Ice Escapades and a Chicken Sandwich

At noon today I took a little walk to check out the outdoor ice arena. It was a little chilly and all the machinery was going full blast but the ice looked very soft. I’m not sure this concept is going to work. One problem is the location. It is right behind the BOK Arena, right next to the downtown heating plant. Pretty ugly. I didn’t even take a picture of it it was so ugly.

Right next to it is what I guess is the city Christmas Tree. Isn’t it pretty? A spruce or fir from Colorado or Wyoming? Nope, its an artificial tree. Its hollow inside. You could fit a whole busload of homeless guys in there. I can tell you from my years of poking around downtown looking for good geocache hiding spots, that anywhere there is a hidey hole big enough to put a person into, someone is in it. So I didn’t poke around inside that tree too much.

You know, there are various tours of downtown Tulsa one can make. You can tour the Art Deco buildings, the Oilman’s offices, Historical sites, shoot they even have tours of the tunnels. I could show you where the homeless guys stay. What, do you think they live in the suburbs and drive in every day? Nope, they live right downtown. They are ahead of trend! They are taking up the best geocaching locations but I don’t hold that against them.

In the background is the BOK Arena. I don’t recommend the cheap seats but I love the way it looks. I don’t get all the whining, complaining, bitching, pissing, moaning, and groaning going on about it. I love the building.

All my wandering and wondering made me hungry so I went for a late lunch at Billie’s on the Square. You know the square where the circle is? They have the second best hamburgers in town and the best Chicken Sandwiches. I had my favorite: The Southwest Chicken Sandwich. No fries, just a diet soda to drink. It is the best Chicken Sandwich in Tulsa. I give Billie’s three stars out of four.

What a Day! – But I Ate Good! – and Worked Hard!

What a day. Gramps has gone back to Idaho. We had a good time. We had martini time every night. We ate very well, we looked at historical stuff and viewed great art. When I went to my Health Club this morning, I found that I had gained three pounds in a week. Whew, I feel like I gained 20. Plus, I need to talk to the club manager. The towels have shrunk. They don’t fit all the way around me any more.

The other thing is that I finally finished with the Cub Scout Popcorn. I drove down to the Scout Office and gave them the check. I didn’t do such a great job this year. I misordered popcorn and had to scramble to make up, forgot to order one kids prize, lost a case of carmel corn (I got it back at least), and just made a hash of things. But hey, I got everybody to pay! I’m very frank with people who are laggards and they know it, so they just pay rather than put up with me. I don’t blame them, sometimes I can’t stand me either.

But hey, there I was at the Scout Office, relieved to be done with it but hungry. The Scout office is located at about 41st and Garnett right in the middle of an office park ghetto. Nowhere to eat. Then I had a vision. Popeyes, near 41st and Mingo. So off I went.

Now, Sweetie may disagree but I think that most of the time I eat pretty well. Its just the volume but still, I eat downtown at Subways, Roast Chicken, whole wheat, no cheese, all the veggies, yogurt, diet soda, or something similar at Quiznos. I like those meals and all but its not like I look forward to them and wouldn’t it be a tragedy if, God forbid, one of those was my last meal?

I lived in the Houston area for years and ate tons of Popeyes chicken before I started my migration to Oklahoma . So there I was at the counter, Three pieces, mixed dark and white, dirty rice, and a biscuit. If I’m going to eat food that is bad for me, I’m going eat good bad food. Lunch was great! And I lived to eat another low fat lunch.

I give Popeyes three stars out of four. Plus, its at the Gateway to great geocaching in Tulsa.


I’m not done yet. You may, but I’m not. I got home tonight and finished the molding in SuperPizzaBoys room. It took about 20 minutes to nail it in. I measured and cut the molding about three years ago and it has been sitting in his room all this time. You just don’t want to rush a project is what I say.

Now, I’m done. You can go now.

More Thanksgiving Weekend

Gramps continues his visit from Idaho for the Thanksgiving Holidays. As far as the critters are concerned he ought to stay permanently.

I made pancakes this morning. I do a pretty good job. These are healthy for you. They have oatmeal, egg beaters, skim milk, brown sugar. My Mother gave me the secret to pancakes way back when I was a young boy. She always told me not to turn them until 97 bubbles came up. I gave away the family pancake secret. Darn!
Also from an engineering perspective. I like to use 1/4 cup of batter per pancake. The face centered cubic pattern I use on placing the individual cakes results in the maximum area of pancake to area of grill ratio for the 1/4 cup batter portion. Later on we went to the Gilcrease Museum. Lots of photographs by Ansel Adams and of course western art. Its a family favorite. Take a look at the sculpture of the Native American with the bow behind SuperPizzaBoy. That image is going on our new license plates.

Old School Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is here. My Dad, Gramps, flew down from Idaho and Wednesday we all drove down to Little Dixie to have Thanksgiving with Sweetie’s Mom, Nana. We had a pretty good time.

Desserts. Note that these were for about five people. Works out to about two person. Plus a few people stopped by to visit.
Lots of dogs. For some reason they piled on me.


Nana lives in an old school neighborhood. They have big trees and sidewalks.

While there, we “men” went out to the Kiamichi Wilderness to check out a monument a site where four British airmen crashed and died during a training flight during World War II. It also the site of a geocache that SuperPizzaBoy and I placed a few months ago. It is way off in the boonies, only four people have found it.

The security guy at the gate into the wilderness invited us to visit their new Fire Station. So we had to go see it. While there SPB got incarcerated for violating the wilderness holiday videogame prohibition. We had to leave him there. I told him that a judge would have to set bail and they don’t work on holidays. I hope that he does ok.

Nana was the gracious hostess as always. She keeps asking me where her grandson is.

Thanksgiving wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without holding a baby. Sweetie is wondering just when do sweet 5 month old boys turn into stinky, farting, 10 year olds. It may be a while before we get SPB out of jail.


Friday, if all goes well, we head back home. I don’t know if SPB is going with us or not.
And of course, the Dallas Cowboys won.
Amen .

Road Trip to Tahlequah – Cherokee Heritage Center

My Dad, Gramps, is in town visiting us for Thanksgiving. He is really into history and art type stuff so over the years we have taken him to the Gilcrease Museum, Philbrook, Woolaroc, the Oklahoma History Center and the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, the Chisolm Trail museum in Duncan, and several other places that I have forgotten about. So yesterday we traveled down to Tahlequah to check out the Cherokee Heritage Center.

It is very cool, we enjoyed it very much, and I recommend it to anybody. They have a museum that had a temporary exhibit on some very intricate beadwork. The exhibit that blew me away was the display about the double dealing and thievery by white people prior to the Trail of Tears where the Cherokee, along with other tribes, were removed from their lands in the east to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. It was a very brutal process.

Before we left Gramps made friends with out two mutts Ginger and Abbey.

It was a great day. We learned a lot and enjoyed ourselves. We didn’t look for any geocaches though.

Talking Turkey

I’ve been hearing about a new gadget. An electric smoker with electronic temperature control and timer. It was insulated so that the food was stay hot and you could add wood chips from outside. You could smoke at relatively low temperaturs for a long time.

You can get them at Academy, Sam’s and Bass Pro. I told Sweetie about my new obsession and she gave me the wifely, “uh uh”. So then some time passes and they go on sale at Academy. I tell her about it and she says well maybe you will get one for Christmas. I said well actually I would like to just go buy it. So, my loving devoted wife says “OK.” Whew so I go get it.

Today I got to try it out. I smoked a pork loin for dinner today and a turkey breast for Thanksgiving Dinner. I used apple cider and pecan for the smoking.

The pork loin was delicious. I hope that the turkey works.

A gadget I can cook with!
The turkey after about 9 hours.
Notice the meat thermometer. I’m all about food safety while smoking!
Two hours later

Gramps

Gramps flew in from Idaho last night to spend Thanksgiving with us. We always look forward to seeing him anytime but we really like seeing him at Thanksgiving.

He is very easy to have around, a very good guest. I think that he likes Sweeties cooking, I think that he likes it a lot! So do I.

We never have martini time in the house except when Gramps is here. We have a couple drinks but nobody gets drunk. Its a great way to relax, unwind and talk and catch up on what is happening.

And then we ate. Sweetie made a great dinner. For desert she made this great bundt cake. You’ve all seen pictures of bundt cakes in Southern Living and Good Housekeeping. They are so perfect, placed on a nice plate, all sprinkled with powdered sugar and all. There is always something fakey about those pictures. Don’t you think?
Here is a picture of the best bundt cake ever made, and eaten.

I really like Gramps’ visits.

Twilight Something

I feel left out. Half the posts in the blogosphere since late last week have Twilight in the title. Twilight dreams, Twilight this, Twilight that. To add to it all Sweetie decided to go see the Twilight movie with some other ladies Sunday night. She said that she and I couldn’t go together sometime because “I hadn’t read the book so I wouldn’t understand.”

Enough already, there is no law that says that I have to have read the book or go see the movie in order to have a blog post that says “Twilight” in it.

SuperPizzaBoy decided to go have a burger while Sweetie was watching the movie. So we head off to Fuddruckers. It is not one of our usual spots but its close to the house. We both ordered burgers and SPB ordered a shake. They shook him up on the shake by bringing a glass with the shake and the “extra” in the steel blender. He told the guy that there was a mistake.

Poor kid had never run into that before but he got used to it very quickly.

Afterward he played with the “King” for a little bit.


Then we went home. Don’t want to miss Sunday night football.

Your Dewey Decimal System Quiz

I found a link to this quiz at Oklahoma Book Lady’s blog.

Hopefully nobody else will be described as a fossil.

Share your results.

Yogi’s Dewey Decimal Section:

566 Fossil chordates

Yogi = 5579 = 557+9 = 566

Class:
500 Science

Contains:
Math, astronomy, prehistoric life, plants and animals.

What it says about you:
You are fascinated by the world around you, and see it as a puzzle worth exploring. You try to understand how things work and how you can make them better. You might be a nerd.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

The Rat Pack Live at the Sands and Dinner at Sonoma Bistro & Wine Bar

Saturday night Sweetie and I left SuperPizzaBoy in the care of sitter Erica and ventured downtown to see the matinee of “The Rat Pack Live at the Sands.” at the PAC.

The show is a recreation of the shows that Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, junior gave at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas during the early 1960s. Obviously not knowing much of anything about the original shows but having seen Frank, Dean, and Sammy plenty on tv during my childhood, I loved the show. The guys, Setphen Triffitt, David Hayes, and Phil Barley as Frank, Sammy, and Dean respectively could really sing.

My favorite was David Hayes. He sang a unique version of “Mr. Bojangles” that made it actually sound like a song. I hate sloppy songs and Mr. Bojangles is the worst ever but I liked Mr. Hayes version tremendously.

The little one liners they tossed out and zingers from Frank and Dean toward Sammy were entertaining also although the audience missed the some of the jokes.

Guys, the ladies playing the Burelli Sisters did a very nice job also.

It was a very satisfying show and I recommend it highly.

Afterward, Sweetie and I had dinner in Brookside at Sonoma Bistro & Wine Bar. We were looking for something a little unique and decided on this. It is a nice little restaurant with a huge wine list many of them by the glass and a small but interesting menu. They told us that they use local and organic ingredients so they are very politically correct. But hey, is the food good, heck yeah, the food is great. I had chicken and avocado sandwich with a cup of tomato bisque , Sweetie had a cobb salad.

I splurged and spent more on the glass of wine that I had than on my meal. Something about good wine just makes it taste a lot better than the rotgut I get.

Dinner was great. I would go back.

Time to get back to reality. SuperPizzaBoy had his friend “N” over for a sleepover Saturday night.