Monthly Archives: September 2009

20 years Today

Sweetie and I got married 20 years ago. Isn’t she beautiful?

She hasn’t stayed still for a photograph since. She is in constant motion.

A blur.

Always “saddling up” to go somewhere.

But she always has time for me.

Happy Anniversary Sweetie, I love you very much!

Fearless by Max Lucado

“Fearless” is a new book by Max Lucado. I’ve never read any of Max Lucado’s work but I was curious about him because it seems that he has written half the books on sale at Mardel’s. I asked for and received a complimentary copy of Fearless from the publisher, Thomas Nelson, as part of their program where they provide several hundred copies of selected books to bloggers.

I read the book and found it absorbing. Mr. Lucado makes his points by way of stories. Mostly Bible stories and vignette’s of Lucado’s family and friends. He repeats his points several times in different ways. The book is easy reading and I just flew through it. I don’t think that it is a lightweight book. It is deceptively simple. I think that teaching by telling stories is powerful. It goes right to our hearts and bypasses our minds. Jesus told stories in his teachings. They were simple on the surface, until you thought about them. Mr. Lucado is of course not Jesus but his teaching style is powerful.

He talks about fear, the sources of fear, how to deal with fear, all from a Biblical perspective. I found his writing style very compelling. I enjoyed the book.

I think that it is worth reading. I rate it three stars out of four.

Would I have bought the book? Nope, the only books I buy are the Harry Potter books, and there are no more of those. I would have checked this out at the library though.

Thomas Nelson has set up a web site for the book here. It is definitely worth checking into.

Sunday Afternoon Running with The Eagles – Turkey Mountain

I went out for a run Sunday afternon. I was looking for something a little different so I went to the west side of the Arkansas River and started from the Turkey Mountain parking lot. I took my Garmin running GPS watch, my Ipod, Palm Treo PDA Cell Phone, and a Garmin Nuvi 500 crossover GPS to hunt geoaches with, as well as my digital camera. You could say I was fully instrumented. Hey, you wouldn’t take a Ferrari out on the track without a few instruments would you?

Also, its pretty risky to leave the house with just one GPSr is what I say.

I found two geocaches during the run. One was just 8 feet off the trail. The second was a couple hundred feet of the trail and involved a climb up a dry waterfall.

It was kind of ugly going up all those d*** rocks and double ugly coming down but at least I found it. I didn’t fall and get cuts, scratches and stuff such as that.

The rest of the run was a dream. I was running three light poles and walking one since it was so warm and there are no water fountains on this side of the river. My running friends tell me that that is “not real running.” I tell them to “jump in the lake.” Its movement and I kept it up for 5 miles. Its a nice trail, not much traffic so I just lose all sense of time and am totally in the present. I stopped and took a few pictures but it all just kind of morphs together in my head.

I wasn’t playing Metallica since I wasn’t pushing myself so hard. I was playing the Eagles. Their more laid back stuff like “No More Walks in the Wood.” (Terrible news for a geocacher.)

What do you do to “Zone Out.” Tell me.

Baloney Sunday Challenge – Ezekiel 31:4-6

Ezekiel 31:4-6 (New International Version)

4 The waters nourished it,
deep springs made it grow tall;
their streams flowed
all around its base
and sent their channels
to all the trees of the field.

5 So it towered higher
than all the trees of the field;
its boughs increased
and its branches grew long,
spreading because of abundant waters.

6 All the birds of the air
nested in its boughs,
all the beasts of the field
gave birth under its branches;
all the great nations
lived in its shade.

Cain’s Ballroom and Bob Wills

Tulsa blogger Michael Bates of Batesline had a Bob Wills song “Along the Navajo Trail” embedded in a Facebook post. I had just finished a colorsplash mod of a photograph of Cain’s ballroom. I thought I would put them together.

Check the Cain’s Web Site for the history of Cain’s Ballroom.

Along The Navajo Trail (LP Version) – Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys

Bikes, Flags, and a Fountain

I’m still experimenting with the Flip Video Camera I ~~stole~~ borrowed from one of SuperPizzaBoy’s teachers. I’ll give it back to her one of these days, maybe. I took it on a run on the river Wednesday night after work. I capatured these images.

A bunch of bikers on Riverside Drive. I only got the tail end of them.

A large US Flag flying at half mast (for the late Senator Edward Kennedy.) I love our United States flag flying in the breeze!

The next day I took on a jaunt downtown. I stopped at a fountain at a new park downtown. I love water fountains!

appreciate your indulgence as I try and figure this ingenious device out. It has wonderful possibilities.

Wrong Way Skywatch

Some of the men from my Sunday School Class go running on the Arkansas River sunday mornings. They don’t wait for anybody, at 6 AM they go. If you are late you catch up, if you know which way they are went as they can either go north along the Arkansas River or sometimes they will go east along the Creek Turnpike.

Well, I got there late last Sunday. Usually they go north, that day they went east. I didn’t know that. I played the odds, I went north. So I was by myself. I almost always take my camera on these runs but when I run with the guys I never take pictures. My sorry little slow butt would be left behind. Sunday, it soon became apparent that they went the other way so I took my time and took a few picture including the one above. I missed the company, but I enjoyed taking the pictures.

Afterwards I still had coffee with them at Starbucks, which is what I like best of all.

For great pictures of the sky from all over the globe, click on over to Skywatch Friday.

Suicide by Bird Poop

Part of Geocaching is monitoring your caches. This is done mainly by monitoring the logs that people write when they find your cache. SuperPizzaBoy and I have a cache downtown “One Degree of Separation: Boys Night Out” between the Doubltree Hotel and the Convention Center. Lots of out of towners staying at the hotel or attending the convention have found it.

I got concerned when I noticed the last two logs.

I know that they are kind of hard to read but basically they are not very complimentary about the condition of the cache. So I temporarily disabled the cache and went out at lunch today to check it out.

What I found was my cache totally covered in white bird poop. Normally I would “plug and abandon” as we oilfield trash say but hey I paid $5.79 for the container at Walmart. I need to salvage it. So I pull it out and carry it back to the office. The office is about 4 blocks away and the more I walked the more the container stank. I got to wondering just how I was going to do this. If I got on the elevator with the thing it would stink things up. I didn’t take a picture of the cache because I didn’t want my hands to touch any part of me by this time but the last log included the picture below. It doesn’t really do it justice:

I developed a plan so I went to the office and went downstairs to a large public restroom. I went and started washing the thing off. It stank up the whole room, but you know, $5.79 is a lot of money, especially with natural gas prices the way they are. I finally decided to take the camo duck tape off. It wouldn’t tear off so I pulled out my trusty swiss army knife and was working on it when the blade slipped on the bird poop and I stabbed by left index finger.

How embarrassing. Especially as a former assistant Cub Scout Den Leader. The shame, the humiliation, and oh, the blood. The blood was going everywhere. I also realized that the blade was soaked in bird poop. Not exactly an aboriginal antiseptic, I don’t think. So I cleaned the wound out as best I could and packed it with paper towels held in place by my thumb. And then I finished cleaning up the container because you know $5.79 is a lot of money.

So I finally got the duck tape off and tossed it in the trash and by now the restroom really stunk, bad, (caused by the same stuff that got injected in my finger) and the people coming and going were looking at me as I was cleaning the blood, bird poop, and bits of camo duck tape out of the sink.

So I took everything upstairs. I went over to our first aid cabinet and collected some disinfectant wipes, neosporin, and a couple bandages and went to a coworker and he doctored me up.

Here is some more photos. First, the cleaned up, duck taped removed, still fragrant, $5.79 cache container.

The not so sharp instrument.

The finger.

Hey, does anybody know if birdpoop can kill you?

PS – I archived the cache. I’m not going through this again. But I’m going to reuse the container. Save me $5.79 and tax.

GPSr RIP, Contests, 666, and WTF?

Lowrance IFinder Hunt H2O GPS receiver. Missing early August 2009, presumed gone.
I probably found 600 caches with this. I guess I left it somewhere. Been using my Garmin Nuvi 5000. It works pretty well but it is not the same besides for going into the woods I need something waterproof. They don’t make these anymore and it looks like I’m going to get a replacement pretty reasonably on ebay.

Speaking of replacement this very nice sweet lady, fellow blogger Baloney, (so named because she is full of it) is both in a contest and is running a contest. She and I both need your help.

You can help her by going to Irritated Tulsan’s “Tulsan of the Month” contest and vote for Baloney. If she wins then she and my friend 666BOI will face off for the Tulsan of the Year. Baloney is very sweet but don’t pay attention to the lies she tells about me or 666BOI.

You can help me by going to a contest that Baloney is running on her blog. Its a “poop hat” award and vote for my buddy 666BOI. He really really wants that Poop Hat Award.

Speaking of 666. I drove by my favorite liquor store the other day and I saw this car parked out front.

So there is another Satan in town? Is this town big enough for two Satan’s. Is the future of mankind going to be decided here in Tulsa, Oklahoma? Are 666BOI and 666FMY teaming up or fighting it out? He doesn’t tell me these things.

Been wondering WTF? It means “What the Flip?” Sweetie has borrowed a Flip Video Cam from a teacher at SuperPizzaBoy’s school for use in a project. I saw it and grabbed it. Sorry everybody, its mine now, at least until Sweetie tells me the third time to give it back. These little gadgets are low tech, low fi, low D but fun to use.

You press a button to shoot video, it has 60 minutes recording time, it uploads itself to YouTube. Its great. The lower tech models cost about $150 new. You can get them for about $70 used on ebay. I’m tracking the bidding patterns to see what’s what and then I may be getting one for myself.

I tried it out on my favorite subject. SuperPizzaBoy, for once he was stumped for something to say but he recovered.