No big adventures lately so what I have this week are Skywatch “targets of opportunity.” Sights I saw while going about my business.
First up is a driveway skywatch shot one morning. I could see the sky so I ventured out on the driveway to take the shot.
This one is from the parking lot of my brother’s assisted living facility. There were some funky looking clouds so I shot them over some neighboring woods.
I was running an errand in the late afternoon one day last week and noticed our former church had the days last light on the steeple. By the time I got over and took the shot things had dimmed. The photo is quite grainy but here it is.
With the cold and my bum knee I have not had too many adventures yet.
I got up the morning of January 9 and this is what the sky was like. I didn’t use a filter. It was amazing.
And then this is what the snow brought. I actually liked it. We had enough to where it made everything pretty but it melted fast enough to not be a problem.
And on January 11 I captured the Wolf Moon a little early. You can tell by the fuzzy lower left corner that it was still waxing. I think January 13 was the night of the actual full moon.
I worked another jigsaw puzzle. I did the google images on this photo and I got no hits so it must be AI or some other made-up thing. This wasn’t too hard. I did the edge pieces simultaneously the edges of the two sky sections A great way to spend the evening. My favorite parts were the mesa to the left and the galvanized roof to the right.
Icing my knee
Be thinking of me. Tomorrow my wife and I are visiting my surgeon to find out about scheduling a knee replacement. I’m kind of dreading it but things are continuing to hurt more and more so something has to give.
One day back in early December I was a little early picking son up from work. So I ventured over to nearby Woodward Park and took some photos.
It’s a small park but it is loaded with trees, ponds, and other interesting things to explore.
Still lots of Fall Color back then and they had a pond that made for some good reflections.
The sun was low, so much the better for the light.
Plus it was still warm in the late afternoon.
And I was shooting RAW using the Halide App for my iphone. Shooting RAW eats up memory and the plain photos are awful to look at but you can run it through Lightroom or Snapseed and since to get them looking better.
So i had me a ball taking photos for about 15 minute before I had to go fetch the kid.
I ran one photo through my DynamicAutoPainter Program.
And this is a jigsaw puzzle that I recently completed of the Canyonlands area of the Southwest USA. I didn’t take the photo so I don’t own the copyright but I am sure somebody does. It was a lot easier to do than I thought it was going to be. First I did all the edge pieces then I did the edge of sky vs land and then the no cloud vs clear sky andthen there were all sorts of horizontal lines to work on. It was fun.
I hope that everyone had a great New Year’s. 2024 was a year of blessings and also trials and tribulation for us and we got through it. Back when I started blogging, there was a friend of mine who also started and quit because she said people only put the positive parts of their life online so it was dishonest. So I guess I am dishonest. Sorry about that and I don’t feel bad about it all. I’m a blessed man, what can I say. I have this irritating trait that no matter what the situation, I think things will be okay. I couple that with a sense of realism about what okay looks like.
I have always loved New Year’s. It’s like a fresh start every year. We didn’t do much, stayed home, had a nice dinner, watched some television.
In late December after weeks of monotonous gray skies I saw that things were shaping up for maybe a good sunset so I got my drone in the air and captured a bunch of images. I put them in a video and here it is. It is only twenty seconds long so do not panic!
New Year’s Day morning I went with Heather to a class she is starting at a nearby YMCA. It is cardio drumming and twenty people showed up to take it. Not bad for a brand new class. She is already teaching it weekly at another YMCA here in town and monthly at our “home gym.” It is lots of fun, you have drumsticks and you drum on an exercise ball in time to music. She leads the different moves. It is lots of fun, she loves upbeat music and so do her students. She also teaches Zumba at two different gyms, and a couple water classes, aquazumba and aquastrength. I take both of those classes. She stays pretty busy. She has been teaching for years and is very good at “reading the room” providing alternative moves for those who need them.
Afterwards, I took off and found a geocache and hiked a short distance. If you are a geocacher, New Year’s Day is an important day to find one and if you are a hiker you should go on a First Day’s Hike. So I did both. Yeah me, hah!
And then we went home and had our New Year’s Day meal featuring chicken quarters and baby back ribs that I smoked on the day before New Year’s Eve. That red stuff on the meat is a very spicy rub use. It brings the heat.
Meanwhile, I did another jigsaw puzzle on my ipad. Great way to stay busy while we watch our streaming shows. The one I am working on now is a Canyonlands scene with lots of tan colored desert and skies. Very challenging.
Again, I wish everyone a Happy, Heathy, and Prosperous 2025!
Hey you know life goes up and down and so does Christmas. This year was a restrained Christmas in our family. My sister came to visit for a few days beforehand and that was definitely a boost. Other factors came in that kind of restrained things. So we had a quiet Christmas. The sun didn’t shine and it was kind of misty rainy so above is my Christmas Skywatch photo. I’ll take it. Not much of a sky but I love the tree. And yes that is a filter I used on my phone. About four of them in fact.
And this is a shot from our driveway a few days beforehand. I kind of liked it. A wag on instagram said that the chemtrails ruined the photo. Get this folks, chemtrails are not real. There, that is my Christmas message to the world.
Another day, same driveway, looking the other way. I used distressedfx on this.
And this is a jigsaw puzzle that I did on my ipad.
Another jigsaw puzzle.
About this time of year, if you are on social media, you get all sorts of hits about apps that will do a yearly recap for you. So I bit on one, I did a couple of 2024 rehashes, one was about my life in general and another about 2024 skies. I saved the resulting videos and then cancelled my seven day free membership. I then inputted the videos to youtube and so above is my 2024 skywatch rehash. It only lasts 30 seconds and then starts over so don’t do what I did and watch it over and over until I realized what I was doing.
I watched a couple of NFL football games including a miserable Baltimore – Houston game that ended 31-2. Tell you what though, Beyonce performed the halftime show. And what a show it was! Came in on a horse and just killed the performance. She should do the Superbowl halftime show. And I am not even a Beyonce fan!
I hope that everyone of you who celebrate Christmas had a good one.
Earlier this month a nice cold, sunny, windy day, I went to Tulsa’s RiverParks trails to look for an Adventure Lab Geocache. Adventure Labs are a specialty cache where you have to visit a site and find information there. No physical cache is involved so it is appropriate for areas where they don’t really want you hiding stuff. Check out geocaching.com for more information. So this Adventure Lab involved going to several sculptures and getting information from the sculpture or accompanying plaque.
I ended up walking about two or three miles and had the parks trails to myself. At the end of the Adventure Lab you get coordinates to a “real” geocache and I found it as well.
And I took photos of all sorts of other stuff. We still had lots of fall color and the skies were really blue.
These are some sort of infrastructure and artists had painted murals on them and I really liked them.
And RiverParks installed this little musical drum for little kids and immature 69 year olds geocachers.
And I got this certificate!! I am not sure what you do with certificates. I am now up to 2287 geocache finds. But who is counting, right?
As described previously I got a chance to tour the new Gilcrease Museum last month. The building’s exterior is finished and most of the interior.
One thing I love about the building is that it has views of the outside. This is from the terrace looking north to the Osage Hills.
This is looking through another window east. You can see downtown Tulsa just to the right.
From the terrace looking southwest into the sun.
This area is going to be a cafe with outside seating on the terrace. I didn’t take any photos of the new galleries. No windows and plain gray walls. Not much to see there, yet.
On the terrace looking at the exterior walls. I was struck by the wavy design and asked the guide what that was about. She said she was told but did not understand it. She said it was “architectspeak.” Maybe so. I think it does add interest to the building.
They are still building this grand staircase which is going to be in the center of the building and go to all the floors.
I can’t wait to see it when it is done.
How much does all this cost? About $140 Million. Check out the private money donated. Tulsa has a lot of very generous families who are not afraid of donating money to the right cause. There is a lot of work to be done. They are designing the interior fixtures. The contractor will turn the building over in May 2025. The concrete and other materials used in construction needs to “off gas.” The vapors could be harmful to the collection, so the museum is not scheduled to open until November 2026. I can’t wait. Check out Gilcrease.org for more details. Check out their online collection. It’s fabulous.
Thanksgiving is here again. I hope that if you celebrate it that you can do so with family. I’ve been lucky I’ve never had Thanksgiving without family.
We’ve had big gatherings and we have had small ones. This year it is just us three along with the two critters. My brother is nearby so we’ll go visit him in his apartment.
We are buying are dinner ready made and heating it up. We’ve done the big all day cooking thing so with just three of us, this is the way to go.
Our two critters, Kodi and Lizzy. They are not really big fans of each other right now.
My son not only has a BA in History, last summer he finished a certificate program to be a paralegal. He is working his way through the formal certification tests and has been looking for a job as a paralegal.
Oklahoma Fall Color is a lot of yellows and browns.
He got a call asking for him to interview a law firm in mid town Tulsa for a paid intern paralegal job. So at the appointed time I drove him to the firm and then headed out to nearby Woodward Park to wander around, see what I can see, and maybe take a few photos.
Stumbled on a wedding going on. I wish them a long and fulfilling marriage.
It was late in the day, the sun was low and the shadows were long and it was a beautiful Oklahoma autumn day. Autumn here lasts ridiculously long.
Got me a silhouette
So I wandered around doing my thing and when I was about finished, son called and said he was done. I picked him up and he said the interview went well and they would let him know in a few days.
More reflections
They came through with a full time, paid, temporary intern job at a salary about 50% higher than the box store job that he has. So of course he said yes.
The sculpture is Rosalind Cook. A very talented artists who is retired and lives in Tulsa. This is named “Poems and Promises” and was a gift from Ms. Cook and her husband to the City of Tulsa.
Monday morning my wife took him to work and I picked him up at the end of the day. I have picked him up after work countless times over the years and he never had the big smile that he had that day. He had a great first day. He was nervous at first but his training kicked in. He had such a sense of accomplishment.
I don’t know who the artist is for this work but this little lady is going to get pretty frosty this winter. I have photos of her with a robe made of snow.
His boss sent him an email saying he did well.
Appeal to the Great Spirit. I have been posting a lot recently of this sculpture. I love it even though it is controversial to some degree for cultural misappropriation. I’m pretty “woke” especially for Oklahoma but sometimes a scupture is a sculpture.
His second day went well also.
I fired up my Hyperspektiv App and made a glitchy video of the work. I kind of like it.
Who knows where this is going, they only promised a temporary job, but for now his Mom and I are happy just enjoying the work he is doing.
It kind of looks like a skinned grapefruit.
And here is that moon I promised you. The full Beaver Moon shot a few days ago in my back yard.
Tulsa has a great western themed museum, The Gilcrease Museum, which has a great collection of art and documents collected by oilman Thomas Gilcrease. He found out that oil prices can go down, just like they go up and he ended up selling his collection to the City of Tulsa back in the 1950’s. The city acted quickly and the museum was established on the grounds of Gilcrease’s estate.
The original museum was cobbled together over time with a collection of additions but it became unwieldy to manage and reportedly the lack of good climate control endangered the collection. So the citizens of Tulsa passed another bond issue and got a lot of private money as well. The original museum was closed in 2021 and knocked down (after the art was moved off site of course.) The new museum was started and the exterior is almost finished so one recent Sunday afternoon I packed up my camera and drone headed off to see what I could see. The new building is very modern and beautiful and overlooks the Osage Hills to the west.
And you have a good view of downtown Tulsa to the southeast. The museum sits up on a hill. I remember looking at it through binoculars from office downtown.
Also on the property is Gilcrease’s old mansion. I think it is empty now. Reportedly ghosts inhabit it and the formal garden. There is Thomas Gilcrease and seven Native American children who lived in the house as orphans. It all sounds very ghostly to me. I’ve been there a number of times and looked through the windows and taken lots of photos and I’ve not seen any manifestations. But hey you never know.
The house is pretty cool with a big porch wrapped around three sides. It doesn’t quite seem big enough to be a mansion. I love the green tile roof. You know that it produces quite a clatter during our Oklahoma hailstorms.
I’d sure like to check out the inside though. It looks like some sort of sunroom upstairs here.
Here is a view of the museum. You can see it is very close to the house.
Some autumn color on the northwest side of the house. I love the covered driveway. I don’t think there is a garage.
The roof sprawls. I guestimate a cost of one gazillion dollars to replace it.
The new museum is due to open in 2026. They have to complete the interior then they have to install the art. I’ll be leaning on the door when they open it.
Check out the museum web site. They have 28,000 works of art in their digital museum which you can visit for free!!
