
is hard to do too much on your own, and it has come to the point
where I either have to get a single company sponsor, or I need
to get a group of people together to work.” Ratcliff said he has
a good feeling about the success of MyLoved.com. “I added features
like a chat room, no pop-up ads or banners, a forum for people
to post in, a ‘Dear Abby’ type of question answerer, the matchmaking
history from Ireland and tips on love,” he said. Another thing
visitors of the Web site can do is register for promotional freebies
because Ratcliff is giving away free dinners to Olive Garden or
Red Lobster. All of the services offered on the Web site are free.
Although there have been no success stories of couples getting
together because of the Web site, Ratcliff said it is just a matter
of time before things start happening. “It’s a new site, and people
just need to get wind of it,” he said. Ratcliff did not meet his
girlfriend on a personals Web site, but he has met several friends
through one. “I use it as a way to make friends more than a tool
to get dates,” he said. “But people are more than welcome to use
MyLoved.com to get dates.”
Budget_________________________________continued
from Main unanimously approved the increase last year. One of the fee increases that Mills has thrown around with the senate was a possible computer use fee increase. “If we could increase the amount by one or two dollars it could save the university a lot of money,” Mills said. The other main concern of students was in the housing and resident life areas, where they would more directly see an impact on a daily basis. Assistant Director of Housing Danny Reddick has spoken to the Resident Assistants about his ideas on how to save money for the rest of the year. “We are one of the only divisions on campus that is constantly spending money on upkeep and necessities,” Reddick. Some of the measures that are planned include turning off hallway lights at night and reminding students to turn out the lights when they are not in their dorm rooms. Reddick said the dorms already use low wattage lights in the halls to save power. “Our goal is to minimally affect the students when it comes to the housing aspect,” Reddick said. A potential rise in cost of living in the dorms was another topic that the Housing office has addressed. “I don’t anticipate those numbers to change at all due to these cuts,” said Reddick of the cost for the new campus apartments. The cost had been determined by attempting to undercut the cost of an off campus apartment with the same amenities. Reddick would like to keep it that way. One group of students who could feel negative affects more than most is the international population of MSU. The possibility exists that the administration will have to cut scholarship money available to bring those students from overseas. “Those students are too important to (MSU) to lose. They are such good people and they bring a lot more to MSU than just financial gain,” Rogers said. It would be difficult for MSU to retain those students if other universities can offer a more competitive wager to them. “It is not that we are too reliant on them to provide the money. Actually, I think that we are more reliant on the metroplex and Internet courses for our revenue,” Rogers said. “Those are the areas that we have concentrated on to bring in revenue and places we will have to attempt to bring in more students from.” Rogers feels that it would be more of a benefit to recruit students to not rely on raising tuition, but to capitalize on students who leave the schools they are at now because of increases.
Grandparents__________________________continued
from Main thinking about my grandmother, I had to think about my driving and just getting there safely,” Rogers said. Doctors later diagnosed her to have suffered a heart attack a few days earlier. When she heard the news Rogers was hit with a hard reality: “I could lose my grandmother,” she thought. Roger’s took comfort in her faith. “My grandmother is a Christian. I knew that if she did pass away that it was in God’s hands and that she would be with Him. That’s the only thing that would comfort me.” Roger’s grandmother underwent bypass surgery, but isn’t recovering as well as was hoped. Williams would often drive to Oklahoma where her grandparents lived to help take care of them. She could’ve opted to not go, but Williams said, “I’d rather miss a class.” Being occupied with sick and dying grandparents while being away at school only makes stress worse, Chaviers said. “They can’t be there or they feel like they have to be there, so they leave and they miss classes,” she said. “It affects their work academically, so there’s this torn aspect to it.” “They’ve got their minds on that a lot and it’s hard for them to focus and concentrate,” Chaviers said. Coping with the loss of her grandfather was difficult at times. “It seemed like everything I thought of, I could trace back to him,” Williams said. “It was very lonely.” For once the hectic schedule of school was a blessing. “Being at school kept me busy. Kept me from breaking down and crying,” she said. Chaviers said the best way for someone to deal with the illness or death of a loved one is to talk about it. However, at times a listening ear can be hard to find. “When we have a friend who is grieving or really worried and upset, we want them to get better because it makes us uncomfortable to see their pain,” Chaviers said. “Don’t think, ‘I don’t want to bring it up because they aren’t already thinking about it. I don’t want to make them start thinking about it,’” Chaviers said. “Chances are they’re thinking about it anyway.” The best thing is to listen to someone going through a hard time. No special words are required. “Just be there and let them talk. Be a good listener,” she advises. “You don’t have to know the right things to say.” Williams has been able to gleam a lesson from the difficulties that come with struggling to understand the effects of ageing. She’s learned about herself. “I take advantage of the fact that my grandparents live an hour away and I could go see them anytime I want,” she said. “I take advantage of the fact that my family will be there when I want them to be.”
Serenade
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a Full-time Job? Oh,
Deer! High
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Monday Night at the Improv!
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