The Orion - Housing Guide, Spring 2013, Issue 6

CH

ICO

CO

LLEGE LIVING

C H I C OCOLLEGE LIVING







Gardens

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HILLPROP072612R2

NEWN E W S & R E V I E W B U S I N E S S U S E O N L Y

USP (BOLD SELECTION)

PRICE / ATMOSPHERE / EXPERT / UNIQUE

Amen i t i e s

Large 3 & 4 Bedroom / 2 Bath

Townhomes with Garage, Patio,

Washer/Dryer & more.

Fu n ,

F r i e nds ,

C ommu n i t y

L i v e he re ,

Lear n he re ,

L o v e s ta y i n g

he re

E v e n t s

• Welcome BBQ

• Pizza Feed

• Halloween Contest

• Pasta Feed

• Coffee/Pastry Stand

• Sub Sandwich Day

• Taco Feed and Salsa

Contest

• Ice Cream Sunday Bar

• Year-End Luau

• plus free snacks in offi ce

daily

(events subject to change)

www.NordGardens.com

1521 Nord Ave. Chico • Office at Unit #1

530-893-2049

Nord Gardens is taking reservations for the

2013/2014 school year. The complex is usually

fully reserved by the end of May.

Stop by any time to view a furnished model unit.

Enhance Your College Experience at Nord Gardens

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ADVERTISEMENT AND VERIFY THE FOLLOWING:

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SPELLING

NUMBERS & DATES

CONTACT INFO (PHONE, ADDRESSES, ETC.)

AD APPEARS AS REQUESTED

APPROVED BY:

DESIGNER

ISSUE DATE ACCT. EXEC.

MA

07.26.12

BDC

FILE NAME

REV. DATE

HILLPROP072612R2

NEW

N E W S & R E V I E W B U S I N E S S U S E O N L Y

USP (BOLD SELECTION)

PRICE / ATMOSPHERE / EXPERT / UNIQUE

Amen i t i e sLarge 3 & 4 Bedroom / 2 Bath

Townhomes with Garage, Patio,

Washer/Dryer & more.

Fu n ,F r i e nds ,C ommu n i t y

L i v e he re ,Lear n he re ,

L o v e s ta y i n g he re

E v e n t s• Welcome BBQ

• Pizza Feed• Halloween Contest

• Pasta Feed

• Coffee/Pastry Stand

• Sub Sandwich Day

• Taco Feed and Salsa

Contest• Ice Cream Sunday Bar

• Year-End Luau

• plus free snacks in offi ce

daily (events subject to change)

www.NordGardens.com

1521 Nord Ave. Chico • Office at Unit #1

530-893-2049

Nord Gardens is taking reservations for the

2013/2014 school year. The complex is usually

fully reserved by the end of May.

Stop by any time to view a furnished model unit.

Enhance Your College Experience at Nord Gardens

HOUSING GUIDE

HOUSING GUIDE

ISM Management CompanyBACO Realty Corporation

www.ismrem.comwww.bacorealtycorp.com

starting at ONLY $340 per person!

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starting at ONLY $350

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125 Parmac Rd. (530) 345-7377

4Locations

Cedar Park ApartmentsI, II, III, IV

I-1143 N. Cedar- 4 bedroom townhomesII-1147 N. Cedar- 4 bedroom apartmentsIII- 935 W. 4th Ave-3 bedroom apartmentsIV- 1050 Colombus Ave.- 4 bedroom apartments


Creek ViewH O M E S

Beautifully Landscaped apartmentsdesigned for privacy, comfort and

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Quiet, park-like setting.

• Four distinctive fl oorplans allow you to choose the apartment that will fi t your individual lifestyle.

• Units include new dual pane windows,fully equipped kitchen, air conditioning, aprivate balcony or patio and much more.

HOUSING GUIDE

Why cats make good pets

Ads create hometown nostalgia

Living across the street from campus

5 advantages to living alone

Couples ruin peace with fighting

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The Orion encourages letters to the editor and commentary from students, faculty, staff, administration and community members.

• Letters and commentaries may be delivered to The Orion, Plu-mas Hall Room 001. Deadline is 5 p.m. Friday. Letters are also accepted by e-mail and go directly to the opinion editor at [email protected]

• Commentaries should be lim-ited to 500 to 700 words and are subject to editing for length and clarity. Please include your phone number.

• Letters to the editor should be limited to fewer than 300 words, must include writer’s name and phone number (for verification) and are subject to condensation. Please include your year in school and major, or your business title.

• The Orion does not publish anon-ymous letters, letters that are addressed to a third party or letters that are in poor taste. The opinions expressed by The Orion’s colum-nists do not necessarily reflect those of The Orion or its staff.

Contents

Trevor PlattSportS Editor

When it comes to choosing your living situation, whether it is by yourself or with five roommates, it is important to figure out how much you have in common.

Are you similar people? Do you have the same tastes in sports, movies and music?

The most important piece of information to find out about your potential roommates is whether they love cats.

The main reason you should find out is because your new roommates are terrible people if they don’t like cats, which means you shouldn’t live with them.

These little fuzz balls of love can be the absolute bee’s knees in your life, should you choose to get one. After living by myself for half of my junior year, I stumbled across a Craigslist ad offering free kittens.

I had been living by myself and

realized it would be nice to come home to a little fluff ball every night.

It was the day my new, better college life started.

Before I continue, I would like to take a moment to clarify something.

You don't have to be just a cat person.

I love dogs as well and even have two back home. But most col-lege students, including myself, do not have an adequate amount of time to truly devote to a dog.

Cats, however, are easy. All I have to do is pet her twice a day, feed her and clean the litter box. Simple.

In the winter, these little angels provide warmth. As you sleep, they will rest on your face to make sure you lose no warmth through your head.

On days filled with sadness, they will come rest on your chest and stare into your eyes. That’s my cat’s way of saying, “I’m here for you, but can you fill up my bowl?”

While I love my cat and am exceptionally happy with my

decision to save her two years ago, I have learned that cats, like Gremlins, come with rules.

First you must never, ever give them milk. Having been raised on a steady diet of cartoons at a young age, it seemed like a logical decision to give my cat milk when I first brought her home. It was a treat, right?

Wrong. What followed were some of the most horrid kitty farts and feline excrement my nose has ever had the displeasure of encountering.

You should also avoid exposing them to the strips of plastic that come off of milk carton tops.

They can be deadly, because most, if not all, cats will go into freak-out mode and play intensely with them to the point that they are unaware of their surroundings.

Doesn’t sound bad? Wait until that top accidentally ends up near your toe and the clawed edges become sharp spikes impaling the side of your foot.

The last and most important rule is not to acknowledge your cat after 3 a.m.

This is just as important as restraining yourself from feeding the Mogwai after midnight. Your new kitty is nocturnal and may have a tendency to go crazy after that hour.

You can watch your cat's early-morning shenanigans, but don't participate unless you want to be pounced upon in bed and receive kitten nibbles on the nose.

While at first this is adorable, the "awww, cute" feeling stops after the fourth or fifth bite.

So in conclusion, cats are awesome.

If you don’t like cats, you proba-bly enjoy punching babies and are a terrible person. But make sure that if you do make the decision to own a cat you do so responsibly.

Take care of your fuzzy friends. This includes shots, neutering and spaying.

If you take care of them and show them the utmost love, own-ing a cat is sure to be one of your most rewarding college decisions.

Trevor Platt can be reached at

[email protected]

Helpful cat-rearing rules for owners

Ball of fuzztrapper, platt's rescued cat, looks up with feline adoration [left] andsquints hiseyes shut [right].

news all week @ theorion.comHOUSING GUIDE4 |

the orion •PHOTOgRAPHs BY TrEvOr PlaTT


Feeling the pressure...From your wisdom teeth?

530-831-0207CALL TODAY FOR HELP

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Katie Akeson OpiniOn COlumnist

Whenever I turn on my TV, I am greeted by a cheerful flow of familiar characters that entertain me during the commercial break, instantly reminding me of home.

Whether it's the commercial’s mas-cot, the clever catch phrase or the catchy tune, these recurring adver-tisements attach themselves to us and become routine parts of our lives.

Most of the time we begin with a reluctant dislike of the recurring character, yet over the years we find ourselves developing a bond with these personalities.

By whatever technological means we use to watch TV, advertisements have a way of breezing into the space that rests between our favorite shows. Some of these are satisfactory while others remain dull, and the

majority are more or less forgettable. The commercials that make us look up, however, are the ones that resur-face with memorability.

Whether our favorite personality is Flo the Progressive girl, the Trave-locity gnome or the delinquent Sour Patch gummy, the mannerisms of these characters become ingrained in our minds.

Chester Chee-tah has served as the Cheetos mascot since the '80s, but has been recently revamped to serve as the cool instiga-tor who recommends people use Cheetos in acts of revenge.

A couple years ago, I turned a cold shoulder to the new FreeCred-itReport.com group after the original band I had become accustomed to vanished.

Our favorite commercials can be credited for forever altering the

meaning of common phrases like “Can you hear me now?” which will always share ties with the previous Verizon Wireless commercials.

And how many of us have wished that we could “do the jingle” and be saved by the State Farm agent who appears in our backseat?

We don’t always get so attached to these ads, because they are inge-

niously clever. Some of the

commercials are so bad that we are delighted to cut them up. My per-sonal favorites to criticize are Aflac

ads. These obnoxiously catchy com-mercials keep us laughing between our favorite shows and provide a wel-comed oasis of family and home.

My theory is that these advertise-ments encapsulate the same feelings of relaxation and gratification we felt during the shows we watched. Watching television serves as quality

time with our friends and family and allows us to temporarily forget about our troubles and release our stresses.

Commercials remind us not only of home, but also of that awesome six-hour "The Walking Dead" marathon we indulged in last weekend.

We unconsciously recognize these characters have been around for a while and will probably be around for a while to come, and this stability provides us with a sense of security.For college students, these commer-cials channel familiar faces into our unfamiliar surroundings and remind us of home in an unthreatening way.

While we may convince ourselves that we will never be caught dead humming the “Who’s that Lady?” song from the Swiffer Sweeper com-mercials or that we'll never take a liking to the Aflac Duck, we may find ourselves a little heartbroken when they are finally taken off the air.

Katie Akeson can be reached at

[email protected]

Ads remind students of home lifenews all week @ theorion.comHOUSING GUIDE6 |

The commercials that make us look up are

the ones that resurface with memorability.

Katrina CameronFeatures editor

I live so close to campus that I often roll out of bed 15 minutes before my 9 a.m. class begins.

Although that doesn’t sound like much time, during those 15 minutes I brush my teeth, put a little makeup on, throw my hair in a bun and speed-walk to the third floor of Tehama Hall with a min-ute to spare.

Living ridiculously close to cam-pus was all I cared about when I signed my lease. But the longer I live with the Wildcat Recreation Center across the street to my left and the Student Services Center to the right, the more I question if I can deal with being in the center of downtown Chico.

There are definitely a few pros and cons to my living situation, so take these into consideration when you go house-hunting. You might be interested in living this close if you’re a procrastinator or a party animal.

Pros:

Catching up on Z'sI press the snooze button when

my blaring alarm goes off at least five times every morning. I’d like to apologize to my boyfriend and my roommate for this.

As long as my bag is packed for the day ahead of time, I can catch up on as much sleep as possible right before class.

Shoot, I even go home to nap between classes sometimes. If I have 20 minutes, I definitely have enough time to get a power nap in.

Perfect attendanceBelieve it or

not, I haven't missed one class last semester.

I’m the type of student who needs to be pres-ent in class and vigorously take notes during lec-tures, because I’ll fall behind if I miss a day.

I’ll come to school equipped with cough drops, tissues and hand sanitizer before I take a sick day.

Being more activeWith my busy schedule, I prob-

ably wouldn’t be able to find the time to work out throughout the week if the WREC wasn’t literally right outside my window.

I don’t have to worry about walking home late at night, some-one stealing my belongings from a locker or changing in the locker-room.

Ironically, my laziness has made me a more active person.

Cons:

Keeping a party smallI will never throw a dance party

at my house again, not after all the damage random partiers did to my backyard last semester.

Downtown drunks mixed with inexperienced freshmen crawl-ing out from the dorms sniffing out parties were probably drawn

to the loud music and flashing lights before they made the assumption they could just join the party and trash my yard.

This is just a guess, but I think I knew about 50 of the 300-plus

guests who graced my shindig with their unwanted presence.

Once a party gets that out of hand and people don’t recog-nize who lives there, there’s no turning back, and your house is automatically one of those "crazy party houses” with large, myste-rious stains on the carpet and no toilet paper.

It’s always loudI figured the streets of down-

town Chico would be near silent compared to the city noises I grew up listening to in San Diego.

Well, I was very wrong. If it isn’t the drunken obnox-

ious shouts of “Yeah!” and “Woo!”

coming from patrons walking home from Riley’s or Madison Bear Garden, then it’s the crappy music coming from house parties or pedi-cab drivers.

I’ve literally heard my neigh-bors play country music until 6 a.m. Sunday morning. I have also shouted at a pedi-cab driver at 3 a.m. to turn his distorted-sound-ing speakers down.

Needless to say, I don’t get much studying done at home during the weekend without blasting my own tunes through my headphones.

My house is oldSometimes I can’t help but won-

der how old this place is, how many people have lived in these rooms and what has happened within these corridors throughout the years.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my roommate and I have been the absolute cleanest and most care-ful tenants our humble abode has housed.

Our upstairs balcony is tilted forward, most of our windows don’t lock, the ventilation is terri-ble and my bathroom is the size of a broom closet.

We also don’t have any basic amenities like a clothes washer or a dryer, but luckily, I can do my laundry at my boyfriend’s newer apartment on Nord Avenue.

Katrina Cameron can be reached at

[email protected]

6 pros and cons of living ridiculously close to campus


You might be interested in living this close if you're a procrastinator or a

party animal.

Thomas Martinez OpiniOn COlumnist

So you lived in the dorms and

didn’t like it. Now you're thinking, “Let me find a roommate like me on Craigslist.”

Six months pass after you move in with the one you find, and you're fighting constantly. That didn’t work.

Have you consider living by your-self for a little bit? I've discovered firsthand that it's really affordable to live by yourself.

Here are some reasons why you should re-evaluate your living con-ditions before next semester and try living by yourself in the fall.

Privacy

Everyone knows that living by yourself comes with privacy. But it doesn't become clear just how much

privacy you get until you move in. You get the privacy that lets you

hang out in your birthday suit all day.

You can do this sort of thing when you live alone.

Studying Most hard-charging Wildcats set-

tle for visiting the library to finish their homework.

But what about when it’s raining and you have an extensive research paper to write? You can go in the rain and get wet, or you can write out that paper in the comfort of your gym clothes. You can also study in the nude if you prefer, because guess what? No roommates.

Pursue relationships

Have you ever had that annoying roommate who’s just always around in the living room when you're try-ing to seal the deal with the person you brought home?

There's also the roommate who

claims, "Half of the front room is mine,” or the famous, “I pay rent here, too.”

The solution to this problem we've all encountered is to live by yourself.

HobbiesYou might have nosy roommates

who go into your room and get into your stuff. That can be really, really annoying at times. You might even consider not pursuing a hobby because of it.

I have found that living by myself allows me to pursue a hobby free from any bothers.

I can leave my house the way I left it, and when I come back I never hear, “Sorry, bro. I broke your Xbox.”

Cleanliness

This one is pretty self-explana-tory: when you live solo, you can be as clean — or as dirty — as you want.

When you leave your dishes piled up for a couple of days and come home from a hard day at school or work, you might tell yourself that you'll simply do the dishes tomorrow.

And if you live by yourself, you can do that.

Whatever your living conditions might be and whatever the prob-lems that come with living with roommates are, remember that you don't have to have roommates at all in college.

If you don’t want to do your dishes one night, you don’t have to do them.

And you won't have to come home to excuses about how there's some-thing wrong with your laptop from a roommate who has been vegging all day.

Thomas Martinez can reached at

[email protected]

Living alone provides several benefitsnews all week @ theorion.comHOUSING GUIDE8 |

Quality

Value

Respect

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Chico, CA 95928

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Katie Akeson OpiniOn COlumnist

Consider this: you are exerting every ounce of your energy toward unraveling the mysteries of quantum physics when the couple next door begins arguing.

As the argument escalates, the vol-ume rises and you hear every word being heedlessly expelled.

Soon one of them is storming out the door yelling obscenities, and the chapter you're reading is drowned out by domestic drama.

Every couple has a right to the occasional argument, but not if they fight in a way that broadcasts their problems to the world. And it seems as though these rowdy couples pick the most inconvenient times to insti-gate arguments.

Whether I am trying to study, Skype with friends, or talking on the phone, the pestering noise thun-dering in the background makes it impossible for me to focus. Students have plenty of stress without these pub-lic brawls pounding additional headaches into their lives.

These couple-scuf-fles wouldn’t be so bad if the volume wasn’t at a level that affected everyone around.

If both parties kept their voices down, it would allow them to main-tain a calm, rational mindset while communicating, and it would ensure that the details of their personal lives would remain private.

The last thing I want my mom to

overhear on the phone are the exple-tives being yelled across the hallway.

A friend of mine who lives in University Village is constantly com-plaining about a couple that lives in the building across from her.

On a few occasions they have put their own twist on a scene from "Romeo and Juliet:" she screams vulgarities down at him from the bal-cony while he scrambles around the lawn gathering whatever belongings she has tossed to the ground.

My friends from Lassen Hall share similar — although less dramatic — stories of the endlessly feuding couples that live on their floor. From what I’ve been told, it seems as if cou-ples tend to cross the border into the girl's side to launch their battle.

Relationship drama is meant to stay within the relationship, and shouldn’t be shared with neighbors or the general public.

These arguments sometimes turn some of us into cheerleaders, rooting for one side or the other. But I would rather grab my headphones in an attempt to drown out the irritating

noise. No matter how

I cope, the fact remains: I have become a captive audience mem-ber to the ongoing drama.

Those who are about to slip into a screaming duel with their partner should be aware of the people around them and keep it down. A low volume, sarcastic snarl can sufficiently replace screeching at an ear-splitting level.

Katie Akeson can be reached at

[email protected]

Noisy fights eliminate peaceful environmentfor schoolwork, talking


These couple-scuffles wouldn't be so bad if the volume wasn't at a level that affected everyone around.

SPRING 2013



Documents

The Orion - Housing Guide, Spring 2013, Issue 6