The Barometer Online

In the U.S., it seems that Europe is considered an ideal travel destination for two reasons: firstly the promise of attractive Europeans (a myth I'm afraid to dispel), and secondly the lure of being able to buy alcohol. While it's true that the drinking age in Europe is officially 18, on the continent it's actually possible to buy alcohol at a much younger age.

While discussing the best and worst of Halloween costumes seen on the streets of Corvallis in the newsroom Sunday, the topic of Sesame Street's Cookie Monster came up after one Barometer staffer claimed to have seen a staged brawl between two Cookie Monster characters on Saturday night.

On Sunday, I believe we had a shared experience, OSU. We woke up groggy - likely still in our Halloween outfits - looked at our wall clocks and groaned at the hour. We stretched out of wherever it was we fell asleep the night before (hopefully, a bed) and tried to remember how we got there.

It's never fun to be upstaged. It's even worse when the one wrecking your self-esteem has the same acronym as you. Ohio State University (known in some circles as the "other" OSU) has built a better mousetrap that surpasses even our edible silverware in terms of sheer greatness.

Guys, I don't know if you've noticed, but the women you see every day are in college. They have more important things to be thinking about than checking out the dudes on their way to class. But, dudes, it seems like y'all don't have anything better to do. I am one of the 10,000 women on campus whose attention, every day, is pulled in two different directions - caught between following our own train of thought and trying to keep that one vital piece of information for the chemistry midterm in our minds, or dealing with the barrage of lookers, gawkers and sneak-peekers.