Last night about bedtime, Sheila called me out onto our half finished deck. She just wanted to spend a few minutes sitting in the moonlight before we went to bed. It was a very quiet, sweet and pleasurable moment.
Most of our time and treasure of late has been going into upgrading the tiny, sagging, in places failing deck out our back door. Our tiny little cottage was previously owned by a fastidious professional engineer who was a single man and ordered his house without too much thought of company. The deck he built was so small you really couldn't relax on it without either blocking traffic out the back door or getting so close to the edge that you might fall off.
We have a family friend who is a great contractor. He quoted us a very fair price to do the work with the understanding he would work it in around his other obligations. So right now, we have a half finished deck, an in the process of renovation lower level paver patio that is actually a large mud-hole from the AC drainage and a backyard so full of building materials and deck and patio items that it's not really worth the trouble to try to mow. The lower level patio is being done by another guy, a local odd job handyman. We gave up on doing it ourselves after a couple of evenings where got about five blocks per evening set. While we are very anxious to just have the project over so that we can completely enjoy it, last night we had enough done to enjoy a nice moment before bedtime. And, anticipation does increase enjoyment when you finally reach your goal, which hopefully will be soon.
We had a very annoying accident last week. Hit and run driver took out the right rear quarter panel of my beloved Sonata. I won't have it back until sometime after July 4th. I actually miss my car.
Right now, I am driving a 2013 Toyota Camry that looks just the one in the picture. (I guess I should say that my insurance company is treating me very nicely.) It is a very nice car that reminds me a lot of what expensive American cars used to feel like. The ride is very quiet. The feel is solid. However, the suspension is mushy and while the acceleration leaves a bit to be desired, it is really quiet acceptable for a large sedan. It's just not nearly as good as my Hyundai with the same size engine and fuel economy ratings.
The six way power seats are better than my Hyundai's. They are solid and very comfortable. However, the touch screen LCD sound system, while full of features, does not work nearly as well as the less expensive and less complicated system on my Hyundai. It apparently does not recognize voice dialing from my cell phone. In my Hyundai, all I have to do is hit the button and tell it who I want to call. It does the rest. The Toyota actually makes you dial the number either on the phone or on the touch screen. The controls for the sound system are very busy and complicated. And, it does not have satellite radio, a standard feature on all Sonatas.
The Camry is a solid feeling, predictable, perfectly acceptable sedan. But, my Sonata feels and looks younger and sportier. The Camry's performance is perfectly adequate for what it is. The Sonata is fun to drive. Not a sports car exactly but certainly no slouch on the freeway. The Camry feels heavy. The Sonata feels light. The controls on the Camry are if anything over-engineered. The controls on the Sonata are well thought out and intuitive. Bottom line, glad to have the Camry right now but also glad I don't have to keep it.
July 5, 2012 - I will give the Camry back to the dealership today and pick up my repaired Sonata. I had a chance to take it on a road trip yesterday and found it to be perfectly acceptable as a road car, quiet, comfortable and convenient in almost all respects. The fuel economy is about 10% less on the road than my Sonata, the Camry averaging a little under 30 mpg. while my Sonata almost always averages 32-33 mpg. on the road. I did notice that acceleration improved a bit after the car had limbered up a bit. But take note, the torque curve (or now the computer settings) on the Camry require that you really put your foot down to get crisp performance where the Sonata is crisper in the mid throttle range. Bottom line, the Sonata would probably be about ten to twenty percent quicker than the Camry but because of the throttle/computer settings, the Sonata FEELS a lot quicker. Bottom line, the Camry I had was a good car. Solid, comfortable, heavy/expensive feeling and very quiet. But, sexy it ain't either inside or out. And, the Sonata is.
I had lunch with my old friend Tom from Claremore today. After a more than ample meal out our usual hole in the wall Mexican place up on Admiral, I asked Tom what he was doing for the next hour or so. He replied that he had a little time. So, we we down the street to the new 2A Shooting Center.
The 2a Shooting Center is a brand new, state of the art, indoor range that is attracting a lot of business. Every time I go, the lanes are busy. The prices are moderate, the service is excellent and the facilities as safe as you can make a gun range.
I had my new .22 rifle/carbine in the trunk of my car. It is a Mossberg 702. This gun is made in Brazil for Mossberg International and at a hundred bucks it is a steal. It has a fiberglass composite stock and an aluminum receiver so it weighs nearly nothing. But, the barrel and action are steel and it is quite accurate.
I had intended to go the range after lunch and zero the scope on it. So, I did just that and Tom and I took turns going through a couple of hundred rounds with it. Here are some pics. The first is me at fifty yards shooting offhand. The next is Tom shooting at fifty yards offhand. The next is Tom showing off shooting at the numbers under the targets from bench rest at 50 yds. The last is me firing offhand, rapid fire at 50 yds.
Tom tells me that he hadn't fired a long gun in years before today. I had fired exactly 200 rounds in the past week and that was all that I had fired for years. But, after putting a clip or two through the little carbine, we were both firing about as well we did in the military forty years ago, bad eyes, aching joints and all.
I guess we are from a different age. My dad taught me how to shoot. He used to stand me at attention in front of him and make me go through manual of arms until I could toss my Daisey around like a member of the Old Guard. He started me on cork pop guns, brought me up through BB guns and when I was old enough bought me a .22. He made me go through the same safety and marksmanship rituals that he had learned in the Army. I'll bet Tom's dad taught him to shoot too. And, back then just about everybody in our generation did some time in the military. And, I guess that was our post grad training in marksmanship.
At any rate, learning to shoot, owning a gun and being proficient with it was a rite of passage for our generation. Something every boy expected to do as he grew into manhood. And, it was pleasant to sit around with an old friend, punch a couple of hundred holes in a piece of paper and prove that we still had one of the skills of our youth.
And yes, there are some larger holes there that obviously could not have been made with a .22. They are 9mm holes made with my little "pocket" pistol. The best I can say about that is that I still can't hit squat with a gun that small.
July 2, 2012 - The Nazi Zombies had a bad day at the gun range today. 100 shots fired at medium combat range, either 95 or 96 hits. Started out using laser sights and when I figured out where I was aiming wrong, just used the iron sights. Only lost a small piece of my thumbnail to the vicious recoil on my teeny tiny little 9mm.
It is 4:15 AM on Saturday morning. I have been awake for over an hour. I often wake in the middle of night but can usually coax myself back to sleep for another few hours. Not this time. Last night, Sheila and I had dinner in the neighborhood and then did something we haven't done for a long time. We went to a movie. For the most part, Hollywood has quit producing anything I want to see. So called stars like Adam Sandler and Will Ferrel give me a major pain in the *ss and I would pay NOT to see them ever again. Most so called movies of late are so infantile, so out of touch with reality and so laced with PC propaganda that they are an insult. Too often, they mistake video game like special effects for drama, pornography for art and tired political cliche's for ideas. They are little movies made by little people with little minds.
This movie is different. Based upon actual events in Mexico during the 1920's and 1930's, the dialogue is thoughtful and at times inspiring, the cinematography lush and the acting superb. Aside from Andy Garcia, Eva Longoria and Peter O'Toole, the rest of the actors are Mexicans we anglos have never heard of. But, taken together, this is one of the the best movies ever made and certainly one you will never forget.
The facts this movie is based upon are undeniable. The President of Mexico at the time of these events was a communist who ruled by revolution. He brutally suppressed the church. There was an uprising by Christians. America intervened to protect its oil interests but not the people of Mexico and the compromise agreement they brokered did not end the persecution. And to America's eternal shame, we apparently sold the regime airplanes that were used against the Cristero soldiers. Some reports allege that the US military actually provided air support against the Cristeros. Here are some photos from the real historical events:
So, what is the lesson to be learned from the sacrifice of our long dead Christian brothers to the South? There are certain historical facts that recur with mathematical certainty. When the secular left gains sufficient political power, it will do everything in its power to eradicate the influence of Christianity be it Catholic or Evangelical because they cannot coexist peacefully. The hollowness and utter absurdity of the secular left's ideology is first exposed and then condemned by free Christian thought. Consequently, the only way the secular left can maintain power is to eradicate religious freedom. This eradication of religious freedom inevitably involves the use of force. Persecution and bloodshed inevitably follow. History has proven this time and again in dozens of little known wars in Latin America, all over Eastern Europe during the Cold War and in especially in Russia where the "official" church was an arm of the KGB. And, if this is the factual lesson, what is the moral application of it? I will let a clip from the movie answer:
Sheila and I did our decoration duties Saturday. Yesterday, we just enjoyed the day. In the morning, I smoked a pork loin and a turkey breast and cooked a big pot of beans. Then, we spent the evening at Mike and Jodi's around their pool. Good food, old friends, a big pool, cool drinks and an hilarious dog. Who could ask for more?
The food pictures are not mine. I got lazy and just cooked instead of cooking and taking pictures at the same time. So, my apologies to the folks whose food pics I "borrowed" from the internet. But, in my defense, I would submit that my food looked at least that good and it apparently tasted good enough since so much of it disappeared. Same for the lightning pictures. I did not take them but they are good representation of what we saw last night sitting there on Mike and Jodi's patio.
It is about
7:30 on Saturday night. I am sitting on
the deck of a lovely little cabin deep in the Kiamichi Mountains near
Octavia, Oklahoma. The sun is setting on
the tree tops. Birds are calling back
and forth to each other across the tiny wooded glen where the cabin sits.
Sheila and I
have just finished a fabulous dinner cooked on the tiny grill here on the deck, chicken kabobs with a ragout of grilled
vegetables on the side. Iced tea and
bacon wrapped chiles rellenos (also cooked on the grill) finished the menu.
We spent a
pleasant hour or so before dinner with a glass of ghetto champagne (Mogen David
and Seven Up) in the little two person hot tub which overlooks the meadow and
the mountains just to the north. It has
been a very pleasant weekend that I am sorry to see winding down. Tomorrow morning, we will head back to Tulsa
by way of Krebs for a good Italian lunch.
We started
our adventure Friday morning. After a
surprisingly good breakfast on the fly of QuikTrip coffee and Subway flatbread
breakfast sandwiches, we headed southeast.
By noon, we were in Heavener and soon after were threading our way
through the switchbacks over the mountains of the Ouachita
National Forest. We arrived at the cabin
around one thirty.
We were
greeted at the cabin by our host, Sherri.
She is proud owner/proprietor of Little Cabin in the Woods. We had texted her from Heavener that we were
less than an hour out. Sherri was very accommodating and did everything she
could to help us settle in. The cabin is spotlessly clean, terminally cute in a girly-country kind of way and
very secluded.
By two, we were
unpacked, drinking something cold and relaxing on the deck, working on the all
over tan we started on our cruise a couple of months ago. Yes, the Little Cabin in the Woods is that
secluded. While you can hear traffic
from nearby Oklahoma 144, it is impossible to see into the the little glen
where the cabin is located because of the
dense woods. We grilled our dinner that evening out on the
deck. Garlic chicken breasts with grill
roasted peppers and a tossed salad. We
finished it off with grilled pineapple slices and a cup of coffee.
Saturday was
the kind of day we don't have very often.
We slept in and had a relaxed breakfast of eggs florentine (from a
carton), sausage links, toast and coffee.
We spent the morning loafing.
Sheila watched a few of her favorite shows on the satellite TV. I read and played guitar. Sheila took a hike in the woods while I read
some more. Sometime after noon, we
grilled some very good chicken jalapeno sausages for lunch.
After lunch,
we showered and took a drive around the neighborhood while our innkeeper did
some chores around the place. She was
ever so thoughtful about this, texting us first and asking when it would be OK
to come up.
When we got
back from our ramble, Sheila took a nap and I settled in on the deck with my
Kindle. But, the hot tub kept calling me
and I eventually gave in. Pretty soon,
Sheila was awake and she joined me. We
spent a pleasant hour or so in the tub, sipping our ghetto champagne, listening
to the birds and watching the sun slowly work its way up the trees as darkness crept up from below.
We promised ourselves that
we would get back in the tub after dark so that we could look up the stars through the
tree branches. We did
just that and spent the rest of the evening in the tub, listening to the sounds of the forest and watching the sky.
Sunday morning when we reluctantly left the Little Cabin in the Woods, we took
Oklahoma 144 west. Oklahoma 144 seems to
start nowhere and end there as well. It
starts at US 259 just south of the big mountains of the Ouachita
National Forest and ends at a junction somewhere south of Clayton, Oklahoma.
To say that it is a lonely road
would be an understatement. We saw a
bobcat scoot across the road in front of us and a chipmunk standing in the
middle of the road. In its fifty or so
mile length we only met two or three cars. It is a long way to any kind of grocery store for these folks much less a WalMart or a McDonalds. I suspect that things like a Starbucks are just something they see on TV, if they can afford a satellite dish. There is no cable up here and I'll bet over the air reception of TV is virtually impossible, especially since the digital transition has shortened ranges.
Many of the homes speak of a lifestyle that goes back to another
time. They were obviously built from scrounged materials by their
owners, who are apparently loggers and lumbermen. Every home has a garden out front. Most have chickens. Some have goats. The homes speak of a hard-working,
edge of poverty rural lifestyle in some of Oklahoma’s most beautiful country. Still, it was a good drive for a Sunday
morning, a trip back in time.
We were in Krebs by eleven but
were disappointed to find that Lovera’s Italian Grocery was closed. However, we looked up the street and saw the
the fast food, convenience store branch of the family business was open. So, we stopped in for some Italian sausage
and cheese to bring home.
The girl behind the deli counter
was very pretty and very friendly. We asked
where she would go to lunch in Krebs.
She recommended Roseanna’s as did the other workers. They all agreed that the food was very good
and not so expensive that you had to cash in a bond to pay the tab.
We had about twenty minutes to
kill before Roseanna’s opened, so we saw the sights in Krebs. Nothing much to see. Just an Oklahoma small town that just happens
to have the best Italian food between Dallas and Chicago. We did notice a large, very substantial
Catholic church with beautiful old stained glass windows. The parking lot was full as was the expansion
lot across the street. I guess that
makes sense. Krebs was founded by
Italians and later became home to Polish miners.
Roseanna’s was everything the
deli folks said it was and more. (Link to video Roseanna's ) Nothing
pretentious, just very good Italian food.
The food arrived very quickly. We
had a simple salad with garlic bread, a half order of lamb fries for an
appetizer and then shared a half sized sampler platter of spaghetti, meatballs,
gnocchi, ravioli and lasagna. While everything
was very good, I finally understand lasagna.
In the past, I just didn’t get it.
I didn’t care for it. That was
because I had never had real Italian lasagna.
Even though I could only have a few bites because of my diet, oh my
gosh. It was unbelievable. While we were waiting for the doors to open,
a friendly lady who had obviously just come from church said that we had to try
the cheesecake. I had one bite. I will remember it for years. And, I have to say that our server, Tyler,
was the best waiter I have had in years.
My only complaint about Roseanna’s
is that they did not have decaf coffee.
I had tried to get a cup of decaf for the last forty miles and there
just wasn’t any. One convenience store
clerk told us that folks in Hartshorne, Oklahoma just don’t care for it. McAlester wasn't any better. We stopped at several places and they didn’t
have it. It seems that they just don’t
do decaf down there. I finally got a cup
up an hour out of Tulsa at the big Phillips 66 on the Indian Nation Turnpike where all the city
people pass back and forth between Tulsa and Dallas.
This was Sheila’s birthday
weekend. My gift to her was the trip and
the meal in Krebs, two things I knew she would enjoy and I would too. And we did. This weekend will be nice memory.
One of our fellow rat-packers is fairly particular about what she eats. She usually does not prefer exotic things like Asian or Indian food. However, she recently discovered Mongolian Barbecue and we have now enjoyed a couple of visits to the Oriental Buffet at 61st and Sheridan which has a good one.
It works like this. You walk down a line stocked with all sorts of raw ingredients like chicken, beef, pork and shrimp. There are also several vegetables such as onions, cabbage, mushrooms, carrots, peppers, etc. You fill your plate with the raw ingredients you want. Then, you take a bowl and mix the sauce you want from ingredients like curry juice, soy sauce, sesame oil, hot pepper oil, pineapple juice, etc.
You then give your plate and the sauce bowl to a cook behind the bar. He throws your dry ingredients onto a huge, very hot grill and cooks them for you. In the last few moments, he adds the sauce and stir fries it a bit more. The result is delicious, very healthy and even low in calories.
The Oriental also has full Chinese buffet as well as a salad bar and even an ice cream machine. So everybody gets something they like. The staff is also friendly and doesn't mind us sitting around and talking for an hour or so after we have eaten.
We were there again last night and as usual, a good time was had by all.
Last night about bedtime, Sheila called me out onto our half finished deck. She just wanted to spend a few minutes sitting in the moonlight before we went to bed. It was a very quiet, sweet and pleasurable moment.
