Once a Runner by John L. Parker, Jr.

My brother Bob, a huge runner from when running wasn’t cool, gave me this book. It was written back in 1978 and is recently back in print.

It is novel about running and runners written back during the days of “no pain, no gain” and “pain is what weakness feels like as it leaves the body,” and “sweat is just your fat cells crying.” The plot doesn’t really matter, it is about running by real runners.

The book starts our really slow. One problem is that the author seems to have gotten a brand new thesaurus and is really giving it a workout plus he is pulling the stops on every simile, metaphor, adjective, and adverb he has ever heard about. About halfway through the book though the author starts writing in a more natural style and the story grabs you and pulls you through to the end.

The book is about obsession, dedication, and hard work and has the best description of running a race I’ve ever read (not that I would know a thing about running a race.)

Buy this book (or get it from your library), and read it. You’ll like it.

I rate it 3.5 stars out of 4.

The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras by Michael Orenduff

I just finished this book. I couldn’t resist it. It is set in Old Town Albuquerque and involves ancient indian pottery, the University of New Mexico, and murder. I used to live in Albuquerque, got my first degree at UNM, and love Old Town. It is the mixture of the cheesy and the nice. Very very old adobe buildings, nice restaurants, lots of alleys and old streets. New Mexico has a charm to it that never leaves you.

The book is about an Old Town pottery shop owner, Hubert Schuze, who has been known to go dig up pots illegally. He doesn’t much apologize for it. He is a laid back guy who has a wide variety of friends and enjoys life. He is accused of murder so he has to take matters into his own hands.

Orenduff is a natural storyteller. This is one of those books where the writing is so smooth and the story so compelling that you stay up till midnight and then get surprised when you look at the clock.

Hey, and it is on Amazon Kindle for less than $6.

I give this book 3.5 stars out of five. This is the first of a series and I’m going to read the rest.

Gulliver’s Travels

During the holidays the Yogi’s went to see Gulliver’s Travels. Its a modern redo of the classic story with Jack Black playing an underachieving slacker mail guy who talks himself into a trip to the Bermuda Triangle.

Go see the trailer here.

I give the movie one star out of five. See if you can’t talk your kid into seeing Tangled instead.

Sunset with a little Flare

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My friend Sharon is married to Don. Sharon and Don are both chemical engineers (so you know they are extremely nice people, right, like all chemical engineers.) Sharon works in an office downtown, Don works at one of the oil refineries on the river. Chemical Engineers in love, something special about that. They are very romantic. I think they murmur to each other about subcooled reflux and isentropic expansion and the beauty and elegance of feed forward process controls.

Whenever I see the flare going at the refinery I call Sharon and tell her, “Call Don and tell him to get his butt out in the plant, something’s wrong!”

Last several times I’ve called she hasn’t picked up though. I wonder what’s up with that.

Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell

I just finished Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell. This is another of her series of Kay Scarpetta books. Kay Scarpetta is a medical examiner who solves murders. In this one she has to solve a puzzler of a murder quickly under difficult circumstances.

She is at Dover Air Force Base to begin with doing autopsies on the bodies of soldiers killed over seas. She is like a reserve officer. She gets word from the Cambridge Forensic Center, her home office that she has been away from for months, that it appears that a murder victim may not have been dead when he was brought in. Oops, so she has to leave Dover and get back to Cambridge quickly to check out what was going on.

She gets there and finds out that all sorts of crap has been going on in her absence. Her assistant, Fielding, hasn’t been taking care of business. She ends up playing catch up on everything, meanwhile she has to figure out what is going on with the murder. And where in the heck is the assistant, how come the military is there nosing around.

This isn’t a linear detective novel. The process of solving the murder goes here, there, and everywhere, but it is very intriguing and compelling. I loved this book. It was a totally satisfying read.

I give it four stars out of five. I got my copy at the library!

A Walk Downtown

We had a cold spell last week in Tulsa. At lunch one bright, sunny, bitterly cold day I bundled up and took my new Diana, low tech, low res, 35mm film camera on a walk.

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First thing was some crane action going by our building. My employer bought the building last year and has been making a bunch of updates since then.

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A little bit further on is Tulsa’s BOK Center designed by Cesar Pelli (Thanks Sydney for pointing out my error). Some call it the hubcap, others say it looks like a roll of duct tape. No matter, since it opened a few years ago we have had some wonderful concerts come to town that we were missing before. I love it.

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The sky was very blue and very clear. I love it when fronts come through in the wintertime. Afterward its like the air was swept clean.

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I’m not sure what is going on here. Somebody is putting a lot of work into this mural. I love murals. I’ll be checking on this one to see what is going on.

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A sculpture honoring firefighters. Firefighter’s are awesome.

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A sculpture put up by our local newspaper, the Tulsa World, honoring paperboys. I don’t think they have had paperboys in the sense of kids who sell newspapers or run a route for decades but I guess that it is good to honor them. With my digital cameras I could put a little zoom action on the photo. With my Diana I just have to take what I can get. I didn’t want to walk in the planting area or duck under their security gate to get closer.

Check out That’s My World for other views of the world.

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Burn the Floor

Sweetie and I ventured to downtown Tulsa on Saturday to see “Burn the Floor” at the Performing Arts Center. It was a wonderful show. It is just dancing, ballroom dancing and the dancers are wonderful. They alternate the fast paced dances with the waltzes. It is a great show.

I give it five stars out of five. Go see it.

The King’s Speech

Sweetie and I went to see “The King’s Speech” recently. It is about King George VI of England and his speech therapist, Lionel Logue. The King took over the crown right at the beginning of World War II under very difficult circumstances. He had a very bad stammer from childhood that he could not rid himself of despite seeing many doctors and specialist. His wife found an obscure speech therapist, Logue, who treated the Duke of York (who later became King George VI, successfully.

So its about history and overcoming and becoming a leader but it is mainly about the relationship and the friendship between the Duke of York and Lionel Logue and how a common man helped a man become King.

This is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. I give it five stars out of five.
Rated R because of language. Get a sitter for the kids, go see this movie. Its great.

Colin Firth makes a great Duke of York and later King.
Helen Bonham Carter plays the supportive wife, Queen Elizabeth. Geoffrey Rush absolutely steals the show as Lionel Logue the therapist.