Category Archives: Observations

Electrical Bees and I Gotta Get 817

On one of my geocaching jaunts I pulled into the driveway of an electric substation in Broken Arrow. I was trying to figure out how to get to the next cache. If you think talking on your cell phone is hazardous while driving try operating a GPS receiver.

My friend Baloney claims that she has 816 caches. I’m way behind. I think she is lying and my friend 666BOI told her so, but I can’t be sure. So I have to catch up.

Anyway, I pulled off the road to get my bearings. I got to looking at the substation trying to figure out what is going on. I’m a chemical engineer and electricity scares the crap out of me. I mean how can something you can’t see kill you so quickly? I looked at the caution sign and it didn’t say a thing about electricity. The sign was about bees, africanized bees. What’s up with that?

I thought substations were dangerous because of gazillions of kilovolts. I thought that is why those stations hummed. It’s a sham. They are generating electricity with bees. Hey who gets the honey? Anbody tell me that!

Oh well, gotta go, busy, busy, busy, going to number 817. Put a certain Queen B in her place! Second place.

Oh by the way, its my birthday today.

Check out Mellow Yellow Monday for more shots of yellow.

What’s a Guy to do?

Well, the last month has been very hectic for the Yogi family. I had a heck of an allergy attack in early March, I mean a real doozey. Followed by a great family trip to San Antonio. We did it all, we did the Alamo, the Riverwalk, Hemisfair Plaza, Seaworld, the whole deal. Then the family left me and my sinuses in SA while they went back to Tulsa.

I did my industry convention, got a whole load of continuing education hours to keep my PE license, found a whole bunch of microcaches in and along the river walk, and explored a bunch of the city on foot. My and the sinuses went through a ton of tissue on the way, and grossed out a bunch of friends. No wonder I was so lonely.

Then I got back to Tulsa and my Mother-in-Law, Nana, a very sweet lady who is moving to Tulsa got her plans accelerated when she accidently fell and broke her hip. So she was in the hospital and then rehab and is now staying with us and is doing great, and is planning to move into her new house in a few weeks.

As an aside, I will tell you that if something similar happens to me, I’m sending the ambulance to where she went, Saint John’s Hospital here in Tulsa and then rehab at the Bernsen Rehab center. Both the hospital and the rehab center are wonderful and are staffed by very skilled and compassionate people not only toward the patient but also the family.

After that excitement died down, I finally went to the doctor who gave me some antibiotics. That stopped the sinuses but also my digestive system. Friday night I took the last of the antibug pills so maybe I’ll start feeling better here pretty quick. In the meantime, I’m exercising again and it is like starting from scratch. That’s not fair.

So tonight, its just me and Nana. Sweetie and SuperPizzaBoy are at some cultural event bettering themselves. Me and Nana are watching House Hunters. Then Nana asked me if I would go the house she recently purchased and check the water level in the swimming pool. Sure! I don’t know anything about swimming pools but I can check water levels. After all I am a by God Licensed Professional Chemical Engineer in the State of Oklahoma (PE 17351).

I get over there and the water level is a little low so I get the water flowing. Filling a pool is not like filling a bathtub. This is going to take a while. What’s a guy to do?

I’ll tell you, its time to go geocaching!

Christmas in July , Number 764, but who is counting, really its not about the numbers, is it, not at all. And yes, as a blogger I take my camera everywhere I go, and, as a geocacher, I take my GPS receiver everywhere.

Any geocachers who slogged through this post? Tell us what your geocaching handle is. Mine is YogiABB. Son’s is guess what, SuperPizzaBoy. Sweetie won’t get one, so the local geocachers call her … well we won’t get into that. I stay on thin ice around here anyway. She really puts up with a lot.

Protest, Counter Protest, and the Cops

My one or two readers who read this may remember the “Exterminators” who have been at the Mayo Hotel for sometime now trying to chant the rats out of the building. “Get the rats out, get the rats out, get the rats out” is their basic line. It doesn’t seem to be working because they are still there.

Well things have been happening. First on March 21st the Tulsa World ran an article on the exterminators. It turns out that the chanters are not exterminators. They are homeless people hired by a local carpenter’s union hired to picket jobs run by Green Country Interiors, a Tulsa based contracter. Its kind of funny because the picketers are hired by the union and paid $10 per hour and no benefits in order to protest the Union because they are paying only $14 to $18 per hour plus benefits.

What is not funny is that the union has put signs up at the Green Country’s owner’s subdivision saying shame on him by name. That seems a little over the line to me.

The union says that there are no carpenters on the picket line becaus they are all working!

It seems ironic to me that unions have learned modern labor management methods. Hiring temporary workers at low wages, not paying them benefits, etc. I’m not saying they are doing anything illegal, immoral, or unethical. I’m just saying that its ironic. I will say that $10 per hour for picketing does not seem like a bad deal for the picketers. All kidding aside, walking in circles chanting at the top of my lungs for three or four hours is hard work.

Now Wednesday we had something new. Counterpicketers. I have no idea who they are or who they represent but in addition to the exterminators we had a couple guys with big old plastic buckets and sticks using them very effectively as drums trying to disrupt the chanting. It was hilarious. Three police cars were there with the officers monitoring the action.

I apologize for the poor quality of the video.

The drummers are not very good. They remind me of the awful rock group “Faith No More” who were popular even though they had no rhythm. Right after I turned off my camera one of the drummers grabbed his video camera and began walking toward me photographing me. Like I cared. Before I could my camera out again to video him videoing me he ran back to his post.

Who is paying the counterprotesters? I need answers, anybody have any?

The Mark of the Beast

Oklahoma decided that everybody gets new license plates this year instead of stickers. I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. The new plates are some sort of laminate plastic with a high tech film. They have replaced the Native American shield with a picture of an Indian Man shooting an arrow into the sky. (I think it is based on a sculpture in front of the Gilcrease Museum.)

But, as always, I need to get back on point. One of the best kept secrets in Tulsa is that there is a tag agent downtown. They don’t have lines, they are nice instead of being rude and it is about 200 feet from my office building. So I was busily working, and putting off getting a tag, and a coworker came over and said that he had seen the weirdest thing at the tag office.

I had to ask what was weird and he said that they had a tag with “666” on it sitting on the counter. Nobody would take it. That fascinated me. Why would anybody care? I know that Hollywood portrays us Christians as loonies who beat wives and children, play with snakes, and recoil in horror at the three numbers. We all know that 666 is the mark of the beast, right?

We know all sorts of things. We know that during Barack Obama’s campaign that you texted him at 62262 and his toll free number had 1-866-6 in it. So that shows he’s evil right?

Well it turns out that phobia may be wrong. In fact it probably is wrong. More recent research based on more ancient texts of Revalation than were available before now show that the number of the beast is 616.

Oops. Somehow, 616 just doesn’t have the same evil connotations as 666. I can see why the truth hasn’t caught on. There is a lot of invested work in books, movies, sermons, anti-Obama web sites, and so on concerning 666.

Back to my story. After my friend told me about the tag, I popped up, grabbed my stuff and ran on over. I had to wait in a rare line of 4 people. I got to the front, and asked if they still had the 666 tag, because I didn’t see it. Everybody in the office turned to look at me including those over in the driver’s license line. The clerk asked, does your existing tag have 666 in it? I said no. Anyway to finish an overlong story I got my tag.

So leave me alone. Go find 616BOI and harrass him! He is the devil worshipper not me.

Long Walk to Eat Lunch

We had a real nice day in Tulsa last week. I was supposed to have lunch with Sweetie, SuperPizzaBoy, and Nana (My Mother-in-Law) at Saint John’s Medical Center a couple miles from downtown where I work. I decided I was going to walk from my office downtown to lunch and bum a ride back with Sweetie. Worst case, I walk back.

So I headed out about an hour early. Below is a shot looking backwards to the building I work in.

A few blocks away is the old Chase Motor Bank. The “Midcentury Modern” fans in town swoon over this building. Used to be a motor bank, now its a combination parking lot, sometimes homeless hangout, and the site of one of my geocaches (“Boys Night Out – City Center”). I hate to see handsome old buildings go to ruin.
Went a few more blocks and cut across the back of the downtown Home Depot and come across this memorial done by the Home Depot employees in honor of a fellow deceased employee. I love stuff like this. You can tell this has been tended to and taken care of over time.
At the front of the Home Depot parking lot I took a shot of the tower from the old Warehouse Market. The tower was saved years ago when Home Depot came in. The tower was an art deco landmark in town and the store managed to save it. More details on a future post. Right now, I’m still going to lunch. Notice the redbud trees off to the right.

A little further on – more redbud trees. I love redbuds. They are a signature of Oklahoma . A few years ago we had a snow just at the peak of the redbud bloom. The redbud trees and snow were the prettiest thing I had seen in a long time. Unfortunately that was pre-blogging time for me and I didn’t have the habit of carrying a camera everywhere I went.

Hooked up with my running route for a little while – the Centennial Trail. Tulsa has trails all over the place. I love’em.

Backwards glance toward downtown. Haven’t got that far. Time to stop gawking and keep moving.

Cherry Street (aka 15th street). All sorts of interesting cafe’s, shops, and stores here. Not very many stretches like this in the Oil City.

New building going up. Looks like post ugly faux facade modernism. It seemed to get approved without any publicity. Other buildings nearby take forever to get approved. What’s the deal?

Bank building on Cherry Street built back in the 90’s. Big fights at city council and zoning board over it. Many complaints over the 1960’s style roofline and parking shades. Boy those citizens didn’t know what they were talking about. That was mid century modern. So I guess this building is a neo or retro mid century modern? I don’t know. My next door neighbor at the time was the architectural engineer on the project. He had no sense of humor about the criticism.

A glimpse of Swan Lake. Part of the what some in the city call the “midtown money belt” also includes Maple Ridge. Know how to make these folks simmer and swoon. Just say the words “street widening” or “halfway house”. They are the folks that put the Not in NIMBY. They don’t have much of a sense of humor either. Seriously, these folks live in a nice area of Tulsa and they want to keep it that way, I don’t blame them for being so curmudgeonly.


Arrived for lunch about 10 minutes early, so it only took about 50 minutes of walking. Not bad. I figure out 2.25 to 2.50 miles or so.
Lunch was great, Sweetie gave me a ride back.

Starbucks, Sexy Sirens, and Queen Esther

What is up with Starbucks nowdays? Our household has been very busy the last week or so. We have been running here and running there, doing this that and whatever. To make a long story short, we didn’t have any coffee in the house this morning. No problem, load the kid up and run to our local Starbucks. I’m going to get a venti size cup of coffee and a bag of beans to take home.

OK, I’ll have a venti Sumatra and this bag of beans. Yes sir, oops, sorry sir, we’re brewing that, how about Pike Place? uhh (I hate Pike Place, their new house blend, I don’t know why, but I find it awful, but still) OK, give me a venti Pike Place. Ooops, sorry sir, we don’t have any of that either, how about an americano?

(I hate their americanos. I love them elsewhere but Starbucks just doesn’t get it.) So, no thanks, I’ll just take the bag of beans. Ohh we’re sorry sir! No problem. So I get the bag and come home and brew my own.

This type of exchange happens a lot these days when I go to Starbucks. They are invariably out of the coffee I want and either have to get the Pike Place or an americano. Come on folks, if you want to sell coffee, then keep it on hand.

And while I’m whining, I don’t like their afternoon policy. Pike Place only for caffeinated. Uggh.

Enough whining. Lets talk about their logo. I generally like to have a visual on my posts so I googled for their logo. Wow, talk about a lot of hits. The history of their logo is very ineresting. The logo above is their latest version. Below is the older version.

Come to find out that the lady is not a mermaid but a siren. Sirens are those mythological creatures who lured sailors to their doom with promises of a good time. A siren is different from a mermaid in that sirens have split tails and mermaids have one. I know that you get the idea. Do I have to spell it out for you? Hope not.

An even earlier version of the logo is below. The siren is a lot less stylized, but “rounder”, and in my opinion, much sexier.

I got most of this information from a post from the blog “Dead Programmer’s Cafe.”

Now, the Queen Esther part. Those Bible scholars among us (not including me) know that Queen Esther was the Queen of Jews in Persia way back when King Xerxes chose her among 7 beautiful virgins to be his Queen. It is quite the complicated story and it is all covered in the Book of Esther in the Old Testament. It turns out that many people in the Middle East including Muslims believe that the siren in the Starbucks logo is Queen Esther, a Jewish Queen, and the crown she wears is the crown of Persia. Muslims find this offensive. This rumor has caused Starbucks all sorts of grief in trying to get their business going in the area.

Of course, I’m not sure that the Muslims would appreciate the story about sirens either.

When is the Doctor Coming?

Our family has someone who is in the hospital recovering from surgery. They are doing as well as can be expected and we are hopeful that they will be out of there soon and on the way to recovery.

Hospitals have changed quite a bit over the years. The food has improved in quality and variety, the rooms are brightened up and decorated more, the attitude of the various staff especially the nurses has improved the greatest. The indifference that used to just kill me, has reduced over the years. Now you get chatted up by everybody from housekeeping to the doctors. All these changes have made much of the experience a little less unpleasant than what it used to be.

There is still a major problem with the way hospitals are run. The kingship and divine right of doctors to not be accountable to anyone for what they do or don’t do especially as to when exactly they are going to show up and explain what is going on. They reserve the right to come early, late, or not at all. That coupled with their right to be the exclusive conduit for much critical information forces the patient’s family and loved ones to keep a constant vigil so they don’t miss out on their one opportunity that day to visit with the surgeon or doctor. If you miss him or her, or if they decide to not show up, then that’s it. No second chance.

That’s bad because the patient involved is often too groggy or sick to really ask the questions that need to be asked or provide critical information to the doctor or engage them about their decisions and explore alternatives in treatment, therapy, medication or whatever. And there is no second chance. You miss the doctor, you miss out.

The nurses are sympathetic and readily admit that this jealously guarded prerogative of doctors is exhausting to families. They say that the single most asked question they get from patients is “When is the Doctor Coming?” and they don’t have a satisfactory answer and the best they can do is guess based on their knowledge of the doctors’s habits. They see the resulting physical and mental exhaustion this practice causes to families but they can do nothing about it.

So, how about doctors making a schedule of their rounds and sticking to it? How about authorizing the nursing staff to inform families of what is going to happen. How about making use of all this whiz bang information technology they brag about to include the patient and the family.

My World – Casino Club

I love serendipity. It happened to me last week during a visit to dowtown San Antonio, Texas from my home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was walking around downtown and I saw a building with a muticolored top on it so I had to go investigate.

My photograph does not do the tiered roof justice. It really is very colorful and distinctive.

The building was called the “Casino Club Building” and was built in about 1927 to house the combined “Casino Association”, a German American Social Club and “San Antonio Club”, a literary club. The building has some Art Deco touches in the entrance in addition to the multicolored roof.

The Club did not survive the depression very well and the organization finally ceased operation in abut 1950.

The serendipity part happened when I got up close and read the historical plaque. It said the building was purchased by oilman Thomas Gilcrease in 1942. Thomas Gilcrease is the art collector who sold his extensive art collection to the City of Tulsa in 1955 that started the Gilcrease Museum which is famous for its collection of Western Art.

A little research showed that Mr. Gilcrease’s first museum was started in 1943 in San Antonio but he closed it shortly thereafter because of low attendance. I couldn’t determine if he used Casino Club building for the museum.

The building, which is right on the San Antonio Riverwalk was remodeled in 1978 for condos or apartments appears to be in excellent condition and well maintained.

To found out more about our world check out My World for photographs and stories from all over the world.

It made it all well worth it!

The Yogi family belongs to a big Megachurch. We love it there and have got to know a lot of people and find the whole experience rewarding.

One of the things that though is that they are always short of volunteers for the Children’s Sunday Schools. I understand why. We got a little burned out as we taught together in SuperPizzaBoy’s classes for several years. We got burnt out so we quit for a while.

Sweetie started teaching again late last year in the four year old class. She ended up being the only adult though in a whole room full of healthy rambunctious kids. I volunteered to help out.

Last Sunday was my first duty. It was fun. Sweetie was the boss so I just got to play with the kids. I played legos with the boys at the lego table, I played duck duck goose with the girls. I helped shepherd them down and back from the big group room. Got to hold some hands doing that.

Back to the four year old’s room Sweetie led the lesson and I tried kept the boys focused. Then the snack. I got to help pass out the mix. Some kids liked marshmellows, others goldfish, others pretzels. I had a bunch of demanding customers. They kept me hopping pretty good!

I did get a tip though. One little girl said come here, hugged my neck with her little arms, and said “you smell beautiful.” I’m not sure what she meant, I don’t wear any cologne but I do bathe at least once every spring, but it made my day!