OKC

“Oklahoma City? What’s in Oklahoma City?”

These are the words that somehow stumbled out of my mouth when I was asked if I had any interest in making the journey.

I was quickly informed that the Oklahoma City (OKC for short) has one of, if not the, largest collections of Chihuly glass in the world. I’ve seen some Chihuly glass, and it’s pretty amazing, so I said, “Sure, let’s go.”

I think I was more excited about making a road trip with our friends Darryl and Winjie than I was to see the Chihuly, but I figured the glass would be fun too. I really wasn’t expecting much more that a fun time with some good friends, and the chance to see some Chihuly glass…but it turned out to be better than I expected.

First things first, the Chihuly glass was incredible. I am officially a fan. Not that I’m going to be buying any to decorate my home any time soon, but seeing this huge exhibit and watching a video showing the incredible process each piece goes through has made me think twice about buying some...you know, when we win the lotto and all.

We also went to the National Memorial of the Oklahoma City bombing. I was both very impressed and deeply moved. I’ve written before the closed head injury and my emotions, and this was really hard for me to make it through. I mean if you cry at Tide commercials, something like this puts you through the ringer.

The memorial, inside and out, is wonderfully done. It walks you through the day and you leave with a true understanding of what this did to the community and how the community pulled together to overcome such a horrible time in its history.

I must admit, I never really understood the whole empty chair sculpture thing out on the lawn. I thought it looked good, especially lit up at night, but now I understand…it makes sense.

I gave up trying to put into words here how seeing it made it all make sense, because nothing I wrote seemed to do it justice. Visit if you have the chance and I think you’ll see what I mean.

And last but not least, we went to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. We had been told by Melissa’s mother that it was a good museum and worth seeing. I went along simply because I didn’t think it would kill me. However, I was pleasantly surprised. There was a whole section devoted to John Wayne, Buck Rogers and all the old movie cowboys. Not to mention, the all the great guns they had on display. Overall, the museum was fun. Well, except for when Darryl and I were forced to dress up like cowboys for a picture. I’ll post a picture of the two roughriders in western garb as soon as I get one from Darryl.


Now for the food:

I didn’t want to go to Oklahoma City and eat at places I could eat at in Dallas. Chili’s, On the Border, or places like that. I wanted to experience some real OKC cuisine. And experience it we did!

There’s a place downtown that Melissa and Winjie knew all about called, Bricktown. Bricktown is a kind of downtown revitalization thing, I think. While we weren’t all that impressed with what Bricktown had to offer in the way of Friday night entertainment, it does have a fun micro-brewery called Tap Werks, and Tap Werks has good food, cold beer and a fun atmosphere.

We also ate a fun place called Shorty Small’s. It’s a BBQ and burger kind of joint that was also rich in OKC flavor and tradition. It was good, but the BBQ sandwich, while good, couldn’t hold a candle to Peggy Sue BBQ here in Dallas. This is a fact that I decided against sharing with our waitress. However, their blackberry cobbler was more than a wee-bit tasty.

Saturday night, we went out to the lake, and sadly I don’t even know which lake it was. It was one of those lakes with lots of water. We went just to go see the sunset and sit and talk. We went to a restaurant/bar called Pearl’s Lakeside, had some more to eat, and sat outside by the water and listened to a band called 2AM. They were good enough that we even bought one of their CD's.

Get this; we even closed down the place! I know what you’re thinking, “Man, they are some party animals!” However, I should probably tell you that last call was at 11:00PM and not 2:00AM.

What can I say – It’s Oklahoma.

Sunday morning we had breakfast at a place called The Classen Grill. It was another old time, been there for over 50 years kind of OKC institution, and it was good too.

I have to thank Winjie for doing all the restaurant research. She somehow found our about all these great places and she even had directions and maps to boot!

So should you go to Oklahoma City for your next vacation? I’m not sure it has all the makings for full-blown vacation, because after a couple of days I was ready to hit the road.

But next time you’ve got a weekend to burn, give OKC try, you may just enjoy yourself…I know I did.

This is the Life!

The only 7-Eleven in Texas that changed to a Kwik-E-Mart for the Simpson's movie is only about 5 miles from my house. So of course I had to go get a Squishee and some Buzz Cola. I decided to buy a 6-pack so I can send a couple to Gordon.

Here I am with my recent purchases.

Foundations of Life

Unlike the title of this post might suggest, this isn’t writing with a deep theological meaning. I’ll leave that to Real Live Preacher.

I first began to notice some foundation issues a few years after we moved in. Doors sticking, cracks in the sheetrock, and a couple of cracks in the bricks on one side of our house. We had a soaker hose that went around about half of the house, and at first, simply having that on for an hour or two was all we needed to fix the sticking doors.

Sadly, the soaker hose hasn’t been fixing things recently and I decided it was time to bite the bullet.

There are about 10 guys are out there working, so I decided to take a few pictures and write a bit about what’s going on. For a man (some say simply a big kid) with a love of anything mechanical, this was a dream come true! Baby, I’m having a blast.

I put a cooler full of ice and water bottles on the porch this morning for the guys as kind of a bribe. I think it worked, because they haven’t minded me poking around and taking pictures.

The type of repair we decided on is the concrete pressed pilings. These are six inch in diameter x 12-inch long cement cylinders with a hole running straight through the center of the length of the cylinder. The put rebar in the hole and a kind mortar between the cylinders to stabilize the piling. They dig as many of these holes as the engineer says they need. For us it was it was 14, but the average is 10.


Cement cylinders

First, they dig a 2 foot square hole, that is about 5 feet deep right next to the foundation. Then they put the cylinders into the hole one at a time and use a hydraulic jack to press them down into the ground. They keep on pressing these into the ground until the amount of force needed to press the cylinder into the ground is greater than the amount of force needed to lift the house. Then they put a wider piece on top of the last cylinder and use jacks and shims to level it
off.


Looking down into a hole



One wall of holes



Finished piling with shims

Even as I’m writing, I can both hear and feel the work that’s being done right outside my window. This is the closest I’ve ever come to being in an earthquake…it’s kind of fun.

My cats are freaking out! I’m talking arched backs, big tails and everything!

They should be finished today, with maybe a little bit of work to do tomorrow. You know, holes filled in and bushes put back – that sort of thing.

They’ve barely started to shim things up, and already my two doors that stick aren’t sticking anymore.


Not too shabby, not too shabby.

Some People are Really Stupid...

So Melissa and I are going to the movie. We saw Ocean’s 13 and it was very entertaining. However, that’s not the crux of this story.

We went to the Northpark AMC 15 Theater. Northpark is a mall here in Dallas and the theater is relatively new. Usually I don’t like going to theaters in malls, but this one is about the closest theater to our house, and the parking is usually better than most of the other theaters.

We’re looking for a parking spot when I turned down an aisle and first witnessed the shenanigans happening down at the other end. As we crept down the aisle looking for a spot to park, my gaze was locked on a small four-door sedan and a minivan.

At first it looked like the sedan was leaving a front row spot and the van was being impatient as it waited to park. However, it quickly became clear that the sedan was trying to twist its way around, via some very creative forward and reverse maneuvers, and steal this space from the minivan.

The minivan was doing its best to crowd, but not touch the sedan in order to somewhat forcefully persuade her not to park there.

It is important to know that there were two African-American ladies in the sedan, and a white lady driving the minivan.

Melissa and I were immediately entertained. The first thing we thought of was the Seinfeld episode where George gets into the parking dispute while trying to parallel park.

We’re laughing and having a good time, all the while waiting for them to get finished so we can find our own spot.

The sedan finally gets into the spot and the minivan starts to pull away and stops. I don’t mind telling you that I began to get a little worried. It’s a sad state of affairs, but people have been shot here in Dallas for much less.

The lady in the minivan rolls down the window and shouts at the top of her lungs, “That’s why everyone hates black people!” Then she drives off.

My first thought was, “Oh, why did you have to bring race into it?” Then I thought, “You mean, if you hate black people it’s because of the way they park?”

Then I saw the driver of the sedan shaking her head, and I decided I wanted to say something to her. I drove over to the exact spot that the other lady had made her idiotic remarks, stopped my car, looked over at the lady and smiled.

She looked back, but didn’t smile and seemed a bit guarded.

“I’m sorry she said what she said.” I told her. “That was very mean and it’s just not true, please don’t listen to her. I like you because of what you did! That was great parking!”

She smiled and her passenger said, “Thanks, but we never listen to people like that.”

I drove off feeling like I had done something good, fought the good fight.

It wasn’t long before that lady’s words started to haunt me, “We never listen to people like that…we never listen to people like that…we NEVER listen to people like that.”

I only happened to be there while these two ladies were treated like second class citizens. And it’s something they deal with enough to be able to say, “We never listen to people like that.”

I don't feel like I'm going through life with blinders on. I mean, I've seen my fair share of bad stuff, but I guess in reality I’m pretty sheltered.


Like I said, Some People are Really Stupid...

Childless in July

At 8:30 this morning you could find us, along with about 200 of our closest friends, at Inwood Village on Lovers Lane here in Dallas. This is our third year to put Macy on a bus and sent her off to camp for a month. There really weren’t any tears this time, at least not from us.

The family of a friend of ours put their little girl on the bus for the first time, and that sure brought back some memories. But in the end, all was well.

For the next month we’ll communicate by US Mail and, when we’re lucky, we’ll get a glimpse of our daughter enjoying one of her many activities on Waldemar’s web site. (They post 50 to 100 pictures a day)

Other than that I’m not sure what I’m going to do with myself. Oh, I’ve got a list of projects. One of which involves me ripping everything out the master closet, painting and installing all new ClosetMaid wire shelves, drawers, and shoe racks…I’ll keep you posted on that one.

Power Restored!

After a day of electrical mystery all circuits are up and running, all our gauges have acceptable readings, and we’re good to go.

We limped along on half power for about 24 hours, but in the end everything turned out fine, and…it didn’t cost me a penny!

Dropped Power Leg???

“Mr. Atkinson, sounds like you’ve got a dropped power leg.”

“Umm…so what does that mean?”

“Well now, that’s hard to say. Could be something simple, it could be something really big, or it could be a bunch of small problems all combined, there’s just no way to tell until we get out there, dig things up and check ‘em out.”

This is never the conversation you want to have with your power company.

That was about 6:45 this morning. Since then I’ve discovered that not only are they going to have to replace about 100 yards of underground cable going to my house, but it’s an all day job with no real idea of a time or even a date for completion.

We’re getting more than our fair share of rain here in Dallas, maybe that’s to blame. Whatever the reason, the power in our house started acting rather strange yesterday afternoon. We were down the street with some friends when Melissa came home to get something and discovered our power dilemma.

What's odd is, only some of our power is out.

· The lights in our family room are out, but the television works.
· The main light in my daughters room is on, but all of her outlets are out.
· The main lights in our guest/computer room are out, but the outlets work just fine.
· The A/C keeps trying to turn on, but doesn’t have enough power, so I just turned it off.
(So I’m very happy to have the cooler rain temperatures for the day)
· Luckily, our fridge is still working, but the oven and microwave only have about half power.
· If I flip the light switch in the guest room, the oven’s timer beeps.

And the bizarre list goes on and on and on...


I don’t think Ben Franklin had this in mind when he flew his kite.