I snapped this photo of the practice baseball field at my son’s school in late October. I loved the fluffy clouds and blue sky. Plus something about the stained boards and the red roof on the shelter said Autumn to me.
Linking with Skywatch Friday
Thorncrown Chapel – Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Thorncrown Chapel is a beautiful wood and glass chapel set in a forest near Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It is absolutely beautiful.
I used to Topaz Impressions to make the photograph look more like a painting. I’ll tell you thought that there is nothing like being there for this gem of a building.
Previous Post on Thorncrown Chapel
Linking with NF Digital Arts Meme
Hiking in Oxley Nature Center
I’m a little late in writing this post. Back during the Thanksgiving weekend my brother Bob drove up from Corpus Christi to spend the holiday with us. One day I took he and my son Logan to Oxley Nature Center here in Tulsa for a little hike.
They have a great nature center at Oxley with helpful people who will give you as much information as you need, everything from a map to helpful directions, and of course flush toilets. Right outside the door headed for the trails is this, an insect hotel. I think it is more like a homeowners nightmare. It is kind of cool though.
Oxley has a great variety of trails.
Even with a lot of people by the time you get a quarter mile away from the parking lot you hardly see anyone.
Oxley is kind of low and has lots of water even during the drought that we are emerging from.
It has a great variety of terrain from deep woods and brush to more open areas. We walked about four miles or so during a nice warm day.
it looks like a duck lost a battle after a furious fight.
I’m a geocacher and found one out in the brush while Bob and Logan waited on me (they don’t like geocaching.) We also passed this cache that I found several years ago. Nice to see that it is still there.
We liked all the benches and places to rest. Oxley is a great place to spend a nice afternoon.
Linking with Nature Notes
Somebody is having a Birthday!
Heather has another birthday!! Can you believe it?
She is wild. Nobody likes the beach more than she does.
She is out of control on the roller coasters, especially the ones that corkscrew upside down and all around!
She’s my wife. Much more than I can deserve!!
So polish off your tiara and enjoy your day!!
In amongst all the other stuff you have going on,
Happy Birthday Heather!
Hanging Out on Friday
At work I am on a 9/80 schedule which means that I work 80 hours over nine days and get every other Friday off. I live for those every other Fridays. It’s the day Heather and I get to hang around with each other.
So yesterday we dropped the kid off at school, grabbed a quick bite at Einstein’s Bagels and then Heather treated me to a pedicure. I kind of like them especially when they don’t get too rough with the bottoms of my feet. I hate the cheese grater they use.
We ran some Christmas errands and had lunch at an Antique Mall and then browsed. I like browsing and taking pics of the merchandise. I never feel led to buy anything though. I guess that I’m cheap or maybe we have too much stuff already. Most people I know have way too much stuff.
I know that the owners of the booths are in it to make money but I think it has to be a passion for many of them. Many of the booths are laid out very well and you can tell that a lot of thought went into the merchandise on sale. I like it when I see passion and what one does for a check aligned. Unless the passion is making money then it often turns ugly.
Later on we took Logan to his play that he is in, Clark Theater’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (or “BCPE” to the old pros). They have two casts and they are doing lots of performances and it ends tomorrow. Last week the Director came to talk to me. Apparently Logan had been doing a little improvisation on his lines and singing and she wanted him to stick to the script. He has been doing Improv for years and this is his first play so we had to convince him that the character he plays, “The Reverand” is not supposed to be funny. He bought into it and from all reports he is back on track with the latest performance.
He is on tonight and tomorrow afternoon when the production ends. It has been quite an experience for him juggling a heavy performance schedule and finals but he is doing fine. He and us are stressed but we’ll get through it.
Anyways we are proud of the kid. He is doing great.
Six Word Fridays – Salt in the Spring Season
The Prompt this Week is “Season”
Salt is a Seasoning, close, no?
Close enough for Me, the Cheater
The Salt River in Central Arizona
A Man and His Puppy Play
Until the Lab Takes A Break
Looking Downstream at the Beautiful Desert
Or Upstream at the Spectacular Cliffs
or Some Unfocused Pretty Purple Flowers
Linking to Six Word Fridays
Soft Autumn Sky
This is a SOOC shot from late November. We have had a pretty mild winter all in all here in Tulsa. Most of the time during the day all you need is a jacket. No snow or anything yet. I love this in between weather after the our sweltering hot summers.
Chili Cookoff and a Night Run
We had a chili cookoff at the gas company yesterday. It was a fund raiser and a lot of fun. There were six different team and each team had from four to six crockpots of chili plus the fixin’s and some of them had extra stuff like tamales and such.
Heather made up a batch of one of her beef chili’s and I entered that. I thought hers was the best. I told a bunch of people there that they were in strong contention for the number two spot.
Here is what happens when you turn engineers loose on chili making. They may not have had the best chili but they had the best signage and were the only teams that had the correct personal protective gear.
I love the signs.
You know how you tell somebody is from New Mexico? If you say “green chili” and their heart rate doesn’t bump up then they are not from New Mexico. This chili was another contender for the number two spot.
I don’t really know who won but I had never eaten so much chili in my life. I love chili cookoffs.
After work I burned off some calories with a night run on Turkey Mountain with a group of people. I’m getting more used to running with a headlamp. You sure have to keep your head down and focus on where your feet are going. I only stumbled once but I didn’t fall. Sometimes stumbling is worse than falling.
We did four miles in the dark. It was a fast group but they would stop every now and then and let the slow guys and gals catch up. We did about four miles. I’m loving night running. I’m thinking about planting a night geocache on Turkey Mountain. More to come on that later?
So, what have you been up to lately?
Lights Are Up! Again – Hopefully for Good this Time
We like our Christmas lights at our house. We don’t do much and we downsized a little this year because I didn’t like extending my ladder to the max length to get the at the very top of the house. We compensated a little bit by putting lights down on the ground in front of Heather’s roses.
So Logan and I put the lights on the gutters. Through this post, you can click here to learn more about gutter screens improve your home’s fire protection. We had some old strings of the old school lights that we used. I know it is not very green for me to say so but the LED lights still have a strange cold glow that is not very Christmassy (that is a word here in Oklahoma, just so you know). I do like that you can stick a dozen or so strands together but I just don’t like the light they give off. So we went old school with the old c style bulbs this year. Hey they were in the original packages, I had to use them.
And Heather put up her dining room tree. It looks great on the inside and complements the lights outside through that big ole window.
So we put them up and shazzam! they work. You can see Heather in the doorway putting garland and lights around our front door.
The next day, no shazzam, the big lights don’t work! It looks like a couple strands have shorts so I go to do my favorite task. Redoing it! Heather helped so it went pretty fast. It had to because she had Zumba class at 5:30. I don’t dare put anything between her and her Zumba. I suggest you don’t either.
So as of last night they were still working. Lets keep our fingers crossed!!
If you “do” Christmas, do you have your lights up yet? Need any help? I’m busy, sorry.
Sunday Morning Run on Turkey Mountain
(Photo by Brian Hoover. I hope that he doesn’t sue me.)
I ran the trails of Turkey Mountain with a new group of people this morning. It was dark and cold at 7 am but hey there was a fire waiting for us. We were promised three or four mils but we got five. I like that getting more than what you bargained for. Most of the time anyway.
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Above is Brian checking out a possible homeless camp on the mountain. It was a tipi looking structure with a blue tarp. Nobody home he reported.
We stayed pretty much at it the whole run. We ran a short loop of about 0.85 miles on the red trail to begin with and then regrouped in the parking lot and off we went again. I was on the slow group which was about all I could handle.
It was a great workout Running by myself I get a little lazy. A group takes you out of the laziness.
We ran right at 4.99 miles. I cheated and walked around a little bit at the end to make it an even 5. I cheat a lot but you guys already know that if you know me.