Walking The Sunny Beaches of Tulsa

I bet you didn’t know that Tulsa had nice sandy beaches did you? Well, we may not have beaches like this one in Orange Beach, Alabama but it is going to get close to 60F today so a lot of people are going to feel like it is a beach day.

Thank Goodness for Australia is all I say. The Australian bloggers showing the nice warm weather they have down there this time of year is about the only thing that keeps me going.

I know why snowbirds are the way they are.

So, when you think beaches does the word Tulsa pop into your mind?

Yeah, me neither.

At least we haven’t had this so far this Winter

A Piss Poor Job of It

This is my employer’s fancy new plaza. I think they did a good job. The old landscaping had all sorts of nooks and and shadowy crannies that were okay during the day but kind of creepy when I walked across the plaza to the parking garage across the way. The new plaza is lots more open and very well lighted.

The building across the way is the old headquarters building for Cities Service Company. At one time it was one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world. The industry downturn in the early 1980’s and then Boone Pickens drove them into arms of Armand Hammer’s Occidental Oil and Gas company. The refineries and gasoline retail arm ended up as Citgo, now owned by the government of Venezuela. The employees ended up scattered to the four corners of the world. As far as I know they all did okay. I call them the Cities Service mafia. They sure bond together.

Their story is echoed in lots of other companies and people, including my career. Such is capitalism and creative destruction and all the other buzz words. And all sorts of other industries have been through similar things. I am not sure whether it is good or bad but fully understand the short term pain and misery it can cause. It does seem that the managed economies of the world have the effect of spreading misery.

Check the widgets on my sidebar for the prices. It is good news to many and not so good news to others.I am starting to hear again the old saw about how the energy companies control the price of oil and natural gas and products such as gasoline. All I have to say is that if that is true then:

We are doing a piss poor job of it.

In fact it has been kind of like a roller coaster. Sometimes I feel like the blonde girl in the video below:

I don’t like roller coasters, do you?

Skywatch Friday – A Warm Sunrise on a Cold Morning

A northeast Oklahoma sunrise as I left my gym the other day to head to work.

Linking with Skywatch Friday

Digital Art Meme – Appeal to the Great Spirit

Appeal to the Great Spirit is a sculpture in Tulsa’s popular Woodward Park. I redid my digital photo using Topaz Labs Impression program using one of the “Colored Pencil” effects.

Linking with Digital Arts Meme

New Member of the Family

We have somebody new in the family. He hangs out in the back yard. He came from Colorado.

He is constantly shushing everybody especially our noisy dogs. They love going into the back yard and updating their barkbook status and visiting with all their friends. Talk about yappy dogs, that is ours.

The new guy or gal didn’t come with a name. I’ve thought about Charles Barkley or Tree Guy or Tree Gal. I’ve thought about Sh’Bark. Nothing really sounds good. How about you? Do you have any ideas?

Take your time, I don’t think he is going anywhere.

Foto Friday Fun (on Monday)

Fellow blogger Gaelyn has a interesting meme called “Foto Friday Fun” where she provides a number for participants to search their archives with in search of photographs. This week’s number is 72 and this is one of the pics that popped up. It is a fish (I have no idea what kind of fish) from a visit to the Oklahoma Aquarium back in 2010. I think the fish is checking me out as much as I was looking at him. I love aquariums and ours is pretty good.

Foto Friday Fun

Sunday Cold Weather Dog Fashions

It has been unseasonably chilly here in Oklahoma so we have resorted to scarves for our dogs

Abby our white Shih Tzu mix (all our dogs are basically ungrateful rescue dogs) was really rocking Heather’s purple scarf. Ironic as Abby is impervious to cold. She is ready to go out anytime and update her barkbook status with the neighbors. Ginger our Dachsund mix is only warm on one day all year long, July 4th, and shivers the rest of the year. She thinks she needs more than Heather’s scarf. Rascal our black Pomeranian mix wants something different besides my dull scarf.

Have you tried helping your dogs cope with winter cold with scarves. Our experiment didn’t work out well at all.

Saturday’s Critters

Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood in Concert at BOK in Tulsa

Friday night and Heather and I headed out to the BOK Arena to attend the Garth Brooks concert in Tulsa. The first of seven. When he put the tickets on sale back in early Noveember he sold 105,000 tickets the first day. Just for Tulsa. You see he is a native Oklahoman and the people here love him. Besides his last concert here was 17 years ago and so we were feeling a little deprived.

Heather and I got there well before the schedule start time of 7 pm. We are such nerds. When we see a start time we assume that they are serious. Well we waited a while so we had some time kill. You can see the view we had. I’m surprised that we didn’t have Sherpas and oxygen bottles to get to our seats. Oh well, we were in the house and that is what counts.

What did we do with the time. Well of course we did a selfie!!! Lots of Selfies at the arena that night.

Especially down close to the stage. I brought my Canon PowerShot SX40 HS super zoom camera to the concert. It is concert legal, anything that uses detachable lenses is forbidden, but the Canon has the super zoom feature and a low light mode that gives me a decent chance at photographs.

There were almost lined up. Who invented the term Selfie. You know I might have I am not sure. So anybody making or looking at Selfies you need to send me a dime every time you do do those things. Don’t worry though, it is in effect only today and I should have a billion dollars by this time tomorrow and then they will be free again. Unless I run out of money.

Then we got a little bit of a warm up act. Singer/Songwriter Karen Rochelle came out and sang and few songs for us. I thought she was really good. She writes songs for Garth’s wife Trisha Yearwood. She was going to be in the concourse after the show to meet people and even take Selfies. If you are going to tonight’s show I’d appreciate if you would stop by her booth afterward and remind about the dime fee that she owes me for each selfie. You know, in accordance with the new policy and all.

And the Garth came out. Actually he came storming out. I had forgotten how active he is on stage. His fans love him.

When he got tired of running around the state, he started climbing stuff. I bet his insurance company has concerns about stuff like this. He was singing the whole time also.

I judge concerts by how much in tune the performer is with the audience. Nobody is in tune with Okies like Garth is. He blew by everybody else. His musicians are first rate and they have been with him a long time. The “new guy” has been with him only twenty years. Garth even introduced a couple of the road crew. I have never seen anybody do that before.

He was here, there, and everywhere. He even grabbed a video camera at one point and was running around the stage with it.

After a while his wife Trisha Yearwood came on stage and they sang a duet.

And then a little bit smash face and then she sent him off the stage. You know to go fetch something or check on the kids or something.

And then she sang some songs. She still has the voice as she played some of the favorites.

She is quite a performer in her own right.

They are pretty cute together. They have been retired for the last ten years while their daughters were growing up, in the Tulsa suburb of Owasso and they have been seen all over town. I have several friends who have ran into them in various stores and everybody is impressed with how friendly and approachable they are. I think they are two of the world’s really nice people. The kids are out of the house and now and so Garth and Trisha are resuming their careers.

So, Garth finished up his set, said his goodbyes to the crowd, several times as everybody was still screaming at him.

He had two encores and then that was that. He is doing two shows on Saturday. It must be grueling for him. He put everything he had into the performance Friday night. I can’t imagine him doing it twice.

If you are not familiar with Garth here is a song.

Edit this setlist | More Garth Brooks with Trisha Yearwood setlists

If you are familiar with him, here was his set list for the concert.

And I got a t shirt. The last concert t shirt I got for Janet Jackson way back when in the early 90’s or late 80’s in Oklahoma City. I still don’t know why I got one.

I just hope that Garth comes back sooner than seventeen years.

Weekend Reflections – Glassy Building

I’m experimenting with a new Topaz Labs product “Topaz Glow.” I thought it made the reflection in the building pop out quite a bit. They have a 30 day free trial program on almost everything they sell which is quite handy.

Do you use Topaz products? What do you think of them?

Linking with Weekend Reflections

Wolf Moon

We had a really nice moon the other night so I grabbed my Canon SX40HS SuperZoom and went out there and superzoomed it. Not knowing much about I was trying the Aperture Priority settings, holding it in my hand, and not getting much of anywhere with it. A bunch of fuzzy wuzzy blobs in the sky. So I went inside and googled “How to take pictures of the moon with the Canon SX40HS” and I found a video.

It’s by an English chick and she said to just use the Auto setting but use a tripod. So that was what I did. I was way superzoomed and even using the timer and the tripod the image was moving around but I did get lucky with one shot. So I’m all excited about the camera again. I just need to be checking the English chick’s videos on the camera. She has dozens of them covering all aspects of the camera.

I posted the photo on Instagram cuz I was kind of proud of it and people were nice and all but some guy got on there and accused me of stealing the photo from him. Like, that got my righteous ire up and going. So I blocked and reported him as Inappropriate. That’ll teach him.

My friend Tom, the great hunter and outdoorsman, told me that the January full moon is called the Wolf Moon. And turns out it is true. At least according to the Farmers Almanac and they are never wrong are they? I love the name. So I’ve been a Wolf Moon shooting fool.

This grainy pic is from my Nikon and it shows a faint Wolf Moon over my favorite place in Tulsa, Turkey Mountain. I probably need to see what the English chick says about my little Nikon.

And this grainy photo of the Wolf Moon is from last night and it is from the top of Turkey Mountain looking east over south Tulsa. So it is the companion pic to the one above. I have taken to running at night on the trails of Turkey Mountain once a week or so with a group of people. We run with headlights and it takes a little getting used to. You definitely have to keep your eyes on the ground. I’m one of the older and lots slower guys and they are nice and wait for me as I pick my around the rocks and roots. I haven’t fallen or sprained anything yet but I’ve stumbled a few times. I’m about at the point where I’m ready to go by myself a time or two up on the mountain. (Shhhhhh, don’t tell Heather!!! She wouldn’t be happy by that plan.)

The “Mayor” of Turkey Mountain and fellow blogger and geocacher, Trailzombie wrote a post on his blog of our adventure on Turkey Mountain. Check it out here.

So, that is about it for today and what I want to know are two things.

One, where do you to learn how to use your camera?

Second, do you have any pics of the Wolf Moon.

And third, has anybody accused you of stealing their photos? How did you respond. You only have to answer that if you are innocent. Or you can confess if you want. We are all about forgiveness on Yogi’s Den.