Hadn't thought of that in years!  You're right, Angie -- we used to love the smell (which is probably NOT a good thing).  But later I learned that the damned stuff was probably doing biological damage even at that early age.  Of course, I imagine that I've done a lot more damage to myself in the years since, just through a somewhat questionable lifestyle that includes a serious devotion to Coors Light (the blessed essence of the amber hops).

And nothing is quite as spectacular as a sunrise viewed from a duck blind in the east Arkansas floodways.

Yeah, undergrad and masters degrees from ASU.  Started the Ph.D. at Texas, then transferred to North texas to finish it.  But fell in love with Austin and the university -- at least as they were in the 1980s.  It's all changed so much now, and that's a real shame.

I don't think I ever had a tiger avatar, though there is one message baord used by football officials where I use an animated avatar of a cat dancing -- just because it looks weird.

God's favorite color??  How can that be obnoxious??

You asked also about Mississippi -- I went there as a Department Chair, then became an Associate Dean.   Sometime we can talk about the image of Oxford and the reality.  They are two distinctly and miserably different things.  Not that there are no positives at all -- just FAR more negatives. 

I've become quite taken with Kansas.  I already knew about the educational system in the Midwest -- the best in the nation, hands down.  The people are warm, open and down to earth.  Weather is usually quite good -- not as cold as Iowa, but not nearly as miserably hot as Mississippi. 

Now, only a fool would try and compare the scenery in Kansas to that of western Arkansas.  But there is a stark beauty to the isolation of the tallgrass prairie that allows a person to slow down and reflect upon the higher values of life.  The immensity, the vastness of the plains is a sort of beauty that I am growing to appreciate more with every passing day.  Watch some of the prairie scenes from 'Dances with Wolves' -- a good part of this region is a lot like that. 

There is much to say for this place.

But I still hate the mosquitoes.