"Did someone leave a voicemail while I was fainting?"

We've had two medical setbacks while attempting to get the multiple layers of stubborn, aged, and weathered oil-based paint off of our 114-year old house.

The first was a stubborn little paint chip that somehow made it's way through my face shield and industrial-strength battle goggles, directly into the upper reaches beneath my right eyelid. No amount of flushing or filling would get that sucker out and about the time my eye had swollen up to the point that I no longer had the double eyelid so coveted by those of my race, I relinquished control of my retinal area to a trained O.D.

In a matter of seconds the good O.D. F.A.A.O. had flipped up both eyelids while scanning for errant paint chips, and swabbed a good deal of the coating my house laughable called paint out from my corneal crevices.

Ahh, much better. On to the local hardware shop for some tighter fitting goggles.

The second medical issue was a doozie. Check it out.


That's Wifey's ankle bone, which is NOT currently connected to her shin bone.

She took a tumble off our back stairs while carrying a paint try and roller full of BullsEye 1-2-3 Primer. Actually she stepped the wrong way on a tin jell-o mold that had been embedded in the dirt for several years after it somehow migrated from our sandbox to the dirt area around the steps.

But the trip to emergency wasn't the highlight of this tragic event.

Nope, it was Wifey's heroic army crawl across the backyard, up the steps she had just fallen down, through the breakfast room, into and across the mudroom floor, finally emerging out the side porch door wherein she could finally attract my attention with some well placed screams of agony and succor that gets her name into the Annals of Heroic Endeavors.

See, I was on the other side of the house, next to the roaring air conditioner fan unit, grinding away on the walls, my head fully encased in shielding and ear plugs.

Couldn't hear a blasted thing.

Doc says the x-rays were bad. Two breaks he could see, but the D.O. Ortho guy were heading to tomorrow will take a better set and be able to determine if surgery is necessary, if Wifey has a bone pin in her future, and when this blessed event will take place.

In the meantime, she's hobbling around on a set of ancient borrowed crutches, downing generic oxycodone like it's Pez candy (the yummy purple ones) and trying to get her work done from within the confines of our queen size bed.

Back at the ranch, the girl's are out of school for summer break, the barren exterior of the house beckons me with every clapboard sigh, and all those cycling rides that Wifey was planning on for this summer will have to go on without her.

Oh, and the quote that begins today's blog post? An actual utterance from Wifey the last time she got up to answer the call of nature and had to be helped back to bed when the ringing-of-the-ears and glistening-o'-the-forehead almost got the better of her.

And the phone keeps ringing as the dancers danced.

Not gone, but wishing I were...

My dry spell of posting has a light at the end of a dust filled tunnel.

Here's what has been zapping my energy and consuming my grinding days for the last couple of weeks.


Sorry for the un-neighborly mess, but it seems the previous owners of our 114-year old house neglected to scrape the paint on the clapboard siding down to the wood before repainting...ever.

So my F-i-L and I are taking grinders in hand, along with a few dozen boxes of 40-grit flap discs, and attacking the caked-on, solidified, and Oklahoma-weather hardened poor-excuse-for-paint that coats our humble abode.

Some interesting exchanges from drop-in visitors (fascinated by our daily progress) have taken place, some humorous, some irritating.

The most reflective conversations usually start something like this..."Hey, they are really making progress on your house," or "Wow, they are scraping your house clean, aren't they?"Problem is, there is no "they." There is only we...my F-i-L and I.

And scraping is hardly the most accurately descriptive word I'd use in describing the process we've had to undergo to remove the mother-of-all old paint from this old house.

We went to 40-grit flap discs when the 60 just got gummed up after several passes down a couple of clapboards. My F-i-L has resorted to using a propane torch and/or heatgun to melt down the several layers of resin-like coating that seems to occupy the north side walls. And I had to finally retire my new wonder tool that I specifically purchased for the paint removal duties on the house when the specially formulated 3M pads made for the tool ended up costing me more to purchase in the mass quantities that my housepaint from h#ll required, than a day-laborer with a scraper and sharpening stone would set me back.

Inch-by-inch, foot-by-foot, board-by-board and wall-by-wall, I curse the previous owners of my house in their neglectful ways of paint preparation and vow with every uncovering of naked wooden clapboard that no new paint will be applied to that which was applied with malice and maliciousness by a previous mortgage holder.

Why, oh, why doesn't Earl Scheib paint houses...

Joisey Joe comes to my small town

The time has finally come to get some siding up on our bathroom/tower extension. Keeping it local is what living in a small town is all about, so we made the 4-block drive to our local lumber yard and found our options for siding that matched our 114-year old clapboard cladding somewhat limited, but satisfactorily within our ways and means.

The fella who helped us wasn't from 'round these parts, as articulated by his dialectally discernible accent, punctuated by his pronunciation of his home state of New "Joisey."

His tale of pomp and circumstances of how he, his son, and old yeller lab made it from the boardwalks of Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and the Sopranos to our little corner of middle Okie heaven involve the 8.3% unemployment rate in his home state (something like 1.6 million jobs lost), and the opportunities for a fresh start, employment in a field of familiarity, and lower living costs.

My entire realm of experience and knowledge of the Garden state comes from listening to Springsteen songs, watching Kevin Smith flickers, and undertaking marathon sessions of Diners, Drive-In's and Dives on the Food Network, yet we communicated on a level unique to immigrants everywhere -- of things missed from back home, and the pluses and minuses of where we are now.

When asked how he's coping with going from New Jersey, which has the highest population density of any state to Oklahoma, which ranks 36th in terms of people per square foot, Joisey Joe commented, "a guy doesn't have to drive very far to be alone with his thoughts out here..."

Indeed.

Quiet, testing in progress...flatulance allowed

A better part of my free daytime hours last week was spent as a TM.

That's Test Monitor to the untrained.

The Oklahoma Core Curriculum Tests (OCCT) are part of the Oklahoma Priority Academic Student Skills (PASS) testing that instigated a few years ago. The third grade tests consist of Math and Reading with the students writing their answers in the actual test booklet (no scantron answer sheets just yet).

My job as TM consisted basically of making sure the teachers don't cheat. That's right, I was responsible for each and every test booklet that was handed out to the class of which I was assigned.

I was instructed not to let a single booklet out of my sight for fear that 1) a test booklet would go missing and end up for sale on eBay, 2) a rogue teacher would fill in the answers for a more academically challenged student and 3) the costs involved with the scandal that would ensue had a booklet ended up in the "wrong" hands, not to mention the financial end of reprinting and retesting test booklets was enough to warrant a full-time test booklet monitor.

Pretty easy duty for a casual observer, who knew and trusted the teacher that I was assigned to monitor. But given that I was not to talk to the teacher or any student during the actual testing, nor was I to answer any questions related to the testing in any way, my shining personality and sparkling school volunteer demeanor had little bearing on my time spent in-classroom.

A few observations on the third graders over whom I lorded over via test booklet monitoring for those three days (I'll reserve my opinion on standardized testing and the whole "No child left behind" issue for a more appropriate forum)...

Yawning for third-graders is dangerously contagious, and seems to run in sets of three.

I can see why Ticonderoga pencils are favored amongst test monitors. Their hexagonal design with six equally flat surface areas provide for fewer pencil desk roll-offs than the rounded-type available in bulk through the Oriental Trading catalog.

Almost across the board, the girls finished the reading sections first, while the boys finished the math first.

Out of 17-students, I counted 6 southpaws. This seemed like a higher than normal average of righties-to-lefties to me, but I left my statistician hat back in my college statistics 210 class, so who knows.

Student farting is more prevalent than one might think in a classroom of 17 third graders. And while the students were so focused on their tests that they were seemingly unaffected by the momentary passing of the gas by their fellow test takers, us mature Test Monitor's weren't so fortunate as the suppression of silly, immature giggles was borderline painful to endure.

The Commissioners, The Famer and Me

I spotted the familiar face of a fellow Soccer Dad at his desk in the County Assessors office. Yelling across the vast room to each other like drunk OU fanboys, Soccer Dad pointed me to where I needed to go, quantifying his directions with an inquisitive raised eyebrow and friendly warning to just head for the room where "all the arguing is coming from."

Swell.

Three of the five County Commissioners were present (enough for a majority voting quorum) as well as the County Clerk and the County Sheriff ("How those new Chargers working for the Deputies?" I asked him. "Oh, they'll do 120 easy," he replied."). In the back I noticed the editor of our local news rag sitting quietly, notebook in hand.

I was first on the agenda. Agenda? Just what the heck was I doing at a County Commissioner's meeting?

Seems the artist who wanted to restore "The Farmer" statue had requested a few dollars from the county to go towards the new bronze version of the 33-year old pitchfork wielding quikrete figure. My presence at this meeting was requested to provide some background (what little I had turned up) on the statue and to help make the case for some of our counties taxpayer dollars to be used for the project.

The artist had raised the majority of funds for the bronze through private party donations, and considering the statue was originally dedicated to the residents of the county, and the statue itself sat in front of the county courthouse building, it didn't seem too much of a stretch to ask the County for a few bucks.

So, I got up, did my song-and-dance about how the previous perpetrators of the project originally intended for the statue to be made of bronze, and had they followed through with their original intent, we wouldn't be here talking about needing to revamp the existing statue, since a metal Farmer would have stood the last three+ decades with more fortitude.

My droning went on as I revealed that my digging a few feet deeper turned up a link to an art inventory catalog conducted and maintained by the Smithsonian Institution. Back in 1996 they surveyed our local farmer and categorized him as constructed of "metal" whose condition was in "need of treatment."

Even the Smithsonian was led astray.

I also discovered the original artist to be long deceased, but his offspring are still alive and kicking in various parts of the state.

Had I been an investigative journalist with nothing better to do, my next step would have been to chase down the family lead, along with surveying any surviving American Legion vets from the 70's who may have first hand knowledge of 1) whether or not they did indeed raise the funds for the bronze, and 2) if they did cough of the dough for a bronze statue, were they aware that their promised metal figurine was instead delivered in Quikrete.

However, seeing the old news hound editor furiously scribbling on his notepad (later asking me which particular issues of "his" newspaper I had found my information in) put my mind at ease that at least somebody would be hunting down leads, and tracking the whereabouts of the missing bronze.

The next day, this article turned up in the local news rag.


Funny thing is, the article all but states that I'm the Johnny-on-the-spot, man-on-the-case in tracking down the molds for the original bronze casting, when all I remember saying was that I had uncovered evidence that a mold had been made and that the surviving family of the original artist may have some knowledge of the background of the bronze-that-never-was.

In an effort to put this "Farmer" to rest, I may make a few phone calls and see what else I can find out about this small town mini-mystery.

My only fear being, what funny bone this skeleton may be holding onto as I pull it further out of it's 33-year old resting place.

OKDad and the Case of the Missing Farmer

An ongoing project of mine has been to research and write the text for a series of historical markers that dot the sidewalks of my small town's downtown district. It's been a good exercise regime for the research muscles in my brain and has introduced me to the colorful past of my adopted hometown. The experience thus far has also been rewarding in that I'm doing my part to preserve a bit of how we got here and where we came from.

Although I think the "historical walking tour in-progress" has had little to no impact on tourism, local interest, and citizen apathy, a local artist noticed enough to ask me to contribute to an art restoration project currently underway.

Back in 1976 when the entire country was scrambling to spend Bicentennial funds being allotted to communities throughout our then 200-year old this-land-is-your-land, a group of "concerned citizens" led by the venerable local American Legion chapter decided to fund a life size bronze of a typical farmer, called "The Farmer."

Catchy.

The good citizenry rallied around the oh-so-starred-and-striped project, started a fund drive, commissioned an artist from up north to create the sculpture. In the interim, local merchants and volunteers bricked up a pedestal to mount the thing on and a concave backdrop wall was erected behind the entire setup. For good measure they dropped two time capsules into the pedestal and had a bronze plaque mounted on the wall.

My role in the restoration project would be to research and pen the text for two additional plaques to be placed on a newly constructed pedestal for the statue. Plaque one will tell a little history on the statue itself, while the second one will provide some background on the significance of "The Farmer" to the creation and continued existence of my small town.

It was while conducting said research that I upturned yet another rock, uncovering yet another skeleton in the closet of my small towns past.

Every published account from 33-years ago dealing with the creation, erection, and dedication of The Farmer lists the statue as being of bronze construction. Several pictures were taken and published of the artist working on the piece, including one that shows molds being taken of the clay original to be used in the bronze casting process. I even found an account listing the fund raising efforts being made on behalf of the American Legion to cover the costs of the bronze figure.

Only problem is, The Farmer that stands in front of my small town's courthouse on Main Street is not made of bronze. He's some sort of hardened concrete-plaster hybrid (according to the Artist planning to restore it).

Had he been made of the brown ferrous metal, no restoration efforts would be needed for another 100 years or so.

So, what happened to the bronze? He was planned as a bronze. Molds of him were made in preparation for a bronze. Funds were apparently raised for him to be cast in bronze. The papers from July 4, 1976 (the day he was dedicated and unveiled) clearly state he is a statue of bronze stature.

So, where's the bronze?

To be continued...

A law for everything

I'll close this week and leave our SoCal Spring Break '09 trip behind with a little reminder, courtesy of the line at one of the great roller coasters at Knott's.


When an adventurous archeologist from the far flug future, digs this sign up in the dry desert wasteland that our planet is destined to become, what will this artifact tell her/him/it about our society?

Steve Martin and the boysenberry

According to author Heather Waite, Barbie Dolls, blue jeans, the boysenberry, the pill, white zinfandel wine, the square tomato, natural soda, the computer “mouse,” the wetsuit, and theme parks were invented in California.

Wait, the boysenberry? Surely you jest.

In fact, comic genius Steve Martin (okay, I'm not gonna argue with you on this point, but when I saw Steve live at the Anaheim convention center right after the release of his first comedy album, Let's get small, only a comic genius could me me laugh as hard as I did) developed what would become his signature comedy style at the same place where the beloved boysenberry was created.

Ladies and gents, I give you America's first theme park, Knott's Berry Farm.

According to his recent biography, Born Standing Up: A Comics Life (a great read, btw), Steve developed his live audience entertaining chops here...


And expanded his repertoire of magic tricks he learned while working at Disneyland here...


See page 58-59 of the book mentioned above for references to the Bird Cage Theater or listen to an NPR interview with Steve.

And the boysenberry? Well, seems old man Knott took some dying plants that were crossbreeds of the red raspberry, blackberry and loganberry, figured out how to get them to grow and named it after the guy who brought him the feeble plants to begin with, Rudolph Boysen. Today, all the boysenberry plants in the world can be traced back to Knott's. Pretty cool.

These amazing facts and other thrilling adventures awaited the girls and I as we took on the park with my Dad and Stepmom in tow, at the end of our So Cal Spring break trip.

Yes, I did ride the rides...even THOSE rides.
Yes, we did eat chicken dinners.
Yes, the girls did pan for gold.
And of course, we bought some boysenberry preserves.

Begin the Beguine

I began the dance.

The dance made it through the first year.

And a second.

To a third.

To here. Now. 4 years since I changed the lives of my family unit and I.

And the dance continues.
Play it Artie...

Traffic legs

While it had only been a little over a year since I was back in LA for more than a short weekend visit, it surprised me how long it took me to get my rush hour "traffic legs" back under my feet.

Staying road-rage mellow was a bit easier, however, given the looks Wife and I would exchange with every bumper-to-bumper jam we found ourselves in.

A sly smile and raised eyebrow was all it took to remind each other that we were only visiting. This wasn't our life anymore and distance, rather than number of cars and time of day, now dictated our prairie land drive time allocation.

Course, beauty can be found just about everywhere, even on the 10 Freeway.


I always smiled when I found myself behind one of these highly polished beauties while hightailing it along the freeways and byways of SoCal. In my mind, only LA trucking companies care enough to ensure their trucks (for the most part) are not muddy, road dirt soaked eyes sores.

Keep on Truckin'...and smiling.

At least helicopters don't poop

There's a classic frenetic montage sequence in Scorsese's GoodFellas, wherein Ray Liotta's character is constantly watching the skies for law enforcement helicopters who are tracking his every move - "All day long the poor guy's been watching helicopters and tomato sauce."

Our recent trip back to my pre-OK stomping grounds in So Cal had me chopper scanning as well.

It was a lovely spring day in Century City. The daytime temps were in the low-70's, traffic was light (we were heading west at 10 a.m. when most commuters were heading east), and the smog level was just light enough to make locals sound convincing when they stated, "that's not smog, that's low lying haze..."

The family unit and I were visiting my B-i-L at his office in the Die Hard Building aka the Nakatomi Building, in reality known as the Fox Plaza. After a quick tour around the building we jumped into a golf cart and trucked on over to the Fox Studios lot for lunch at the lot cafe, aptly named Moe's Grill.

The inside dining area was abuzz with studio folk watching one of the dozen or so giant wall mounted monitors spewing forth any number of Fox channels, Fox programs, Fox movies, or Fox commercials for Fox channels, Fox programs and Fox movies.

We chose to eat outside.

As the girls snarffed on their grilled cheese sandwiches, danced around the grassy areas, and begged us to go exploring among the back lot buildings and fake street facades, B-i-L, S and I had a pleasant lunch.

Until the choppers came. Three of them. Circling our position like turkey buzzards over a family of freshly roadkilled opossums on a county road.

While we spouted out guesses for the myriad of reasons so many helicopters would be converging on such a small chunk of flyover real estate (one vote for high speed pursuit, one vote for bank robbery, one vote for nearby filming -- after all, we were on a movie lot) the girls excitedly watched the whirlybirds pass over head, probably wondering where the tractor accident was that caused the mediflight chopper to come into town to take the wounded Farmer to the hospital in the city.

Okay, I'm theorizing on that last part, but since the only helicopters the girls get to see in the skies above our small town are usually one-way flights to the OU medical center with some unfortunate victim of a heinous tractor accident onboard, you can see why my mind drifted in that direction.

The choppers finally left, we finished our lunch, the girls got to peek inside a few sound stages and act out imaginary scenes on the backlot, while S and I counted about 358 Prius hybrids in the parking lot.

Our next encounter with a flight of choppers occurred during an early evening patio dinner atop the Mount Washington home of some good friends. Same scenario. We're eating, talking, drinking, and theorizing why a bevy of the rotored beasts are circling overhead.

Home invasion robbery, chasing a suspect through a neighborhood, high speed pursuit ending, Keanu Reeves sighting at the Baskin Robbins. Take your pick.

During the week the girls became pretty good at spotting the whoop-whoop-whooping copters overhead. Once at the cemetary, once at Disneyland, once at Knott's, and several times over my Mom's San Gabriel valley based condo.

Who knew there were so many tractor accidents in LA.

RAHN-DEE BAAH-SUU!

One of the benefits (yes, my fellow small town hovelians --just made that word up...like it-- there are benefits) of living in an area the size of SoCal is the cultural diversity that can be viewed on local television.

So culturally diverse in fact that I actually witnessed a pop-cultural reference to a fellow small town Oklahoman via a Japanese language drama series broadcast over local Los Angeles tv.

It's a small world folks.

It all starts with one of our family's newest favorite people, LB. Her career path enables her to intersect and interact with many of the gentle folk who were elected to run our state government. One such person being State Senator Randy Bass of Lawton. She recently relayed the story of Senator Bass to Wifey and what a story it is.

In a nutshell, Randy Bass was a major league ball player from Oklahoma who went on to achieve superstar status as a member of the Hanshin Tigers pro baseball team in Japan. He is now a public servant for District 32 in our state, but still enjoys cult-like status in the Land of the Rising Sun.

The curse associated with Bass and the Tigers is the stuff of sports legend and you owe it to yourself to bone up on the details of the story here.

When Wifey relayed the background of Randy Bass to me via LB's anecdote, I thought it was interesting but didn't pursue any further research into the matter. After all, I'm not all that huge of a baseball fan (unless you're holding a two-fer of Dodger Dog's in my face), and while the image of a bunch of crazed Japanese baseball fans tossing a statue of Colonel Sanders (read the story) over a bridge into a river makes me shiver with anachronistic delight, the relevance to my life was lost.

Until the other evening, sitting with my Mom watching a subtitled Japanese language program on local SoCal tv. The dramady we were watching centered around a group of misfit high-schoolers who were attempting to form a baseball team at their school to help keep them out of detention.

I had minutes ago finished telling my Mom about the whole "Randy Bass" cult and the Curse of the Colonel in Japan, when one of the characters on the show hits an unexpected home run, drops his bat, tosses him arms triumphantly in the air and jubilantly screams out loud, "RAHN-DEE BAAH-SUU!"**

So there it was, in digitized living color. A pop-cultural reference to what I thought was a relatively obscure Oklahoma character, that I had only recently been made aware of, and was now being shoved in my apathetic consciousness by the wonders of a subtitled J-tv program.

Face it, if your name makes it into a tv show as a pop culture reference, you must be something big.

I give you State Senator Randy Bass, public servant, Baseball god, Colonel Sanders look-a-like (I don't get that one, but okay), and proud Okie.

**This was my phonetically spelled version of how the non-English/Japanese speaking actor pronounced the name, Randy Bass. Here's another one for you to translate...Maku-do-na-du-do's" -- think fast food and the golden arches.

The de-EVO-lution of my senses

Meeting gearheads in my small town is a relatively easy exercise. You alley walk.

For a three block radius from the main drag in town, situated behind the houses that line the residential streets are driveway alleys. They provide convenient rear entry access for the homeowners, relatively unfettered gathering right-of-way for our bi-weekly trash pick up (you heard me, twice a week my refuse is swept away), and the perfect p.o.v. ingress for garage voyeur opportunities.

On more than one happy occasion I've struck up friendly conversations with folks both under hood and under chassis while walking the family hound up and down the alleys.

Once I clearly identify myself as not being affiliated in any way with one of the many religious organizations who prey, um I mean, witness their messages of peace and love via doorbell rings or driveway interventions, my small town neighbors have shown 100% favorable reaction to my alleywalk impromptu gearhead visitations.

And while the temptation to join my new found motorhead mates in synergistic internal combustion bonding has been great at times ("If you have another ratchet, I'll change the left bank plugs while you do the right..."), I generally scoot on my way content with the knowledge that the fine art of shade tree mechanicking is still alive and running at 8000 rpms in my small town.

Fast Rewind to last week and my family's brief Spring Break-o-rama at my Mom's So Cal condo digs.

I spotted this spanking Evo poking it's perky nose out the front of it's garage while taking out the trash one morning. Walking by I noticed a pair of feet sticking out from under the tail of the ramped up rear-end, alongside a shiny new cat-back aftermarket exhaust setup sitting on the floor. Ah-hah, I exclaimed, as my brain signaled some performance modding occurring in the general vicinity.


My flip-flopped steps combined with the thunderous sound the dumpster lid barked as it slammed shut onto my deposited trash caused the Evo mechanic to look out and around his project. The sight of me smiling like a garage-snooping-small-town-alley-walker must have freaked him out some, as he just kinda scowled, checked around his immediate area to see if something had gone missing, and called (in Chinese, I'm guessing) to an unseen person in the kitchen area located adjacent to the garage.

I was about to utter, "nice car..." but the survival instincts ingrained in my brain as a born and bred Los Angeleno finally awoke from it's small town slumber. As my gray matter database of city living accessed how my actions could be interpreted and misconstrued as an invasion of privacy, my casing a joint for future theft, or even challenging in an aggressive manner, my feet carried me quickly away.

Out of the corner of my eye two additional fellows emerged from the kitchen area. I knew better than to turn around for a looksee, but my gut told me that all three sets of eyes followed me on my hasty retreat to "my side of the condo complex."

So now I'll be on the lookout for any Evo owners on my alley walks in my small town to see if they're all that cranky or paranoid.

Keeping my distance of course.

1000 words or more, "What I did over Spring Break" essay

So, how'd your first day back at school after Spring Break go?

I figured it was an innocent enough question. My 9-year old hasn't yet developed the swarmy sarcasm of a text-crazed teenager, so I expected a fairly straightforward answer to my probing query.

Not to be.

As C launched into her retelling of her day, and how she...(taking a deep breath)

...told about a "zillion" kids how the entire family flew to California for Spring Break, stayed with my Mom, went to visit our old house, ate sushi till we barfed, watched Mommy's eyes glaze over at her favorite Thai restaurant as they brought out dish-after-dish of her "deserted-island meal," watched my Mom's treasured dvd of Mamma Mia about a "zillion" times, went to visit several old friends - one of which was C's pre-school heartthrob (she was capital N-ervous), spent a mid-week/hardly-any-crowds day at the OG House of Mouse, spent another where-the-heck-are-the-crowd's day at Knott's, shopped, learned to play Do-Re-Mi on my Mom's piano, ate pastrami dips at The Hat, Hawaiian soul food at Bob's Okazuya, some home cookin' at my Mom's, dim sum from a hole-in-the-wall dive on Garfield Blvd, and along with easily a "zillion" other satisfied customers since 1920, snarffed on the absolutely best fried chicken west of the Rockies at Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant.

There was more, but I'm paraphrasing.

Really, I am.

"So, did any of your other friends do something fun over the break?" was my follow-up question, overly confident that C's description of our whirlwind week in my old stomping grounds was enough to make even the most jaded 3rd grader take notice.

"Well, Madolyn told everyone she got a new heifer and they all thought that was the coolest."

A heifer. Really.

Sorry Gover-nator Schwarzenegger, your golden state may be cool, but in the eyes of my small town's 3rd grader's, a young female cow is the b-o-m-b.

Locker room secrets

"I never thought I'd ever see all of my friends totally naked...it was so, so weird!"Those were the first words out of my 9-year old's mouth as she climbed into the back of my two-toned ricer after school the other day.

The auspicious occasion wherein she was placed in the "so-so weird" situation of seeing her fem-school budkins sans clothing was the community pool locker room. Her entire grade was getting a few hours of away-from-school-and-into-the-pool time courtesy of the principals deep pockets as a reward for passing their 0-9 times tables tests.

When the note came home indicating the requirements for participation being 1)bring swimsuit and towel, 2)plastic bag to keep wet items in and 3)do not wear swimsuit underneath regular clothing, I knew we'd have to have a talk about the pre-swimming activities.

And we did.

However, the reality of disrobing out of her drysuit and into her wetsuit in front of others must not have sunk in, judging by her opening statement upon days end pick up.

C started going into detail on the events of the locker room tomfoolery, who ducked into a toilet stall to change, who chose to utilize the privacy of the showers, and who was small enough to actually fit into the full-length lockers for a bit of isolation.

By the time we had rolled home and were jumping into afternoon snack/homework doing time, she started going down the list of who she actually saw sans clothing -- at which point I grew uncomfortable and stopped her flaming lips.

What followed was an unusual conversation between myself and my 9-year old about the theories behind locker room gossip, the complicated concept of personal space, and the unwritten codes of behavior and privacy that both girls and boys share.

Truth be told, I was pretty vague on that last point, especially the girls part.

Okay, I was vague on the boys part too, since, I didn't think it was the appropriate time to explain to her why men tend to favor looking straight ahead, or straight down when we pee or shower in group situations.

At which point I made a mental note to make sure Wifey brought the topic up at their nightly tuck-in talk.

Heavens to Murgatroyd. Exit, stage left.

Tastes as good as it looks...a bad thing

Wifey brought home something called Cain's Ultra Select Green Tea (Japanese style) last night and almost choked up her upper GI track this morning as she was drinking a cup on her daily commute.

During the phone call wherein she poetically espoused the negative aspects of the green tea, I took a gander at the packaging wherein the most heinous of warm tea-like beverage was contained. Here is what I saw.


Now, I'm no advertising exec.,nor am I a paid art critic, but c'mon, this is substandard even by my substandard's of packaged artwork.

However, since the taste of the tea apparently accurately reflects the cheesiness of the packaging, perhaps the artist who created the masterpiece can be forgiven if he was wholly motivated by what lie beneath the folded boxes contents.

Hard to be creative when you gagging I suppose.

I'm not blaming Cain's here. Apparently the Cain's Coffee company has ceased to exist for some time now, having been sold to Nestle in 1960, Chock Full O Nuts in 1992, and Sara Lee in 1999.

Why stymies me is that Sara Lee's coffee and tea division apparently makes some decent selling hot beverage products.

Yet nowhere on their Brands website can the Cain's logo or product line be found.

In '03 Cain's Oklahoma coffee and production plant was closed and even though the grocery story shelves throughout the panhandle state still devote an enormous amount of shelf space to the perceived "Made in Oklahoma" line of Cain's products, they only thing remotely "Cain's" about it is the name on the label.


Another fine Oklahoma institutional product, relegated to ugly stepchild status.

At least the ultra-cool Cain's Ballroom is still rockin' and rollin' and swingin' and swayin'.

Wonder what kind of tea they serve there? Hope it's not green.

Buttoned up

The deal was, we'd take the girls to see Coraline, if and when C finished reading the book on which the movie was based.

That same deal worked out pretty well for The Tale of Despereax, the author of which my 9-year old is now listing as one of her favorite writers.

She buzzed through Coraline far faster than even I had anticipated and no sooner than we had said "my other mother," the family unit was chowing down on multiplex popcorn and watching the credits roll.

It was a typical movie going experience, at least for us. S was nonplussed (she can't seem to get past animated flicks), PK complained about her feet falling asleep when she forgot to rotate her sitting position, and C and I had a lively discussion as soon as the house lights came up comparing the differences between the book and movie versions (I read the book one night after she finished it...really enjoyed it).

The next morning I woke up early, scrounged around our sewing kit, got Wifey to play along and we both quickly lay back in bed, our eyes shut tightly and covered with a pair of these....



PK came downstairs first. Our eyes "buttoned" shut, Wifey and I could only hear what was transpiring, but it was enough to paint a picture.

Our youngest saw us in bed, eyes buttoned up.
She pauses, not saying a word.
She tears off upstairs, heads down the hall and into her big sisters bedroom.
They talk. They pause. They think. They head downstairs, whispering along the way.

Upon spying our practical joke, C gave a knowing chuckle out loud and the jig was up. PK later told her that she first thought we were giving ourselves "spa treatments with cucumbers, but then she realized they were buttons on our eyes and that the movie had come true."

If none of this makes any sense, go check out Coraline at a theater or in the young adult section in a library near you.

Haunting our resort room boob tube

The drive down to Frederick for the Oyster feed was long enough that the Wifey and I decided to make a weekend out of it and find some interesting digs to cohabit with our girlies in tow.

We ended up at this plushy palace of southwestern Oklahoma charm.

Wifey had known about the amenities at Quartz Mountain for awhile, and it's reputation as a world-class (and I don't use the "world" word lightly here) artist retreat/colony even managed to permeate the mitochondria in my memory cells some time ago. But who knew a cushy, resort resided in the dramatic mounds and valleys of the Wichita Mountain range.

We took advantage of their $59 room special (as did my in-laws who joined us for the mollusk madness), spent the evenings exploring the galleries and sharing the heated pool water with Dieter, Greta, Helga and Otto, a foursome of tourists from Munich in search of the real America (not their real names, but hey, I took Spanish in HS, not German).

Check-out day morning we gorged ourselves on surprisingly edible hotel buffet fare and hiked it off taking in several of the nature trails that surround the resort. The cave trail was a thrill for the girls, while my F-i-L seemed preoccupied with his search for deer, elk, and turkey signs. Several times I noticed him reaching around back for his shoulder slung rifle that wasn't there as he blazed the trail for us, mighty sprightly for a man of his age I might add.

The only "made-us-go-hmm" moment of our stay came when we scanned the channels of the hotel supplied cable tv and found this image occupying the digital bandwidth on channel 78.


The image on the tube is exactly as we saw it...frozen in time, no audio, no 60 cycle hum, no character generator scroll running along the bottom warning us of the impending switchover to digital signal.

Just this image.

Examine if you will, as we did, and you'll notice quirky details in the picture. I'm toying with an appropriate caption for the shot. So far my choices are:"Laura and Luke enjoying their final cup of coffee moments before being attacked by three enormous french roast coffee beans from behind."

"Jack Black travels back in time to have a cup of joe with Janis Joplin, but suffers from temporary blindness due to a malfunction in his DeLorean's flux capacitor."

"Celebrating the release of the seasons 1-3 of the landmark 90's television series Friends on Blu-ray DVD, Ariel and Ishmael enjoy a cup of coffee and attempt to harmonize the lyrics to the theme song, "I'll be there for you."
Okay smarty pants, you come up with something better...

And visit beautiful Quartz Mountain while you're at it. If you're lucky, these two will still be drinking their joe on channel 78.

Burping oysters for 20 years

A referral and personal invite from a lovely lass in Wifey's office who calls the uber-cool burg of Frederick, Oklahoma her home town, found the family unit and I spending a fall-like February day consumed by (and later consuming) mass quantities of bivalve mollusks fresh from the gulf coast.

It was Oyster Fry time in Frederick.

I know what you're thinking and I know that look that crept across your face as I strung together fresh seafood and Oklahoma in the same sentence. It's the same look I get whenever we're sitting at a sushi bar in the city and the chef assures us that the fatty tuna is fresh, fresh, fresh -- saying it three times in a row in a charming attempt to assuage our fears of nematode laden raw fish.

But some casual fryer-side questioning of the man who oversees the transport of the raw oysters from the gulf coast fishing docks to the Frederick community center kitchen in a matter of hours put my mind at ease.

As did the first, second, fifth, seventh, (uggh), and twelfth bites of fresh, raw, ice cold oysters, dabbled with tabasco and a squooge of lemon juice, with nary of hint of fishiness or aquarium essence to be found.

And while freshness is no guarantee of a roundworm free dining experience, I made sure to down a half-dozen of the cracker-breading fried shellfish wonders for good measure.

This being an Oklahoma culinary institution, the brimming platter of fundraising comestibles included a generous scoop of coleslaw, a handfull of Ruffles, some fresh from the can S.E. Rykoff green beans, water and/or tea, all topped off with a squeezable slice of Wonder bread.

Someone down Frederick way also came up with a red sauce that was the perfect blend of smooth, bite, sweet, and Cajun sassy-ness that they were more than generous handing out for oyster dipping madness.

While the ratio of fried to raw eaters was somewhere in the 80:20 range, those whom I observed were joining me in the partaking of the raw gems seemed to be imbibing with gusto. Although admittedly, the joy of grossing out fried-only oyster eaters with every uncooked bite/chew/and swallow is almost as enjoyable as eating the little slippery suckers themselves.

A craft show, art exhibit and personally guided tour of the charming historic downtown district topped off the day and kept us burping oysters into the crisp southwest Oklahoma afternoon.

Wifey ate and enjoyed her first oysters. C did as well. One. PK liked poking the raw ones.

Thanks for the day, LB.

TLA of the Day

In four short years I've gone from using such common internet software related TLA's as TCP/IP, FTP, ICQ, LAN, UFS, WWW, RSS, and XML in my daily conversation, to this one...

PBR

-- which I uttered the other day to my Wife at dinnertime while discussing current local events.

Don't know what PBR is? Well then, I guess you're not from 'round these parts.

Actually, PBR may be coming to an indoor arena near you. Check this website for a schedule.

And no, I've never been.

Big moo cows scare me.