Christmas Shopping & Other Holiday Stuff

Last Minute Bargains Anyone?


Usually by this time on the calendar in recent years I've already gotten my Christmas Cards mailed and most if not all of my Christmas gifts on the way to their recipients.

Not so this year...for a variety of reasons including myopia and dyslexia and laziness and sloveness and by and large CASH FLOW because we've spent a TON of money getting relocated out here to the Okla-By-God-Dang-Homa and even when I had the CASH I didn't have the time and we refuse to put Christmas presents on a Credit Card.

But the bottom line this morning is that we personally already have our Christmas presents for our household because we absolutely LOVE the Broken Arrow/Eastern Tulsa geographic area and I LOVE my new job and Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup and I LOVE our new house and new neighborhood.

Regarding everyone else...

...we're going shopping on line now in the next couple of days and in some of the local "brick and mortar stores" this weekend and hopefully by Monday morning everything will be on the way to our friends and family.

Honestly we've had some interesting Christmas holidays together over the past ten years living in Atlanta and Florida and on an Island on the Georgia Coast and visiting the Farm in Alabama.

But...

This one is partially by design and partially by circumstance going to be spent "stranded" alone in the middle of the mid-west.

My new company has a nice Christmas party this weekend in a fancy hotel with an open bar and dinner and we've got a room there in the building for Saturday night after the celebration.

And I've got some other ideas for entertaining Pat and the Turbo Pup for Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

So while the family and friends we're missing are residing dozens of hours away by car we're going to get along just fine out here in Oklahoma.

Hope everyone has been a Good Girl or Boy and your Christmas stocking has something other than a lump of coal in it.

Later Y'all...

Writing Malaise

Unfinished Works...


Sorry for the light posting over the past half week.

It isn't for lack of writing because I've probably pounded out five  or six pages on two or three subjects...

...but before I got to the point of hitting the "Publish" button on Blogger I ran out of steam on the topic or else just thought that my work wasn't up to my usual standards and didn't have the time to go back though and fix it.

I'm really in a strange mental state these days being sort of overloaded with the new job and finishing up some personal details relating to moving cross country.

And now it's time to get back to studying my software manuals to support a new project I've just started working on.

Regards Y'all (I'll try to work up a good head of steam and issue a good rant when something comes up in the news...)

Five Day Fire

Livin' The Old Fashoned Way...


Back 100 Years Ago Back in the 1960's at my Grandfather's house in Southern Alabama the fireplace and associated hearths were the center of social interaction sometimes summer and winter. 

You see, by the time I came along my Pa Rushing's home had electricity after WWII, but the water and sewer and what we today call heating and "air conditioning" was an optional feature supplied by the homeowner...in our case that being our family.

Water?

At first we had a hand dug well and a windmill to pump the water we didn't lift by bucket.

Sometime in the 1960's we had a deeper well drilled and an fancy modern electric pump and rubber bladder tank installed to provide showers for all of us grandkids and extra water for cooking and the dogs and chickens and cows.

I Can't Get There From Here?

Modern Airline Insanity...


So one of my regular readers...my Buddy Ed... commented and reminded me that I should be in Knoxtown this weekend taking care of our rental house.

That would be a true statement Ed because I made plans a month ago to be there this weekend.

But my chosen airline...freaking UNITED AIRLINES...decided to delay the departure of my 6:20 PM flight last Friday night to a time so late that I was going to end up missing my connecting flight from Chicago on to Knoxville.

But then being the savvy traveler which I am, and understanding from looking at the UNITED AIRLINES WEBSITE and learning that my original Chicago-Knoxville flight was the last one on their airline on Friday night, I managed to force them to admit that they were willing to let me LEAVE TULSA and then STRAND ME in Chicago about 10 PM and make me argue with them about paying for a hotel.

So fortunately after speaking with some lovely woman in a "customer service" center in India or Malaysia or possibly Belize, and living on hold for most of 30 minutes while I argued about canceling the outbound leg of the flight and keeping the inbound leg Monday evening...

United/Continental Airlines, in their infinite wisdom said...

They couldn't do it...

They simply wanted me to leave Tulsa at 6:20 PM and miss my flight to Knoxville, then  spending the night in or near O'Hare airport (and possibly at my expense if I needed a room), and then not leaving Chicago until 2:40 PM Saturday afternoon  finally arriving in Knoxville about 6 PM. 

A two day trip.

Now understand this fact ladies and gentlemen...

I can drive to Knoxville in 14 hours for less than $250 in gas, and these idiots want me to do the same trip in 12 hours for the price of an airplane ticket and a motel room?

The original idea was to be in Knoxville before midnight Friday and have all day Saturday and Sunday and most of the day on Monday to get some stuff done that I need to do.

You Know?

This wasn't intended to be a pleasure trip to Knoxville to buy University of Tennessee T-shirts or eat ribs at Calhouns' restaurant.

After the dust settled I checked the airline web sites and Kayak.com and according to the websites my only alternative was to spend a couple of hundred dollars more than I originally paid United Freaking Airlines over A MONTH AGO in order to pull this thing off after recycling the schedule from Friday PM to Saturday AM.

So doing the math and looking at the other things going on around here, and considering that the idiot Real Estate company in Knoxtown which I have contracted with to lease our house refused to respond on a timely manner,

I was finally forced to make an executive decision and do something very complicated (OK...not).

I stayed home with Pat and little Missy the Turbo Pup and worked on my Garage and Office.

I'm happy and my girls are tickled pink as my delayed anger grows directed toward my so-call "leasing agent" in Knoxtown.

Looking forward past the holiday season where airline ticket prices are impossibly high, it looks like prices to fly come daown a good deal and there is a good possibility that there will be some thunder and lightening in Knoxville on the rental real estate management busienss front the week of January 9th, 2012.

Stay tuned to this channel for more details...

I Can't Get There From Here?

Dueling Dealing With Living With "Small Market" Airports...


This morning one of my regular readers commented with a question about my whereabouts this weekend. I had already planned on commenting on my personal pre-holiday travel situation...once I calmed down a little from the trama...by doing a blog posting...so here it is.

Yes Ed, I was supposed to be flying back in Knoxville this weekend to take care of some business relating to the house we own there, but the Airlines, in their infinite wisdom (or lack thereof), changed my plans an hour and one half before I was supposed to depart our "Tulsa International Airport" yesterday evening.

But since you know me, I can't answer a question directly, and thus I take this opportunity to digress and talk about my history of flying while ending up telling the story of why I ended up spending this weekend cleaning out my garage and organizing my office in Tulsa, Oklahoma (airport code TUL) rather than beating the crap out of a guy that calls himself a "Realtor" and hiring a new contractor to do some work at our empty, unrented house in Knoxtown, Tennessee (airport code TYS)

Here goes...

First you have to understand that I spent the first 17 years of my life with my only contact with aircraft being looking at them in magazines, watching them on TV, and building them in the form of plastic and balsa wood models and flying them around our front yard and on over at the local elementary school ballfield. 

Don't get me wrong. 

I was absolutely CRAZY about everything having to do with airplanes, but I just didn't do much flying since my family elected to drive on vacation like most other families did in the 1960's and 1970's.

Wait..my dad--the Army Test Pilot--drove me out to our local airfield and took me up in a Cessna 172 with another pilot for an hour flight around our little town of Ozark, Alabama including flying over our house and "wagging our wings" to our neighbors.

But then things changed drastically at the age of 18 when I joined the Navy Reserve through the NROTC program at Georgia Tech and the summer after my Freshman year President Jimmy Carter sent me off on my first "Summer Cruise."

It was a "Cruise" all right, but not a "Carnival Cruise Line Cocktail In Both Hands" type of cruise, and the process of getting to the boat Ship was in and of itself an adventure I'll never get over or forget.

To put this adventure in context, you have to understand that other than the aforementioned birthday flight in 1968 I had never been in an airplane actually flying in the air for more than a single hour.

Now fast forward our story to August 1978 and I find myself standing at the Delta Airlines ticket counter with my Mother and Father presenting a government issued voucher to the ticket agent allowing me to board a flight from Dothan, Alabama and heading to the old (and now torn down) Hartsfield Terminal Building in Atlanta, Georgia.

Wait...come to think of it that wasn't actually my first visit to Hartsfield Airport...because my Dad took us over to the Terminal Building on one of our driving trips up to West Virginia to visit his parents back in the late 1960's and we went up on the "observation deck" to watch the Douglas DC-3's and Lockheed Tristars take off and land.

Better entertainment than going to a Circus or the County Fair to me.

So any way, with much pomp and circumstance and a few tears from my Mother, I boarded my first commercial airline flight heading ultimately to of all places...

SUBIC BAY, PHILLIPINES.

Now don't get me wrong here ladies and gentlemen, I was a quite well traveled youth having been driven to New Jersey and ridden a train from there into New York City when I was in Kindergarten.

I'd ridden in a car with my family not once but TWICE from Alabama to Pasadina, California before I was High school aged.

We took another trip to Salt Lake City, Utah and numerous other eastern regional trips to places like Washington DC  and Manassas, Virginia in our Motorhome.

"I'd been around"...

I thought.

But...

This "flying half way around the planet" stuff was something quite different.

Picture Jim Nabors character Gomer Pyle.

"Shazam" was an understatement when considering my situation, in my considered Redneck opinion.

Speeding this story up, Delta loaded up my luggage and my silly 18 year old butt on a DC-9 in Dothan, hauled me to Atlanta, managed to not allow me to get lost in the process and put me on a giant Lockheed L-1011 and  dumped me back on the ground in San Francisco, California...

all in less than about eight hours as I recall.

Then the non-stop adventure continued.

After stumbling around the airport there in San Fran I managed to find some guy in a Government Issued uniform who proceeded to direct me to an "area" where a bunch of other bewildered "Midshipmen"--also mostly on their first flights--were sequestered awaiting the next segment of our journey to begin.

I guess the first thing I learned while being on active duty in the Navy was the art of "hurry up and waiting."

There in that room with those rows of attractive upolstered yet impossibly hard seats we waited until the very last person on the very last plane ever arriving that day in California came into the room. Or at least that is what it seemed like.

Next they hearded us into some olive drab Military issue busses,  and proceeded to drive us across the mountains to a place called Travis Air Force Base.

Then, after some more waiting...serveral hours worth--something they call "Mustering" in the Military-- we finally got to see and get on the giant airplane which would haul us on the next leg of our journey...Alaska.

This time Lockheed was also the manufacturer, but the airframe was a lumbering C-141 "Starlifter"...

outfitted not with passenger accommodations but with "jump seats."

In having "jump seats" what it really means was the plane was set up for short duration missions "in theater" where the troups would have combat gear and parachutes and not required to make the SIX HOUR flight we faced.

Instead of rows and rows of seats facing forward like you would find in a bus or commercial airliner, this monster sized plane had a row of seats made out of nylon webbing running down the sides of each wall and then two similarly constructed rows of seats running down the middle facing  back to back.

The short duration design apparently didn't matter to the Air Force because they were just hauling Navy Midshipmen...

But hey, they did have the handy "kitchen module" so they could serve a hot metal pan of food in flight and there was the "pooper module" up in front of that contained things and conditions even I refuse to describe here on this blog relating to bathroom sanitation.

So they literally threw our duffle bags and extra suitcases into the back of the plane, strapped everything down with cargo nets, hearded us all on board and off we flew into "the wild blue yonder."

All tongue in cheek humor and sarcastic commentary aside, being young and strong and healthy at that time  I found that leg of that 27 hour trip to be the best part of the sojurn.

They gave each of us the chance to come up into the cockpit and spend ten or fifteen minutes sitting in a little seat between the three man flight crew just looking out at the horizon and around the instrument panels.

Since we were flying to the north west we were basically chasing the sunset, and it was a clear day with various layers of thin clouds hanging here and there and during my visit to the cockpit I remember seeing the sun just hanging on the horizon casting an orange and yellow glow on everything as we flew over the mountains of Washington state.

Hours later, Alaska is and was a blur in my memory because it was night when we got there and it was still night when we left after refueling the Jet and laying around on the floor in the under capacity "departure lounge" waiting on whatever it is that the military "logistics" people have to have happen before you do whatever it is that you could probably have done a couple of hours earlier if it wasn't for waiting on the "Paperwork."

We blasted off on that plane finally, now heading on the next leg of our adventure...

Yokota Air Base...

JAPAN.



   

Losing My Religion

"Missing My Grocery Stores"


Does anybody but people living in Oklahoma know what the store with the name "Reasors" hanging on the front canopy sells?

OK...I'll end the suspense and tell you that out here in the Midwest they are the best dang Grocery store in the state...

but still...

While living in the "Atlanta Metropolitan Area" I was pretty much a Kroger man...with the occasional visit to Winn Dixie when I was looking for Beef or even Publix when the straits were dire.

Then on St. Simons Island, GA we continued our subsistence on Winn Dixie Beef (Winn Dixie being based less than 100 miles south out of Jacksonville, Florida) and the chain Harris Teeter which catered to the upper crust consumers driving past our Condo and house going out to Sea Island.

In retrospect, I went to Harris Teeter almost every day when I was spending most of my time lounging around sitting by the pool...

Since those glorious semi-unemployed days and now before moving across country, while in Knoxtown we again became firm Kroger consumers with three "regular" Kroger stores within five miles and one "Super Kroger" (with a second under construction as I write) within a similar distance from my back door.

But now today our grocery needs are met by Reasor's with their weird Isle layout with everything running perpendicular to the front door rather than parallel to the sides of the store.

Seriously, I feel like I'm in a drunken stupor just walking into their store layout looking for a half gallon of Orange Juice and some Hunt's "Petite Diced" Tomatoes.

Ok...this dissertation is getting a little obtuse even for me...but you get my drift.

When you regularly cook like I do and when you walk into your grocery store you are not "shopping" i.e. wandering aimlessly down each and EVERY FREAKING isle looking for corn starch or capers...

Most of the time I come into my local grocery store...a which I expect and demand to be a veritable purveyor of gastronomic ecstasy...and conduct the next 15.375 minutes like I'm a Navy Seal.

Strike...

Take Prisoners...

Get Out...

You know?

Feel free to consider the above admissions and contemplations and get back with me if you feel I'm in error.

Otherwise...That will be all...for now...

Livin' In An Electronics Store Tulsa Town At Christmas

My Electronics Equipment OWNS My Butt...


So here's my problem here out in Tulsa, Oklahoma this morning...Ladies and Gentlemen.

Try to commiserate with me...if you will.

It's like this...

In about the past 60 days I've acquired intentionally or in some cases, (like a progression of THREE new company cellphones ending with the current Blackberry), un-intentionally more new devices containing computer chips and being delivered into my life with owners manuals and requiring my daily attention than I can possibly deal with at my age.

I've already mentioned the new used car...our Audi Q7 "crossover" SUV...that basically drives itself and if I'm not careful each weekday morning instead of going to work I find myself heading to Jamaica because this thing can basically read my mind and it does things based on the environment around it and where it is at any given moment without my input.

Thus far I've managed to hold on to the steering wheel and poke a few extra buttons and watch the two GPS screens and make it back home each afternoon.

Then once I arrive back to the new house each day I have to deal with THIS GREAT NEW BUILDING which it turns out since we moved in is also intelligent.

In the process of wandering around looking at stuff I've learned that there's some kind of "multi-zone" heating and cooling system which I've yet to have the time to sit down and read the manual and understand...

Out in the Garage there's a control panel with the "Rain Bird" logo on it which controls our in ground "multi-zone" sprinkler system.  I stacked a pile of boxes in front of it a couple of days after we moved in because our lawn is currently dormant in the Tulsa winter conditions and frankly...

I didn't feel like reading another operating manual for free when I'm up to my ass in alligators at work learning how to model giant steel structures in my new RISA structural design software.

And then we have this "Security System" which has a keypad beside the Garage Door and the Front Door and yet ANOTHER ONE in the master panel in our bedroom and while I appreciate the idea of being able to cause it to dial 911 and make a fuss with alarms and shoot lasers and machine guns in my absence...

I just wish someone would tell me how to turn the volume down on the annoying BEEEEEPPP it makes each and every time I open my door in the middle of the night to walk outside for a minute to pick up some more firewood.

Speaking of firewood...

We bought a giant pile of seasoned wood last weekend, and since then Missy the Turbo Pup has learned to hang around the Hearth most nights basking in the warmth and glow of a good fire.  I think that she remembers her younger days when we lived on St. Simons Island and had a Tabby mortar fireplace we used a few dozen nights each year when the weather dipped down close to freezing.

Our house in Knoxtown was fireplaceless and that was one of the few things we didn't love about the place.

Meanwhile, back to discussions about combustion...

I started one (a fire) last night about 6:30 PM and it's been roaring now for over ten hours. 

I intend to try to keep it going non-stop all the way through the weekend until I have to head back to work Monday because other than a little shopping later this morning I personally don't intend to move much further than 75 feet away.

After all...I'm pretty darn accomplished at doing absolutely nothing, and this weekend other than a little homeowner stuff that is ALL I will be working on.

Hope you all have a LOVELY pre-Christmas weekend and try not to spend more than you can pay back on the old credit cards...

I'm Headin' Back To Knoxtown

Sort Of Excited...Sort Of Sad...

So we were doing the math tonight in the process of getting my luggage packed in anticipation of my weekend trip to Knoxville to get the final details cleaned up with the rental house, and in the process I realized that as of this recent re-location to Oklahoma...

I have changed residences SEVEN TIMES since 2001.

Seven moves in 10 years...between four cities and three states?

That after moving only 8 times including college dorm relocations over 27 years spent in the "Atlanta Metropolitan Area."

Let me say THIS about THAT statistic...

I'm getting too old for this CRAP.

Further, I own too much CRAP to continue to have to load it all into boxes (or supervise the process) and get it loaded onto a truck and then follow it down the road to a new house/city/state.

So any way, today after work I'm getting onto yet another commercial airliner and heading east across almost half of the Continental United States.

In the process once I arrive back in my former home town I intend to spend three days and two nights cleaning up some details and meeting with a contractor

 

Colonel Potter's Gone

My Heart Is M*A*S*H*E*D

I just learned that yesterday Harry Bratsberg A.K.A. Henry Morgan A.K.A Harry Morgan AKA Bill Gannon (Dragnet) AKA Colonel Harry Potter has passed away.

I feel older and older every day, and every day it seems that I know and/or admire more dead people than live people.

RIP Colonel Potter....

December 7, 1941

"A Date Which Will Live In Infamy..."


I wasn't around on this day in 1941 when Japan executed their attack on the US Pacific Naval outpost of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii...

69 years ago (oops...make that SEVENTY YEARS AGO.)

But I've heard the stories about that day my entire life (since I was born shortly less than 18 years later) and lived outside a military base for the following 18 years after that period and had family members which served in the world war which ensued.

I saw the pride and fire and pain in their eyes when the topic came up.

Funny thing...

most of the men and women I knew really wouldn't talk in detail about their service but did have a strong opinion about our country's ultimate participation in what has come to be known as World War II...the sequel to World War I..."The War to end all Wars."

I guess that some people would say that it is easy for me to sit here at my age and compromised health in the floor in front of a computer in my living room and filibuster about the need for our country to continue to take the lead on the world stage in enforcing the rule of law and defend humanity as we have over the past 235 years.

But if something like the attack on Pearl Harbor happened again this morning and if the US military called me I'd get off my butt and go...even if it was only to do things like issue uniforms or run a computer or paint sidewalk stripes on Navy bases.

So this morning...in an out of character moment...instead of offering political commentary, I'll just offer my thanks for the service and sacrifices made by those patriots which served both before we officially declared war on Germany and Japan and after President Roosevelt's famous speech...the closing passages which I offer here:

"Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire."

All you have to do today is change the date in that speech to September 11, 2001 and substitute the words "Radical Muslims" for "Japanese Empire" and you have a pretty good starting point for solving things around here for the next 69 years....

but our politicians don't have the backbone and spleen to do it in convincing manner like we did in the 1940's.

In closing, on this anniversary of the loss of thousands of lives in Hawaii in a cowardly act of war, I offer my own hearty "God Bless America."

Yet I also observe that it is critical that we in this next election in 2012 somehow manage to overcome the forces which are working from within to make us a country which could not today and would not in 1941 have been able to muster the manpower and industrial might to succeed in winning a war forced upon us.

70 Channels And Nothing On TV...

GOD Save Us All...


Just in case you haven't been paying attention, I'm pretty cranky these days because I'm a little tired from finishing the details of moving over the last six weeks and a lot tired from doing my new job about 50 hours a week in the process.

My internal Internet and cable TV is still a work in progress here at the new house--the surround sound system for the living room is still un-installed sitting in a cabinet under the space awaiting the new living room TV...

but meanwhile I'm finishing some work here in the early morning hours of Monday, December 5th, 2011 and I just poked the button on the remote control enough times to scan the entire channel spectrum and it is truly disgusting the bullshit which is on the Cable TV system at this time of the night.

What I want to know but am almost afraid to ask is this...

Who is their target market and do these people watching this stuff actually VOTE?

Just wondering...

What "Be Wrong" With Modern Black Culture???

It's CULTURAL...Not RACIAL...


Doesn't anyone but me have a problem with people like this?




A product of your TAX DOLLARS producing future so-called citizens that will


VOTE

My Physical Image In Another 25 years???

Hey...I Already Have The Eyebrows...

Today a number of people including myself in parts of the some of the world--mainly the western hemisphere--will be remembering and celebrating the 176th birthday of one of my personal Idols...

That Man would be the famous American writer and humorist...

Samuel Clemens a.k.a. "Mark Twain."

The first fictional novels I read as a child were my copies of "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" my Mom and Dad gave me before I was ten years old. 

I currently own vintage hard bound copies of each book which are editions published in the 1880's.

Today many people including so called "professional educators" have lost track of the ideas behind these writings and Mr. Clemons' intent when he wrote the texts.  Thus they fuss and fume and call them terms like "narrow minded" and "racisit" and as a result clammor to exclude them from school libraries and discourage parents from including them in their children's reading repartee.

I say that every boy would benefit from reading both books more than once before the age of 12 (as I did and did again in the past year) because they are just both funny and good reading for real non-metrosexual men.

You girls can come along and read them also if you want to I guess.

I have to go now and get ready to begin whitewashing the fence behind my house now...

Regards Y'all...

Love Note From Your's Truely

Just A Little Something Something To Let Them Know I Really Care

Dear Technical Service Department,


Just in case you have been busy digesting turkey scraps and still recovering from the Thanksgiving holiday, be advised that your cable and internet service is dropping out out here for most of the past week every three to ten minutes in Trinity Creek Phase II and ABSOLUTELY KILLING US because we telecommute with our companies and cannot afford to be off line 50% of the time and running around resetting routers and cable modems a hundred times a day.

Also, your sales rep sold me the "Super Duper Double Damn Good" high speed internet service though the end of this year to try out for free and if the upload download speeds we've been seeing are representive of your upgraded services you are going to lose our business to another internet supplier.

I better see a half dozen trucks and technicians out here today or there is going to be a letter written to someone over your head at COX.

Fix my freaking Cable and Internet Service...DAMMIT...


Heh...That Aught to get some action going out here...

Missing In Action

Critical Tools Found Abandonded In Knoxtown...


There has been a mystery unfolding here in the eastern suburbs of Tulsa, Oklahoma over the past month...Ladies and Gentlemen...

and I'm quite pleased...

...actually I'm tickled PINK...

...to report to you of it's resolution late yesterday.

You see, in the process of loading all of our worldly possessions into boxes and onto a truck in our old home there in Eastern Tennessee, somehow certain items very near and dear to my heart as a cook, and critical to my efforts in advancing my skills in the cullinary arts,  went missing.

As of last Sunday afternoon we have been searching and waiting with pregnant anticipation as each and every box larger than 18" square had the tape removed and its contents removed in hopes of finding our stainless steel boilers and two pizza stones I've enjoyed using over the past decade.

Sunday evening it was with a heavy heart that I broke the last box down, folded it flat, and admitted defeat.

It would appear that our beloved pots were lost (the lids made the journey somehow) and one eight quart boiler, two six quart boilers, two four quart boilers, our collandars and miscellaneous throw away oven pans had disappeared in the moving process never to be heard from again.

Then Pat had an idea I agreed with.

Perhaps in the insanity of packing up all of our stuff and loading it into a giant moving truck, our movers had somehow missed the single lower kitchen cabinet in Knoxtown which contained the missing items?

Incredible coincidence, but possible none the less, you know?

So I sent an e-mail to our next door neighbors who have been looking after the place and GUESS WHAT?

...ALL OF OUR POTS AND PIZZA STONES ARE STILL SITTING THERE LONELY IN KNOXTOWN!!!!!

I was so excited I literally almost ran out of the door and drove to the airport upon hearing the news last evening, but since I already have a plane ticket to return the weekend of December 9th to finish up some business in town I thought better of the impulse and decided to wait and just pack everything up and ship it back here FedEX while I'm in town next month.

You have to understand, with the importance of cooking around here...especially with the nice new gourmet kitchen with gas stove and marble counter tops...of all the things which could have been lost the pizza stones and pots were some of the worst things to lose.

I'd almost rather have lost my old Chevy Surburban or a hip or knee on my right leg than our stainless pots and well seasoned stones.

So any way, life is busy but good here in Eastern Oklahoma these days...the weather starting to turn toward winter...and from Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup and I...I offer a hearty...

Regards Y'all...

What I Am "Sonny" Is About 50 Pound Heavier And A Hell Of A Lot Meaner...

...And I Don't Think I Like You...

"Black Friday" Isn't A Racist Slur?

Shopping Today Means Nothing To Me...


So just in case you are interested, let me emphatically state that the LAST place you will find me today is standing in line waiting to get in a WalMart at midnight or enduring a rush through the TV/electronics department looking for deals, or otherwise participating in this so-called "Holiday" retail marketing event which has come to be known as...

...BLACK FRIDAY.

Why not call this much talked about consumer based day one of these terms:

"Stupid Dumbasses With Credit Cards in Hand Signing Away Most of Next Year's Salary FRIDAY"?

Or perhaps...

"People which don't understand stores are open every day and most of the so called "deals" were already available online last week without standing in the lines in the brick and mortar stores FRIDAY?"

You know?

Then of course there are the limited number of people out there (mainly women) which really can afford to shop and buy almost anything they want at any time...

and just enjoy events like "Black Friday" and last minute Christmas shopping at Macy's in New York City?

And to them I offer a hearty "KNOCK YOURSELF OUT TODAY" because I most definitely will not be there competing for the "limited quantities" of sales items and getting in your way at the cash register.

All ranting and raving aside...my wallet and I are happily staying home here today doing mundane things like opening the final unpacked boxes in our offices and garage areas and re-arranging the giant stacks of previously opened boxes we have sorted and piled out in the garage awaiting resale or disposal.

Hope everyone had a LOVELY Turkey Day and has a good balance of the Thanksgiving Holiday...

Regards Y'all...

Thanks For Thanksgiving Holiday

A "Working Vacation" Or Is It Really "Vacation Working"?


First of all, let me start out this Holiday Season by saying/writing this...

I recognise that we have truly been BLESSED both individually and as a Family here in the Year of Our Lord, 2011.

I would be remiss in not thanking God for his bounty and our individual close Friends and Families for their prayers and support over the past decade (plus nearly an extra year since as of April 3rd, 2012 we will be 11 years together) that Pat and I have been living as a committed couple...

and of course we've benefited from little Missy the Turbo Pup's efforts providing love and support and security in doing her self assumed job as the Family Clown and in her capacity of delivering a "good barking" to anyone/everyone/every circumstance which in fact needed a "good barking."

While the task at hand as we move together through the end of this year and look ahead into 2012 both personally and professionally sometimes appears daunting, we continue forward with the knowledge and belief that our success is the result of an age old equation I've sometimes been guilty of ignoring in parts of my adult life.

That would be this axiom attributed to Sir William Shakespeare:

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures."


I'm humbled by the opportunities I face in the new year living here in the US of A...the greatest country in the history of the planet...and I am resolute to stand up to the challenges with which I am presented.

Wish me luck...If you will.

Regards Y'all...

Training Day

Teaching Old Tricks To A New Dog...


OK Ladies and Gentlemen, if anybody needs me, later this morning you can find me sitting in yet another classroom here in the eastern Tulsa suburbs about 7:30 AM taking another class/seminar.

This one is on S A F E T Y.

Specifically, C O N S T R U C T I ON   S A F E T Y.

My bellybutton has been puckering and un-puckering for most of the past week in anticipation, and if I can avoid falling down getting out of my car in the parking lot or tripping over the course registration table you'll hear from me again sometime later today or early tomorrow morning.

Now it's time to go cut open some more cardboard boxes looking for my Pizza stones...

Regards Y'all...

Life In The Fast Lane

Doing Oklahoma At High Speed...


Well, we sort of took the day off yesterday after expending a whirlwind of energy over the past couple of weeks settling into a new town, a new job, and a new house full of boxes needing unpacking.

Speaking of boxes...I can make you a DEAL on used packing boxes if you need any...half price...but I digress.

So any way... we lounged around all Saturday morning basically doing nothing, and then we spent the afternoon driving our good friend "Ski" back over to Oklahoma City in order for her to be able to catch her noon flight today heading across almost half of the country back over to our little Island of St. Simons on the Georgia Coast.

Interestingly enough, affording expediting our local travels we've found that the state of Oklahoma has very liberal speed limit laws on the Interstate Highways.  For instance, in yesterday's venture to the west along I-44...a toll road running between Tulsa and Oklahoma City...the speed limit was set at 75 MPH in rural areas and even 60 or 65 MPH here in the Tulsa city limits.

In the end, Miss Ski managed to knock our socks off with her decorating efforts in the main areas of the house (and pushing the vacuum cleaner around about every 15 minutes it seemed), and so when the dust settled so to speak all I have left to do is basically the office and garage areas of the building to straighten out and organize whatever is left in the brown boxes stacked along the walls and in the corners of the rooms.

Today would be a success if :

A. I could get a new refrigerator for the kitchen on order to be delivered this week since we've been living out of coolers stocked with bags of ice thus far...and

B. I could go out and buy a new 56" TV which will fit in the new living room entertainment center cabinet my girls (Pat and Ski and Missy the Turbo Pup) went out and bought for me on Friday and had delivered as a surprise.

Other than that, we're living life LARGE out here in and on the southern plains of the US mid-west, and now it's time to get back to looking at some drawings I did last week getting them ready to turn in Monday morning as I start my third project and get down to doing the business I was hired to do.

Y'all have a LOVELY Sunday...If you will...