We’ve had a little weather here. Sleet, freezing rain, and snow. Not too bad, the main thing was that it was cold. We’ve kept our bird feeders going. Cardinals and squirrels are the main customers.
We have several squirrels and they each have distinct feeding styles. I like this dude. No inverted positions for him. He just sits down for dinner and goes for it.
The back yard is cold, the patio got kind of slippery.
We had a blue jay show up for lunch. Sorry for the ugly orange flagging. Our internet provider put it up to mark other utility lines.
I love the female cardinals.
A video of the blue jay.
Cardinals and juncos co-existing.
A female cardinal video.
Lizzie the cat checking out the patio action. She doesn’t like outside at all. She is a rescue critter. When she was just a baby kitten somebody drove through a store parking lot and threw her the window.
Abby likes going outside but she burrows under a blanket afterwards.
I finished another jigsaw puzzle. I’m loving doing them on the ipad. I’m not very good at it. My wife just flies through them. We are not racing though, are we?
That’s the critter roundup this week. I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Lots of great posts there. Check it out.
I’m also praying in support of Ukraine as they bravely defend themselves from naked aggression by Russia.
Monday was shirtsleeves weather here in Tulsa and I went to Turkey Mountain for a hike and see the progress on the trails. In the above pic, if you squint really hard you can see a small tracked backhoe working on a new trail. I gave them room and went the other way.
The new trails, are wide, and rock free, for the most part. They are built to be kind of “flowy” so there is gentle bends from side and side and up and down to enhance the experience for moutainbikers.
The new trails are open to everybody except horseback riders. They are trying to get the trails packed down really hard. They have a bunch of signage to encourage people to share the road. The mountain bikers love the trails and can get going pretty fast. So far I have not had a problem with bikers not being polite.
The new trails seem to be encouraging more people to go deeper into the mountain park than before especially families. The old trails were very rocky and technical and not family friendly at all. So people are getting away from the parking lot it seems.
But even though there were a lot of people on a sunny afternoon, there was lots of room for everybody.
There was some recently opened new trail on the cliffs overlooking the Arkansas River. It is nice having professionally designed switchbacks. Before this, the vertical trails just went straight up the hill and given all the rain we have the trails turned into gullies quickly.
So it was a good day for chilling out.
The RiverParks staff likes to have fun with the visitors. They are also continuing to build more trail and I expect there will be networks and loops of professionally designed and constructed trail reaching deep into the park. I’m loving it so far!!
A brief video of my adventure Monday.
Wednesday night, Russia invaded the Ukraine is a puzzling power play. Lots of people have died already. Earlier this week I got a postcard from somebody in Berlin showing the Berlin Airlift back in 1948 or so. It’s so ironic that here we are over seventy years later dealing with Russian aggression in Europe.
Football season is over, what to do on Sunday?? I know, I went to the Darryl Starbird Rod and Custom Car Show at the fairgrounds. The Starbird Show is all about hot rods and custom cars, not your boring old Fords and Toyotas. All of the cars at the Starbird Show are one of a kind.
They are painted bright colors and polished to a high gloss. They are works of art in my mind.
Works of art that can be driven.
This car was supposedly built just for one episode of “Love American Style.” Is there another television show more 1970’s than Love American Style. The placard with the car said that it was for sale (no price asked) and had been in storage for 40 years. Huh?
I am not sure I want a car like this but I will look at it all day long.
This is one of my favorites. It looks like a Jetsons car (anybody out there remember the Jetson cartoons) with the bubble top. That is not the best part though.
The quilted interior is my favorite. And look, no spedometer! (or any other instrumentation for that matter. Pure style.
A customized Jaguar XJS Convertible.
A hotrod with a bathtub style body.
Is this not a surfer’s car?
No leaning over for a kiss in this car!
And another favorite. Sensitive readers should skip over this part. Apologies to everybody, Sorry, not sorry. I’ve seen a number of cars over the years with the logo “The Panty Dropper” on it. Very vulgar and low class, I assure you. I assure you, yes I do. Well at the Starbird Car Show the tables are turned. I present the “The Boxer Dropper” owned by a woman. Note the pair of boxers on the ground. (No!! they are not mine, shame on you for thinking that! It is a nice car though.) I loved this car and the concept. And I love that women are getting involved in custom cars.
My favorite car at the show was “Pannama” which may or may not have been in the car that the Van Halen Song “Panama” is based on. The owner had a photo of a car that looked like this with David Lee Roth (the lead singer of Van Halen in case you are wondering.”
The car is absolutely gorgeous and appears to be similar to the car in the video for the song. Below is the video.
Thank you for sticking me through all this. I’ve been to several of the Starbird Car Show. Check this link to check out my previous posts.
I am linking up with Image-in-ing. Check them out, join in!!
Big excitement this week is that my trailcam captured a raccoon very early Monday morning. I don’t know if it is a Rocky or a Racquel. If you have any clues let me know.
And a short ten second video. I haven’t seen him since so I guess he was not impressed with what we had on offer on the patio which was nothing.
Also exciting is that Rascal our pomeranian graduated from physical therapy. He got injured in November and has been getting acupuncture and PT since then. The progress really has been remarkable. I thought we would never be able to walk him again but now we do it every day. Just a mile or so because he is still building up strength and stamina. The staff posed him in a graduation cap and he loved it. He is such a diva.
I saw Lizzie grooming herself the other day and getting big mouthfuls of fur so Heather got out the grooming tool. Lizzie loved it. We are trying to avoid hairballs.
A robin all puffed up in this fuzzy shot to try and keep warm.
A bird in our birdbath.
A female cardinal at the feeder.
And a bright colored male.
And both of them in this ten second video.
That’s about it for critterworld in our neck of the woods. I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Come join in!!
Here’s is the almost Snow Moon from my back yard. I usually take it in the front yard but our neighbors across the street had some sort of ruckus going on that sounded like I needed to avoid. I think it is pretty much the same as the front yard offered at a lot lower sound level.
I went on a walk in a city park here. I love the trees against the blue sky.
More blue sky! We are supposed to have storms tomorrow (Thursday) and cold weather so be thinking about us.
Not my Photo!!
And I finished another online jigsaw puzzle. I’m loving this relaxation induced anxiety. All this stuff in Canada, and the Ukraine, and life in general, just rolls away while working jigsaw puzzles. Actually, the concerns don’t go away, I just escape having to worry about them for a while.
I hope everybody is having a good week. I’m linking with Skywatch Friday. Please join in!!
The last football game of the season (big frowns).
Here is our little Lizzie on neighborhood watch with LJ down in the shadows below. They love to watch the goings on.
I went on a walk around our Lafortune Park the other day. Lots of good shadows there. I love playground shadows.
And winter tree shadows.
I found me some bleacher shadows at the baseball diamond.
A couple of friendly old guys (in other words about my age) came by on their bicycles. Don’t normally see bikes on the walking path but they were going very slow and not causing any problems.
Heather and I went to Philbrook Museum a week or so ago for an art respite. I think shadows are an integral part of some art.
And another work
This isn’t my photo, it’s an ipad jigsaw puzzle I did. I love the online puzzles. I don’t like real jigsaw puzzles. Such a mess and I have a real sensory issue with the paper backing. I can’t stand touching it. Plus the pieces scattered about are a mess. The online puzzles are cool. For rookies like me you can specify the orientation to be up and down which simplifies things greatly and when you make a fit, the screen has a small flash and a cool little clicking sound. And when you finish, the jigsaw lines go away and you get the photo. (Note, the copyright still belongs to the company, not me.)
And another puzzle I finished. I love the combination sea and landscapes with interesting buildings.
And speaking of not my photo, this is from my buddy Josh who is working this week in the Bakken Oil Field of North Dakota. He is always giving grief about how pensioners like me need to get back to work. I give him a hard time being so dang lazy.
https://flic.kr/p/2n3ddom
Here is another photo from Josh from the inside of a natural gas processing plant. I find the plants to be very cool. In fact they chill the gas down to about minus 132 F to extract the ethane, propane, butane, and natural gasoline out of it. Oh well, I can tell you don’t care. I don’t blame you. I am way off topic, sorry.
I’m staying off topic for a bit, sorry. It’s Super Bowl Sunday. Heather makes a Turkey Chili. That is all the snack I want for the game. Our son loves it as well. Don’t tell him that Heather loads it up with all sorts of vegetables that just mix right in.
I eat the chili with Fritos scoops. Don’t get me the regular Fritos, more sensory issues from me.
And this will be my beverage of choice. It comes well recommended.
I hope everybody is having a good and safe weekend. I am linking this hot mess of a post with Magical Mystery Teachers Shadow Shot Sunday 2 meme and with Lady Fi’s Our World Tuesday. Come join in the fun!
Rascal, our Pomeranian (the black blob to the left” sufferred a hip and knee injury some months ago and has been getting therapy including acupuncture and it is really paying off. We have been walking him and Abby for a mile every day and they love it and pout when we can’t take them out. We have a one-mile route through our greenbelt that takes them by the backyards of several houses with dogs. The dogs give each a good barking.
Our lady of leisure, Lizzy, has taken over this tray on our coffee table. She has a number of favorite napping spots in the house.
Here’s an artsy shot of LJ in the shadows getting some sun. Sun is the next best thing to the fireplace for him.
All our multitude of birds have disappeared. I put out the trail cam one day and all I got was this female cardinal, all day long.
I love to capture the blurs of birds as they fly off, so this was a week and a half ago.
The skies from our driveway a few days ago. Just a little bit of snow remained.
A family down the street made a snow family. It is all melted now but I thought it was cool then.
Big treat, warm day and we went to Trader Joes!! I stocked up on my favorite snacks.
I took son to an offbrand video game store. I noticed this sign board off to the side. It looks like a relic from an earlier time. I love mysteries.
Heather and I went to the Philbrook Museum of Art. They had a special exhibit on the “The Transcendental Painting Group” a group of artists in the 1930’s in New Mexico. Pure art, no relation to the world at all but this looks like a sky to me. What about you?
This is from March 2016. A photo I took of the Tulsa Driller at the Tulsa Fairgrounds.
I am now addicted to online jigsaw puzzles on my ipad. When you finish, the make a great picture.
What have you been up to? I am linking with Skywatch Friday. Come check us out!!
I drove up the freeway from Tulsa to the little town of Collinsville, Oklahoma to check out a mural painted last summer by a friend of the family, Raine Clotfelter, of Branson, Missouri. He was commissioned by a business owner who had bought a new building for his establishment and wanted something to make it special.
It’s special alright, 140 feet long and 20 feet tall of special, showing a lot of Oklahoma features under a beautiful sky and a huge United States Flag. It was too big to put it all in one photograph, even with my drone so I made a short video further down this post.
Raine does this thing all over the country. You want a mural painted he’ll come and do it for you. He goes by the moniker America’s Muralist and he is very accomplished artist. Check the link for examples of his work and his clients. He has done work for Walt Disney Productions, Columbia Pictures, and others.
He grew up in the small town of Antlers, Oklahoma and you can tell his small-town values are still with him. He likes to do work in small towns to help enliven them. He has certainly done that in Collinsville.
This link is to a local television story about Raine and his mural. This link is to a newspaper article about the project.
Check his website Americas Muralist. See if there is one of his mural near you.
