Popcorn Pickup Today

It was Cub Scout popcorn pickup day today for SuperPizzaBoy’s Pack. Did SPB help? No he was staying with a friend. So me and the crew went to the warehouse on a cold November morning to pick our popcorn up. I’m the popcorn colonel, so I’m in charge!

The man in the brown jacket below is Rick, our Cubmaster. He is really the man in charge. For 5 years he has been the den leader and the last few years the Cubmaster. He has a real heart for kids and has done a great job. He has been very understanding about SuperPizzaBoy. He has gone the extra mile to make SPB feel a part of the Den, Patrol, and Pack. So have many other people but Rick went way above and way beyond what could be expected of anybody.

The boy right behind him is his son. He sold almost 20% of the total popcorn in the Pack. I’m keeping my eye on him. I’m going to hire him when he gets out of college. He is a selling machine.

Below is some of the popcorn in our garage. Sales were down a bunch this year. Our Patrol sold 58% of it. Next year we are out. Somebody else better step up!


Below is JC’s Mom. She helped me get distribute the popcorn to the kids. She and her husband Joe are always there for the Patrol. They are always right in the middle of the action. She and Joe are also great with SPB. He trusts her a lot.

Sweetie also helped. I am not allowed to post unauthorized photographs. I make a point of following that policy every once in a while.

Party Time

Sweetie is down at Nana’s helping with the sale of the store. The sale didn’t close until late Friday afternoon so she called me and said that she was going to stay down there.

SuperPizzaBoy is at an overnight with his friend Q.

Wow, Friday night alone! Party time.

Let me see, first stop is Home Depot downtown. SPB’s toilet is leaking. Then to Blockbuster to get something besides a romantic comedy. I enjoy a good romantic comedy but on my own I can get something will lots of action. I didn’t recognize many of the movies, I picked “TransSiberian”. I’m watching it now. I think that it may suck. I am not sure quite yet.

Ok then to the grocery store to pick up some chicken thighs. I absolutely love grilled chicken. Thighs are my favorite. I really like nice firm thighs.

Ok then home. I figure maybe 30 minutes to fix the toilet. Fat chance. I need another part. Put the dogs back up, run and get the part. Come back. All told it took two hours. I’m lucky I finished at all. Plumbing is not my strong suit.

Finally get to cook my chicken. Watch my movie, go to bed. Don’t tell Sweetie, she thinks I’m out partying!

Here is where I spent most of the night. The dogs didn’t help. They grabbed everything they could and ran off with it. Why do dogs love toilets?

“The Brass Verdict” by Michael Connelly


Michael Connelly writes books with hard boiled characters, Tough Guys. He is most famous for his Harry Bosch series. Harry Bosch is one tough LAPD Detective. You mess with him you are messing with trouble. Mr. Connelly has added another tough protagonist, Mickey Haller, a tough defense attorney. He was introduced in “The Lincoln Lawyer.” Haller doesn’t have an office, he works out of Lincolns. He has several that he rotates.

The Brass Verdict has both hard boiled guys. Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller. Haller is the main guy, Bosch just has a side part in this book. Two tough guys. They are kind of working together but not really. This avoids the confrontation where one of the tough guys has to blink.

I’ll spare you the story. You can read the book to find out the story. I don’t care about the story. I go for the writing. I’ll just give you a flavor of the book, Chapter One, page 1:

“Everybody lies. … A trial is a contest of lies. … The trick if are sitting at the defense table is to be patient. To wait. Not for just any lie, But for the one you can grab on to and forge like hot iron into a sharpened blade. You can then use that blade to rip the case open and spill its guts out on the floor.”

This isn’t chick lit. It isn’t the Red Tent. This is a guy book.

I give it a 3 out of 4. A great read.

Barack Obama

One of the blogs I follow is “From Where I Sit” by Michael S. Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson publishing. He seems like he is act pretty well put together and has a sense a perspective on things that I appreciate.

His post today is entitled “My Four Commitments to Barack Obama.”

I’ve decided to adopt those personally. I’m tired of two years of squabbling and fighting. The country has some problems to solve and we need to get together and go about solving them together.

Counterpoint

I looked and looked for something funny from Republicans about Democrats. I couldn’t find it. That might be a bad sign for Republicans today.

The Tulsa World had a nicely reasoned opinion piece by one of my favorite columnists, Paul Greenberg. I couldn’t find it on the World site but I found it posted on the web.

Paul Greenberg Column

I love watching the election returns. So I’ll be eating popcorn and watching the returns tonight.

Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican

I was surfin’ the other night when I saw a poster. I googled the words on the poster and got a gazillion hits for t shirts and such but there was a post from a blog. I followed it and burst out laughing. I mightily annoyed Sweetie who is under a tight deadline for an article for our church magazine. So I decided to share it with everybody.

Now, don’t anybody get excited and start throwing things. I just thought it was funny. I looked for a counterpoint just to provide equal time but I think Republican’s have lost their sense of humor. (Full disclosure, I am a registered Republican,) I looked and looked and there are lots of posts but they are all foaming at the mouth. If anybody can find a funny “Friends don’t let friends vote democrat” entry let me know and I’ll add the link. I’m all for fairness and balance as long as they are opinions I don’t oppose.

I don’t know who the heck I’m voting for Tuesday!

fluid thinking: friends don’t let friends vote republican

Little Dixie Halloween

For Halloween we drove down to Nana’s house in Southeast Oklahoma.

Sweetie as the Mad Scientist.

Link (aka SuperPizzaBoy) demonstrating spin attack.


The Mad Scientist found her own little sweetie.

Yogi, not to be outdone, found his own sweetie.
Can we trade in our smelly stinky boy for one or two of these?


OK, John its http://crustygasguy.blogspot.com. No www, no dot com,

Forget it, lets have another beer.

No I don’t want to look at your phone. Yea, its great,

Hey let me know when you figure out how to make a phone call on it.

Yep, John, I’m putting you on my blog.

After all, you are one of the top 20 hair guys in southern Pushmataha County!

HallowZooEen

Early this week we went to the Tulsa Hallowzooeen. We go every year. This year we went earlier in the week than we normally do. We were rewarded with no crowds and more pleasant people. The folks handing out the candy were a lot less stressed and more generous.

We were in and out in less than an hour. It wasn’t like we were in a hurry.

SuperPizzaBoy likes the pretty girls. (Don’t say that, its embarrassing Dad!)

Grrrr, I’m not Robin Hood, I’m Link. Can’t you see the shield?

Making off with lots of candy.

Stab attack on the Tigers on the way home.

Carrie Underwood Concert

Wednesday night we left left SuperPizzaBoy with Clara the sitter and Sweetie and I headed downtown to the BOK Arena to see Carrie Underwood.

She put on quite a show. She is even more beautiful live than on TV. She is really gorgeous. She was like #2 gorgeous woman in Oklahoma that night. She wore some really nice outfits. Her first dress was very short. As she was going down a runway into the audience bending down shaking hands she said “I’m glad I’m wearing shorts under this dress tonight.” I strained my eyes really hard, I couldn’t quite see her shorts.

She can really belt it out and sing and is really personable. It is very hard to believe that it has been just since 2005 since she won American Idol.

The production was good, the only cheesy thing was the video montage, during a costume change, of her winning multiple awards during the years. Its like, OK Carrie, we know that you are a big star. After all we bought tickets to be here girl. Also, its about time she dropped the “oh golly gosh, I can’t believe I’m a star, and I’m just from Checotah, Oklahoma and I’ve been to Nashville, and I’ve been to Hollywood, and I’ve been to New York City, and I just can’t believe that all that is happening to little ole me and everybody is being so nice to me” rap. We know that you are a star Carrie! Start acting like one.

You can tell that she had true fans there. The fans sang the hit songs right back at her word for word. We were at a Garth Brooks concert once and he said that was the highest tribute that a fan could make toward a singer, singing the song back. I think it is a little strange myself.

Carrie still has a sweetness to her. She had her 5 year old niece on stage to help sing “American Girl” and she had an infant nephew in her arms in another song until they had to cut it short because he started crying. Neither song went quite to plan but Carrie looked she didn’t mind a bit.

Another thing was that when she was done singing, she said good night, the house lights came on, and the audience hauled ass for the parking lots. No encore, no nothing. What is up with that? I’ve never been to a concert that didn’t have an encore. Is that a country concert thing. The only other country concert I’ve been to was Garth Brooks. He had an encore, he’d of sang all night I think.

Maybe she sang all her songs and didn’t have any left.

I like her and all that and am proud of her being from Oklahoma but really and truly I’m can’t help but think that if she had she just stuck it out with Tony Romo the Dallas Cowboys would be doing much better than they are. I just don’t think that Tony ever got over the breakup.

One final note on the venue. The nosebleed seats at the BOK Arena are not very satisfying. They are too high up and the video screens are occluded by some strange apparatus. The sound was kind of muddy up there compared to the Eagles where we were fortunate to sit quite a bit lower.

Anyways, it was nice to go see Ms. Underwood. She put on a good show.

I rate it a 3 stars out of 4. Great voice and performance were huge plusses. Cheesy self promotion video and no encore slight minuses. Venue problems not her fault.

A Sunday Walk

Sunday the Yogi Family went for a walk around Jewell Lake in East Tulsa. Its a water supply lake with a very nice, flat, wide, path around it about 3 miles long. Just right for SuperPizzaBoy to ride his Triton ( a very cool heavy duty tricycle steered with the rear wheels.)

Of course, there was a geocache there so I peeled off and found it. Its underneath the tin in the picture below. Don’t tell anybody though. Geocachers don’t like hints. It hadn’t been found since June. I like finding the ones that hadn’t been found in a while.

Then I went back. I was way behind as you can see. It was a very pretty, sunny, cool, windy day. I loved it.

I caught up with them. I have a very cool video of Sweetie almost crashing riding the Triton down a ramp at the spillway. I have been forbidden to post it. Maybe, if my one or two readers asked she would relent.