Christmas 2014

Sometimes small is good.  This Christmas was a small one in terms of people involved but a very big one in terms of warmth and cheer.

A few days before, Michelle invited us to her house for dinner and to help decorate the tree. When the time came, she was overtaken by a nasty sinus infection but managed to soldier through.

Christmas morning, we were over early to see Ben and Ella open presents.  It was a wild time of wrapping paper everywhere, oohs and aahs, and happy chaos.  When the last present was opened, Sheila and I went back home to mind the turkey and dressing cooking at our house while Michelle finished the rest of the meal.

A couple of hours later we were back for what has become our traditional Christmas meal, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, Grandma Cook's sweet potatoes and Robert's family favorite cheese grits. For dessert, Michelle baked a pumpkin pie and an absolutely decadent chocolate cake layered with a rich cream cheese frosting and infused with Kirschvasser.

After lunch, Michelle and I settled in to watch Holiday Inn while the kids played with their toys and Sheila and Robert worked on a puzzle.  Holiday Inn was a tradition in our house as Michelle was growing up.  We always watched it.  This year, I was asleep on the couch in fifteen minutes and snored through part of the movie.

I couldn't really have imagined a Christmas like that when I was a child.  I remember Mom and Dad putting away a dollar a week (a lot of money when you only made forty or fifty per week) to pay for our Christmas.  I would get one or two presents and valued them highly. There would be a simple meal, chicken or pork chops.  There might have been a canned ham or maybe even a real ham if the company had been good to the employees that year.  Once or twice there was a turkey.  "Christmas" was for kids then. I don't ever remember Mom or Dad getting a Christmas present.  We usually attended a short church service on Christmas day.

The kind of Christmas we enjoyed this year would have been  the stuff of dreams and television in my childhood and certainly not the reality of a factory row family living in a four room farm house and running cattle to make ends meet. The values of Christmas then were first religious.  We celebrated the birth of Christ.  I remember Dad sitting in his chair reading the Christmas story from Matthew ... after Mom asked him to of course.  I remember being taught to be thankful that we were warm and dry, with adequate clothing and good food to eat.  And, I remember being taught to be thankful that we were all together because that wasn't always the case for some people, particularly as I grew older.  During those years, just like now, the young men of some families were .... elsewhere.

I hate to admit this but I am always a little embarrassed and a little uncomfortable with the amount of money we spend on presents for each other.  Granted, we have the money and we are not extravagant like some but still it seems excessive.  There were so many gifts that the children couldn't appreciate their value.  Excess sometimes leads to ingratitude.  Little Ben was happiest stomping around in his new boots, playing with a whiz bang toy truck that Gwenda bought him and tearing down the hall to "dunk" a tiny basketball in the toddler hoop set that Sheila bought him.  The rest of it was just stacked aside for later.

At times like this, my mind often goes back to a Christmas season while I was in the Navy.  Part of our "winning their hearts and minds" cargo for Colombia was several pallet loads of donated toys to be given to the local charities. Street kids were everywhere around the docks.  Some had no family and no place to live. All hustled a living around the docks the best way they could.  I was on duty guarding the open bow doors.  One kid just stood out there looking in at all of those American castoff toys.  We watched him for a while. He apparently wasn't a lookout for larger thieves and he never made a move toward the ramp.  He just stared at the cargo there on the ramp waiting to be unloaded.

After a while, somebody on our guard detail reached through the netting and pulled out a very used but still functional toy trumpet.  He handed it to the kid and motioned for him to scoot.  The little boy was wide eyed at first and then a huge smile broke out on his face. He ran off a few steps and began tooting his new horn.  The whole time we were there, we heard that kid tooting that cheap, half worn out, toy plastic trumpet around the docks. Somebody griped that we should have given him something quieter but it wasn't a serious gripe. It was obviously the best toy the kid had ever owned. Maybe the only one.

I think we sometimes forget just how blessed we are.

Thanksgiving 2014

A lot of what happened this weekend was shaped by what happened last weekend.  Last weekend, Sheila decided that we needed to take a load of green waste to the dump and get it out of our backyard. Our son-in-law Robert graciously loaded it up for us on Saturday. Sunday, when it quit raining, we headed up to the green waste dump site. That's where IT happened.

For the past several months, my knees had been getting progressively better.  I had been walking without a cane (and without excessive pain) most of the time and helped along by Synvisc injections into the joint of the worst knee, the left, I was getting around pretty well and feeling pretty good.

However, Sunday morning, when I walked around the pickup to begin unloading the green waste at the dump, my knee joint tore again. There was only minor pain at the moment and I thought nothing about it.  But, by Sunday night, I couldn't walk.  I was literally dragging my left leg behind me as I leaned on a three point cane to get from my chair to the bathroom.  The pain was intense and I simply couldn't get around. It didn't get any better the next day.  So, whatever we did for Thanksgiving was going to include the big cane, pain pills and me strapped into carbon fiber and velcro from my crotch to my ankle.  But, it still wasn't going to include my walking more than a few steps or standing for more than a few moments.  Even with the pain pills, the joint wouldn't support me.

Sheila called Jincy's in Qualls and made reservations for us for Thanksgiving dinner.  We were given the 1:00 o'clock sitting. The Baker clan (as in Chief Bill John and crew) had apparently pretty well filled up the 11:00 o'clock.
The drive over and back was a pleasant break from the house where I had been confined for the past several days. Our lunch companions were a mixed batch of locals, lake dwellers down for the weekend and folks from the big city like us. The only real common denominator was an intense sense of what I can only call "Okieness." The talk was mostly about things like the extinction of quail, the small deer population, baby foxes sneaking around lake cabins, etc. Debbie, the owner talked about her good hay crop this year and the fact that she couldn't get anybody to haul square baled hay anymore.

The meal was the best turkey dinner I have ever had.  It was sweet how Debbie and Diana fussed over us and helped Sheila get me served from the buffet line.  I was touched. Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant can be pretty dismal.  Debbie and Diana went out of their way to make everyone feel at home and succeeded, at least on our part.  It was a fabulous meal served in a warm, friendly, family like setting.

I talked Sheila out of doing much Black Friday shopping by showing her that the savings really weren't worth the hassle.  She decided to just get a few things for herself.

On the way out, we had lunch at Calaveras. Calaveras is located on the corner of Admiral and Lewis right square in the middle of the Kendall-Whittier Square arts district. It is a perfect place to see an art film at the oh so fashionable Circle Cinema or buy art supplies, framing materials or even religious artifacts at the huge, family run, Ziegler's store.  You can also get mugged or shot while you watch drunks pile out of the nearby, legendary, Bee Hive Lounge.  Until very recently, you could also view "private screenings" of another type of "art film" and buy videos, books, DVD's etc. aimed at that other "art market" at a disreputable place that was frequented by men who could only be described as creepy.  That place has apparently, finally, shut down after years of complaints.

The meal at Calvera's was excellent.  Sheila had a torta, a Mexican sandwich with meat, beans and guacamole, and other fixins made on a whole load of Mexican bread split in half and toasted on the grill.  I had a chile relleno burrito.  It was composed of meat, rice, beans and grilled chilis and
topped with slices of chile rellenos stuffed with white cheese.  It is usually served covered with a white queso sauce but I asked for it on the side instead and just sampled a little bit of it.

Mexican food is very diverse and changes from region to region and here in Tulsa from block to block depending upon where the folks came from.  I don't know where these folks came from but the menu is what I call Cal-Mex because it is very much like the delicious Mexican fusion food served in the barrios and food trucks of California.

The atmosphere at Calvera's is more fast food than I care for and the crowd is a mix between artsy and musician types, old money from the rich neighborhoods a mile or so south and really poor folks from the immediate neighborhood splurging. It is a strange and perhaps unsettling mix of both people and neighborhood. For example, we couldn't park near the door and I couldn't walk the half block or so from the nearest parking space.  So, Sheila let me off at the door and parked the car.  But, I watched her from the street every second from the moment the car stopped until she was safely in the restaurant. I prefer El Burrito a mile or so down Admiral at Pittsburg where the crowd is mostly Mexican families and working men mixed with merchants and working people from the nearby factories and businesses.

After lunch, Sheila did her personal shopping. She has a thing for SteinMart. She acquired a new bag, a new pair of pants and a new pair of shoes,  After SteinMart, there was a quick stop at Sams and then the WalMart neighborhood market for few groceries.  I sat in the car, enjoyed the sun on my face, watched people and listened to several episodes of Gunsmoke on the satellite radio.

Friday night, we settled in a for quick home cooked meal and an evening of Australian television from the net.  We have become kind of addicted to an Aussie family dramedy called "Packed To The Rafters," and their equivalent of a police procedural called "Blue Heelers."  The Aussie programming is quite entertaining but not nearly as brassy and in your face as American programming has become. It's also more polite and good-natured. I really can't stomach much American network TV anymore. It insults my intelligence and my values.

It was a less than ideal holiday.  Sheila is working at TU today and we will be in all day tomorrow.  I have lived with the knee pain before and I suspect I will get through this rough patch as well. Somehow, I have to drag myself into the courthouse Monday.  After that, hopefully, the docs can get me in for physical therapy to begin working on loosening up and strengthening out the torn joint. But, I am thankful for all of the good things that happened this weekend.  Debbie and Diana served us a wonderful meal, Sheila had a good time picking up a few new things and I have had worse afternoons than sitting in the sun drinking a big Diet Coke and listening to Gunsmoke.  And, I am thankful for the hope that, through God's grace, this will just be another rough patch with the arthritic knees and things will get better soon.

Bill and Sheila Do Canning

Sheila loves her little backyard garden. Some of her happiest hours are spent back there digging around in the dirt and watching her little crop grow. The garden did well this year.  The okra and peppers did exceptionally well.  We gave away okra to everyone in the neighborhood and everyone who came to the house. We sent Olivia, a lovely latina lady who helps Sheila with the house, home with big bags of veggies every time she came.  But, we still had a dining table full of vegetables, mostly peppers, a lot of jalapenos, a nice bunch of various sweet peppers, some habeneros and some that had apparently cross pollinated.

Yesterday, we spent the morning cleaning house. We were just getting ready to fix lunch when the doorbell rang.  It was Olivia with a huge bowl of Pozole that she had cooked the night before. Pozole is a Mexican stew made of pork, hominy and chilis.  You eat it garnished with crisp tortillas, shredded lettuce or cabbage, onions and radishes and lime or lemon juice.  It was an amazing lunch.

After lunch, Sheila decided to can some jalapeno jelly. Jalapeno jelly sounds like an oxymoron to Yankees and midwesterners who don't tolerate spicy food well anyway.  To the unwary, it looks like a clear, mild apple or mint jelly. However, the moment it hits your tongue you will be disabused of that notion.  To those who develop a taste for it, it is a culinary delight. It is good eaten plain on toast with butter or a garnish on meat. But, when you add cream cheese to the mixture and serve it on toast points you have a gourmet delicacy, sweet, savory, hot and creamy all at the same time.  We nearly doubled the amount of jalapenos called for in the recipe and got the temperature just right for folks who eat authentic Mexican in the local barrio almost daily.

Unfortunately, the batch of jelly didn't make a scratch in the number of peppers we still had on hand so Sheila decided to pickle some.  We already had the hot water bath going and all of the equipment out so why not?  By the time the first batch was cooling, it was dinner time and we were out of fruit jars. So, we went down the street to Sam's Southern Eatery and had dinner and then on to the WalMart Neighborhood Market for more fruit jars. 

By the time we finished, we had nearly a case of 1/4 pint jars of jalapeno jelly and nearly two cases of half pint jars of pickled jalapenos.   It was also past eight o'clock and kitchen was a disaster area.  But, nothing would do Sheila but to have it completely clean before she went to bed.  I was asleep long before she was finished.

As we were sealing the last few jars, I decided to taste the product.  Sheila warned me not to.  She had been wearing two pairs of surgical gloves all through the process and still had pepper burns on her hands.  I told myself it couldn't be that bad, picked a couple of slices off of the top of the jar closest to me and popped them in my mouth.  Within seconds, I was chugging lemonade straight from the half gallon jar in the fridge.  It would appear that our little jalapeno friends must have cross pollinated with their habanero neighbors or something.  The pickling process will calm them down some I'm sure, but these are not going to be peppers for sissies and Yankees. 

I'm sure my mom was looking down from heaven and laughing her head off at Sheila and I canning itty bitty jars of condiments in a pasta cooker.  When I was a child, I spent many long, steamy days in the kitchen with mom working over her high tech steam pressure canner putting up quart jars of everything from corn and peas to sausage patties and beef stew for the winter. 

Sometimes you do things for the joy and symbolism of it.  I'm sure we could have bought a couple of cases of pickled jalapenos and a case of jalapeno jelly for a lot less than it cost to make it, especially if you factor in the hourly rate for Sheila and I's labor.  But, it wouldn't have been peppers from our garden and canned in our kitchen.  To people who grew up on farms, there is something primal and satisfying about putting your crop away for the winter, even if it just symbolic.  And yes, even though we wore ourselves out, a good time was had by all.   

A Double Anniversary

Sheila and I celebrated a double anniversary last night, our 45th wedding anniversary and Sheila's fifth year of being cancer free.

For reasons I may not be completely able to explain, Sheila and I are both drawn to a strange little place down by Lake Tenkiller that is so deep in the sticks that you swear you are lost every time you head there but eventually drive up on it anyway.  Getting there is part of the mystique I guess.

Jincy's Kitchen in Qualls, Oklahoma is something of a legend.  During the depression it was a general store run by a

woman. Later, it was one of the sets for the movie, "Where the Red Fern Grows."  Now, still operated by a family member, it is a legendary family style restaurant that manages to draw a good crowd most nights it is open despite being absolutely in the middle of nowhere.

Wayne and Pam

We were joined by Sheila's niece, Pam Edwards, and her long time life companion Wayne Elliot.  Pam and Sheila were like sisters growing up and Pam is also a long term breast cancer survivor.

Mike and Jodi

Sheila and I's usual partners in crime, Mike and Jodi Sala, rode over with us.  Mike and I got to know each other serving on the board of a private school and a lifelong friendship developed between the families.

We arrived just as the band was tuning up, a local family group called Oklahoma Wildlife.  They were very good musicians but their lead singer had something extra. She sang with a big old smile on her face and just threw her head back and let it happen.  She was happy to be there, was having a great time and did her best to share her joy with everybody else. She succeeded.  Her joy and enthusiasm were contagious.

Between songs, the band emceed a game of Trivial Pursuit with the crowd.  Sheila won the first question by knowing that Pan was the "shepherd demigod that invented the flute."  The MC and the crowd were stunned.  I felt like blurting out, "appearances can be deceiving, folks.  She is actually a magna cum laude grad of the TU business school."  But, I didn't. I won the next question by knowing the name of Charles Darwin's ship on his alleged voyage of discovery, the Beagle.  By this time the crowd was getting restless. Somebody pointedly asked, "How in the world could you have known that?"  I just murmured that I read a lot and didn't say anything about multiple degrees or being a published author.  Given the mood of the crowd, our table held back after that.  I learned as a child that being too smart can start a game that ends badly.

You pretty well have to be southern to understand Jincy's.  The place is the distilled essence of the Eastern Oklahoma southern/hill culture.  It looks like the place where we would walk in as barefoot children clutching a precious nickle or dime to buy a

candy bar or a coke, a rare treat that was infrequently enjoyed.  It sounds like the places of our youth where the gentle Okie hill country dialect was spoken and homemade music filled the background.  It smells like the places of our youth. Jincy's is heated by a potbellied stove. The smell of the woodsmoke, combined with the old store smells and the authentic aromas of a southern kitchen, take you back to where you came from if you are southern.  Every person I have ever taken to Jincy's says the same thing about the food, "that tastes just like my Mama's cooking." And it does.  For a moment, you can close your eyes and be home again.

As we were leaving, the band stopped us and serenaded us on the front porch in celebration of our anniversary.  It was touching.  I wrapped my arm around Sheila and we stood there and listened as our companions joined in the little song celebrating our life together.  It was a sweet moment whose memory will last a lifetime.  It is important to mark the milestones in your life.  This one was well marked and will be fondly remembered.

Bill Imitates Barney Fife ....

OK.  I told the official story of my two days in Ponca City yesterday.  But, as Paul Harvey used to say, here is THE REST OF THE STORY.

Every morning of my life, I take a strong diuretic to help control my blood pressure. Most mornings, it's no big deal. I take the pill, stay close to a bathroom for a couple of hours and there is no problem. Last Thursday morning, I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. and be on the road by 6:00 .... right in the big middle of my prime time so to speak. Within a few minutes of leaving home, I was counting minutes to the next rest stop on the Cimarron Turnpike, a long 60 miles or so.

Having reached the first rest stop without incident, the same problem was painfully presenting itself again by the time I reached my destination in Ponca City.  I quickly parked my car in the heaven sent up front parking spot, hurriedly gathered my briefcase and other things necessary for the morning class. I hurriedly exited the car to head for the nearest bathroom when IT happened. My first humiliation of the day.

There are some things that people who carry weapons just don't do.  Number two on the list right after "don't point that thing at me again or I'll stick it up you *ss" is "never drop your gun."  As I sprang (as best I could anyway) from the car, my mind was totally focused on the blessed porcelain receptacle that would allow me to ease my pain.  But, the moment I put my feet on the ground,  I heard a clatter below me and realized that I had dropped my Glock right there in the parking lot in front of a dozen or more detectives/homicide investigators heading for the same seminar.

I was so embarrassed that I simply pulled off my holster and locked the whole rig in my trunk. That should have been the end of it but it wasn't.  Later in the morning, I looked out and saw several folks ganged up around the rear of my car.   I love my Hyundai.  It is the best car I have ever owned.  It has almost no faults.  But it does have an annoying idiosyncrasy.  Old GM remote door openers will pop the trunk.  I looked around and saw a parking lot sprinkled with junker GM cars, just  as you would expect in a small Oklahoma town VoTech. So, I reluctantly went out and put my weapon back on.  I figured that was a better alternative than leaving a five hundred dollar weapon unprotected in what amounted to a high school parking lot.

I carry my weapon in a high dollar Kydex inside the waistband holster.  I always wear a strong belt. The rig had never failed me before.  But, now that I had it on, I couldn't be comfortable with it.  I kept imagining my weapon falling to the ground again every time I shifted position in my chair or got up. I noticed that I was constantly adjusting it or pushing the weapon back down in my waistband to make sure that it didn't ride up and clatter out as it had in the parking lot.  Unfortunately, I was doing this in a room full of men and women who are trained to notice such things.  Eventually, I just pulled it off and stuck it in my briefcase.  But then, I had to carry my briefcase with me everywhere I went for the rest of the day, even to the bathroom.

Later in the day, our host announced that the school was concerned about all of these armed strangers

wandering around campus without any ID.  He asked the seminar participants to please wear their badges while on campus.  By law, I am allowed to carry a badge but I don't.  I don't need it.  The state issued ID card is fine for those rare instances when somebody actually asks me to show credentials. But, in order to prepare for the rare occasion where I did have to literally wear ID, I had prepared a full color copy of my state license and carried it in a magnetic clasp ID holder which clips over your belt or a strap on your briefcase.  So, when our host asked, I just pulled out the ID holder and clipped it to the strap of my briefcase which was now accompanying me everywhere I went.

Later that afternoon, the class ended and I had gotten several blocks away from the campus before I looked at my briefcase and realized that my ID was missing.  It had been on my briefcase when I left the classroom.  I immediately made a u-turn and headed back to the campus.  I retraced my steps out of the building and didn't find it.  I asked at the front desk and it hadn't been turned in.  Reluctantly, I went back to my car and headed home the last few shreds of my dignity now totally destroyed.

I have learned that putting off embarrassing tasks does not make them any easier.  So, driving down the street in Ponca City, I dialed the number for CLEET (the licensing agency for law enforcement and private security in Oklahoma ).  Sheepishly, I reported that a darn good copy of my PI license was now floating around Ponca City, probably in the hands of a stupid teenager that doesn't realize that trying to use it will buy him more trouble than he could possibly imagine.  And that's before he has to deal with me in civil court. The folks at CLEET couldn't have been more gracious. But, knowing cop culture, I can imagine what was said as soon as I hung up. I could almost hear the guffaws halfway across the state.

While talking to CLEET, I had to control the urge to gush out things like, "This really isn't like me.  I am actually a very competent person, almost anal about things like this actually.  I don't know what happened today but this is just not normal."  But, I had the common sense not to.  If you have to say things like that to strangers, do you really expect to be believed?

I can't do anything about the missing ID but I did remedy the holster problem.  I examined it thoroughly and found that either: (a) the tension screw which regulates the pressure that holds the weapon in place had worked loose a bit, or (b) the rubber compression washer it works against had compressed. At any rate, I tightened it back up to the point where the weapon will remain in place even if you hold it upside down but still draws properly with a firm pull.

I wish my dignity could be fixed so easily.

I Met The Real "Bones" This Week

I am going to break one of my own rules and talk about something work related in this post.  I'm breaking the rule because my experience was a minor adventure of sorts.

For the past couple of days, I have been attending a law enforcement seminar on cold homicide cases. Just like law enforcement, private investigators have to complete a set number of hours of continuing education per licensing period.  This seminar had three great things going for it.  First, it involved training on a relatively new DOJ database that might help me resolve the occasional missing person case where the subject appears to have just dropped off the face of the earth.  Second, it was taught by people who are actually qualified to teach the subject matter. And third, it was free.

PI's are kind of out of place at law enforcement seminars and I was even more careful about admitting that I am an attorney.  Cop culture is very much a closed society.  And on a practical level, law enforcement has access to all sorts of information and techniques that are out of bounds to PI's. But on the other hand, PI's can do (or at least get away with) things law enforcement cannot, especially when there is no requirement for the information to be used in court which is increasingly the case in business related matters these days.  The client often just wants to know what happened and how to stop it. 

Contrary to what you see on television and read in cheap novels, private investigators are not normally involved in homicides.  My little practice usually involves skills more like those of a good print reporter.  I am tasked with telling a client the who, what, when, where and why of a situation. I may do interviews, take some pictures, etc.  Rarely, I might do an actual surveillance.  I'm sometimes tasked with verifying who a living person (usually an employee or a job candidate) actually is and occasionally with looking for a person who just isn't where they are supposed to be any more.  But most of the time, it's just computer and telephone work.

The first day of the seminar was taught by legendary former Tulsa PD homicide detective Mike Nance.  Nance now works for a national organization that helps find missing and abducted children.  Aside from teaching us how to access the database in question, Mike gave the crew a lot of blow by blow instruction on the practical side of handling a homicide, complete with color slides of crime scenes and body parts.  While that part of his presentation didn't have much practical application for a geriatric attorney/PI with a very, very low key civil practice, it was fascinating.

The morning session of the second day of the seminar was taught by Angela Berg. Angela is THE forensic anthropologist for the Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.  Yes, she is Oklahoma's own "Bones." The spooky Tulsa World's photo of her posted here does not do her justice.  In person, Angela is an attractive, petite blonde with an engaging personality and a razor sharp wit.  She approaches her work with the wry, dark humor that most homicide cops and related professionals adopt as a coping mechanism to deal with one of society's most horrible and heartbreaking jobs.  She described her job for us in great detail including color slides.  All that was missing was the unforgettable smell of a human body left unattended too long.  The material Angela taught has very little practical application for me but it was fascinating.

The last speaker of the seminar was yet another legend in homicide investigations.  Harvey Pratt is a Cheyenne Chief complete with ponytail.  He is a nationally recognized forensic artist and re-constructionist.  He is also a talented Native American artist.  For many years, he was a legendary investigator with the OSBI. He assisted in major cases around the nation, some involving well known serial killers.

Good homicide investigators often have engaging personalities. It is a tool of the trade that unlocks information from witnesses and even confessions from suspects. Pratt is no exception.  He is very personable and funny.  But underneath the dark cop humor is deep intensity and a mind that routinely collects a level of detail that most of us can't imagine.

While I don't want to take anything away from the other speakers, Pratt's presentation justified the whole two day adventure for me.  I walked away from it with two priceless nuggets of information.  The first involves interviewing skills.  I have always considered myself a very good information collector.  After the military, I was professionally trained to gather information in the business world by the big name computer companies I worked for.  They taught us to read people and situations the same way most people read a newspaper.  I did a stint as a print reporter and have practiced law now for nearly fifteen years. In short, I have spent most of a lifetime in the information business.  But, Pratt taught me that I need to kick my standard, kind of laid back, interview routine up several notches in collecting details.

The second nugget is more esoteric and I had to think twice before writing about it.  One of my "projects" these days is teaching pastors and other church officials how to spot child predators attempting to access children through their organization.  I've put a lot of time and study into it but frankly didn't trust myself in one area that was always lingering in the back of my mind, the perception of an evil presence.  Science calls these people sociopaths or psychopaths but in fact they are just plain evil.  Pratt openly acknowledged that fact and the fact it can be recognized in another person.  He described sensing it despite the outwardly normal and charming personality of serial killer Ted Bundy. Pratt taught me that I can acknowledge that perception openly instead of just quietly acting on it.

At the end of the second day, I had accomplished my goals.  I had logged sixteen hours of continuing education, learned how access a high powered DOJ database that can help clear a missing persons case and been challenged to kick my game up a couple of notches in a key area of the trade.  It was time well spent.  

The Adventures of Bill and Sheila Down Under

Every once in a while, I Google up the term "Bill and Sheila" just to see what other Bill and Sheila's around the world are up to.  This time I found a doozy.  There is an Australian artist named Michael Jones who has done a series of paintings called "Bill and Sheila On Holiday."  If you are our age, they are funny, poignant and expressive.  Each one tells a little story.  I am going to share a few below.  The rest of the portfolio can be viewed here:  LINK

PMS In Paradise

Boys Will Be Boys

It Doesn't Get Any Better

Nice Little Weekend

Sheila is in the middle of her "crazy season" at TU. When she left full time employment there, she kept her "side jobs" managing a website for an oil patch research consortium and doing the administrative and clerical work for their conference that is held every year about this time.  She also continued doing specialized (and highly skilled) work for a professor who became a family friend ver the years.  Recently, she has been editing the equations for an engineering text he is writing.  In short, she has been working crazy hours.  

She decided to take half a day vacation Friday to get caught up at TU.  I told her I would take her to a "special lunch" before she plowed into the mess at TU.  I know she likes chicken friend steak and I know she likes country music. Every Friday, a group of very talented older musicians serenades the crowd at Nelsons on Memorial, the home of the best chicken fry on the planet.  It was good.  Very, very good. The music and the food.  Sheila had the chicken fried steak.  I had the chicken fried chicken filet.  We both swore we might never eat again.


Saturday morning was the Susan G. Kohman Race for the Cure. Sheila goes every year.  Her older sister Gwenda and her niece Pam are both breast cancer survivors as well.  So, the three of them went and took a whole mess of the family with them.  It sounded like they had a good time.

Sheila got home right about lunch time and we headed out to Catoosa to check out a new gun shop that had a heck of a deal on Crimson Trace laser sights for Glock pistols.  I wound up buying one and I'll be darned if it wasn't perfectly zeroed right around 50 feet right from the factory.  When you point the pistol at a target, you see a perfect little red dot superimposed right square in the middle of a properly aligned front sight picture.  I had avoided buying a laser sight until I had proven to myself that I could shoot without one.  But, now that that is proven, the laser sight offers an amazing tactical advantage under certain circumstances.

Having walked around all morning, Sheila was hungry.  I know that she likes sushi but I am just too cheap to buy it very often at a regular sushi restaurant where the check can look like one of my legal bills if you eat very much at all.  But, there are a couple of Chinese restaurants that serve good sushi as part of their buffet in the area.  The best is Asiana in Claremore. Since we were already in Catoosa, we headed that way for lunch.  Lunch as amazing as usual, especially for a buffet, and we got our sushi fix in for a while.

On the way home, we stopped for a few groceries at the strange little Walmart in Catoosa.  It is kind of a mini super center.  Very clean and new and I have to say that the staff had great attitudes and were far more helpful than you have a right to expect in a discount store.  The greeter actually followed me to my car, helped me put the groceries in the trunk and then took the handicapped scooter back for me.


By this time we were both ready for a nap and that's exactly what we did.  When we got up, I fixed us a batch of one of our favorite dishes, "choo-choo fried rice."  It is a dish that used to be served on trains in China.  It is bacon, green onions and dry scrambled eggs stir fried with rice.  We served it with chicken tenders cooked with Thai chili sauce.  It was a very nice little at home meal.

After dinner, we settled down before the TV. Netflix has just acquired the rights to the rest of the BBC's long running "Midsomer Murder" series.  Midsomer is hard to explain.  The plots are very British and totally ridiculous.  The little town of Midsomer, which is any tourists dream come true, seems to have two or three gruesome murders every time a new episode is scheduled.

If you believed TV, Midsomer, population fifty thousand or so, would have a murder rate that would put Detroit, Chicago and LA combined all to shame.  And, oh what murders! There is seldom a gun seen but they stab, burn, poison, run over and do everything else imaginable to dispatch each other. The cops never carry a gun and, of course, regularly get the crap beaten out of them by resisting suspects.  But to balance that out, since Britain has no equivalent to the Fourth Amendment, British cops apparently break and enter into just about anybody's home they choose.  If the door isn't locked they just walk in and announce themselves (sometimes).  If the door is locked, they just break in. Every time they do that bit, I subconsciously cringe and wait to hear the gunshot that would automatically follow in America.  And of course, the chief inspector has a drop dead gorgeous wife and a terminally cute Jack Russell terrier that he talks to when is trying to work something out.  The plots are so ridiculous and the premise so unlikely that it is all kind of fun. Sheila and I have watched every one of the thirteen past seasons and are working our way through the last few now.

Not a bad little weekend so far.  I suspect that we will be in for the day today unless something comes up.