Last Friday after lunch, Mason, Morgan, Susan and I piled into the minivan, headed toward our cabin in Beavers Bend, Oklahoma. The cabin is in Hochatown, 10 miles outside of Broken Bow. As I already mentioned, Beavers Bend is a four-hour drive from our home in Yukon, and two hours shy of the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. Susan's family like to stay in this particular resort overnight before heading out to dig for diamonds the following day. I decided to tag along this time. I had no
Beaver's Bend, that is. Susan's back from her four-day stint in Vegas, and after less than a day home we're on the road again -- this time, it's all four of us. This weekend we're hanging out in a cabin in Beaver's Bend, Oklahoma. It's a four-hour drive to the cabin, but the trip was made significantly more pleasant since I brought the Xbox along. Mason played Lego Star Wars II almost the entire trip. We had a very pleasant stop along the way in Antlers at my Uncle Kenny's place. My cousin David
Mason, Morgan and I have made it to day three of bachelor-hood (and bachelorette-hood). Susan is "roughing it" on a four day conference in Vegas. Mommy comes home Thursday afternoon, and she's got a ton of dirty dishes and dirty clothes to contend with. When it's just me and the kids, the house's cleanliness takes a backseat to getting through the day. Actually, things have gone really smooth this time. Monday night the kids went to go visit Susan's sister for a bit and Tuesday they went to visi
Around 9am this morning, as Mason played Xbox and Susan and I watched, Morgan hid in the hallway coloring her legs, arm and face with an ink pen. Shortly after the budding artist was discovered, she was whisked away for bath time. With Mason content with his videogame, I decided it would be a good time to sneak in a quick morning walk. It was raining very lightly -- somewhere between a mist and a drizzle -- before I left. I threw on my hoodie sweatshirt just in case.
It's a good thing I did
Halloween night was fun. Linda came over and brought "Yoda" with her. Susan deemed it too cold for Morgan to trick-or-treat, so Linda and I along with Yoda and Spider-Man sat out on our quest for candy. Mom came over to see the kids and barely caught us before we left our street. Mason already had a ton of candy from trick-or-treating both the zoo and the FAA; now he has two tons. Susan's sister and mom came over at different times to hang out with the kids for a bit. After trick-or-treating was
Today was "Haunt the Halls" -- different from "Haunt the Zoo" only in the aspect that it takes place in the halls at work instead of the zoo. Other than location it's pretty much the same schtick, except for the fact that both Mason and Morgan got 10x the amount of candy today than they did at the zoo (where we paid $6 per kid). Someone remind me about that next year.
Saturday evening, Mason, Morgan, Susan and I went to "Haunt the Zoo." It's one of those "safe" alternatives to trick-or-treating your own neighborhood, which is kind of silly considering we plan on trick-or-treating our neighborhood as well. Think of it as a dry run.
We arrived at the zoo just before dark and noticed that several thousand other people decided to haunt the zoo Saturday evening as well. While parking, I overheard the parking attendant report back that there were "five parking
You may remember that from May 1st to August 1st of this year I participated in friendly weight-loss contest with several co-workers. During that three month period I lost a total of 46 pounds. (And yes, I won the contest.) From August 1st through today (roughly three months after the end of the contest), I have maintained the weight that I've lost. I've done this through a combination of diet and mild exercise. Obviously I haven't been dieting and exercising as much as I did during the initial
I had a big blog post ready for today about how I feel like my life is being overrun by "stuff" and how I'm really in the mood to start downsizing and getting rid of crap. But then at lunch we went to Sams and I fell in love with the 56" televisions and have been looking up more information about them on Google all afternoon. I've decided to postpone my budgetary cutbacks until after the inevitable future television purchase.
I've wanted one of these stupid plastic hat cleaners for as long as I can remember, which is actually kind of stupid seeing as though they're only a dollar at the dollar store. I've been "meaning to pick one up" for the past fifteen years now. Recently I made the committment of plunking down one hundred pennies. I finally own one.
Finding a dirty hat in my house isn't difficult. In fact the first one I grabbed was sweat-stained and grungy, and the fact that it was originally light gray didn'
While we're not seriously looking yet, Susan and I enjoy looking at open houses and dreaming. Unfortunately, I don't know that we will ever find a house that suits us perfectly. The biggest problem is my stupid hobbies; between Star Wars collections, arcade cabinets, videogames, computers, and tons of other junk, I don't know that we will ever find a house (short of an abandoned Wal-Mart) that could hold it all.
Today however, we came close. While out driving this afternoon we ran across an
On the way home from work yesterday I noticed that I'd missed a couple of calls on my cell phone. While checking out my phone Susan called, and when she did I realized my phone was only vibrating, not ringing. I checked the mute switch and it wasn't flipped. Then I remembered, the last time this happened, my SD memory card had popped loose. I checked the top of my phone and, where my card normally goes, was instead a big gaping hole. Uh oh.
Tracing my steps backwards, I remembered that Monda
This evening I had the privledge of observing what must have been the world's worst skateboarder. Tonight was Mason's hour-long gynmastics class. Typically during his class I keep myself entertained by sitting out in the car and either brainstorming ideas for my next book, listening to music, or playing Gameboy Advance games. Tonight however, I could *not* keep my eyes off this skateboardiing moron. Not only did it appear that he had never skateboarded before in his life, but the poor kid was si
Johnny, my work-partner-in-crime, has his mind elsewhere. On top of the fact that he hasn't been sleeping well, his wife had surgery Monday and he's been off work the past two days hanging out with her and helping around the house. He came back to work today worn out, so Susan and I decided today that we should all go somewhere relaxing for lunch.
The three of us all normally park in the same parking lot, so it's a coin toss as to who's going to drive to lunch any given day. Johnny was parke
I went in with four co-workers this year and split a season's worth of Hornet's tickets five ways. To get my out-of-state readers back up to speed, due to a little tropical storm named "Hurricane Katrina" the NBA New Orleans Hornets temporarily relocated to Oklahoma City. The Hornets love being in Oklahoma City -- financially, the franchise is doing much better here than back in NOLA. And likewise, Oklahoma City loves having the Hornets -- last year alone, we sold out the Ford Center 24 times! U
About a week ago, Mason informed us that one of his front teeth was wiggly. He's been bending it back and forth, making anyone who's watching cringe. Last night, with a little encouragement, he played with the thing until it eventually popped right out.
Mason was visited by the Tooth Fairy last night and said he plans on spending his dollar at either the Dollar Store or Dollar Tree, "whichever has better toys."
Yesterday for lunch, Dad met Susan, the kids and I over at the new Chinese buffet in Yukon. Lunch was good, but uneventful. We chatted, we ate, we left. Susan and the kids left in one car while dad and I stood in the parking lot chatting for a few more minutes. Then, he and I (who also drove separately) left, each heading home.
As I came over the bridge at Czech Hall at I-40, I saw several cars pulled over to the right hand side of the road. I immediately recognized one of the cars as Susan’
Saturday, October 7th marked the umteenth-annual Czech Festival here in Yukon, Oklahoma. Yukon was apparently founded by Czechs and has an official "sister town" in Czechoslovakia, so the first Saturday of every October is officially "Czech Day".
Here is my non-cynical summary of Czech Day: The Czech Day Festival begins with a parade down Main Street, where all the Czech prince, princess, king and queen nominees join Shriners and lots of local schools and other organizations. The parade las
A little over two years ago I ended up with four jukeboxes. I originally only wanted one. Actually, I originally only wanted an empty one, inside which I could mount a PC that would play MP3s and have the appearance of being a working jukebox. The guy who was selling me the empty had another jukebox that he could throw in, but could make me a better deal if I bought two, and a really good deal if I bought three. Over $1,000 later, I was the proud (?) owner of four jukeboxes -- three working ones
[The Drive]
I have a terrible habit of leaving late when it comes to road trips. We spend our whole lives trying not to be late, so when vacation rolls around it’s like the one time when being on time doesn’t really matter. Inevitably I’m always late out the door when beginning a road trip, a habit I always pay for when I’m on the road late at night, wishing I were anywhere but driving on the road, late at night.
Friday, September 29, I set out for Chicago. I had planned on leaving the h
I'm off -- hitting the road, destination Chicago. I'll be back Sunday. Chances are, the only blog I'll be updating over the weekend is the one at robohara.com. Check there for trip and show updates. For everyone else, bloggage will continue Monday morning -- most likely with lots of show pictures! Wish me luck!
On the way to work this morning I swung through our new neighborhood McDonald's drive-thru to pick up some breakfast. There were three people working at the first window; a supervisor of some sort, the order taker, and the button pusher. As the three employees spoke amonst themselves, I realized that I had no idea what race they were. Their skin was brown, but not too brown. They weren't Indian (Native or Eastern), I don't think they weren't Mexican ... and in fact I'm not sure what they are. An
Yesterday, my website got “slashdotted”. Slashdot.org is a technology-oriented news site that is read by hundreds of thousands of people every day. When someone “slashdots” your site, that means that a link to your site has been posted on Slashdot.org, and those hundreds of thousands of readers (or some percentage thereof) all begin to visit your site at the same time. Not only did my website get slashdotted, but I feel like over the past 24 hours, my life got slashdotted as well.
It all sta
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