My daughter drew a picture of the two of us. I'm the whale-looking thing and she is the other figure grafted to my head. While not amazing, the only other objects she's drawn to date are kitties and the usual suspects of geometric shapes.


Tonight, we had a good New Years get-together. 3 friends came over and we watched mind-numbing TV, played some pool (first time in a year or so) and had a feast the size and depth of which is normally reserved for Christmas or Thanksgiving.

My resolutions for this year are to declutter (house, mind, finances) and to keep income > expenditures.

Bird flu preparedness kit.

Now the woodcarvers and soapcarvers of the world can finally find peace.

Met some people from the TulsaNow forum last night at a local dive. It was happy hour, which has no effect on me, but it was a good excuse for a time & place. Jerry Giordano from Channel 8 crashed our party and interviewed us. You can't pay for that kind of PR for a free forum.



It was quite humorous that while I have no reason to go to bars as a general rule, when I do go, I end up on the news.

My new copilot, Christmas present from my wife.

Love it when my daughter plays with her v-smile and there is this one game with the included game that has Robots that drop from the ceiling and attack you. Everytime she yells "Oh No! Bwohbots!"

Spent time contemplating Y2K8 and how finances will work next year. If we can get everything accomplished we want to, might end next year with a lot less financial stress. Just glad I wasn't one who overbought on a house or got an adjustable rate mortgage. Those people are hosed..

Made it through with minimal casualties. Just my sanity. Got everything back in the house, kids got all their presents opened. Good year overall.

I've always had a habit of watching high-drama shows with low intellectual involvement late at night to ease my brain down. Used to watch "blind date" but it's hard to find on anymore. I tivo'ed a Degrassi marathon the other night and the wife and I have been watching that for a half hour or so every night in bed. The acting, writing, themes are nothing to write home about, but it's definitely Canada's "saved by the bell" but with more afterschool special mixed in. I'll be glad once I get through all the episodes I have recorded so I can pretend I never watched it in the first place.

Drove up north today, got to try out my new truck-powered Christmas wreath. Most the gifts we gave were very well received. Note to self: humorous gifts based on sarcasm don't fly with everyone.

I got new wallstone for the perpetual railroad tie to wallstone conversion project in the front yard which was nice. Got home, got the kids in bed and opened good gifts. Got a small radio controlled plane (probably do less damage when I crash this one,) a tiny chewbacca, rubik's cube, mechanic shirt with "geek" nametag and stickers to add facial features to inanimate objects. Much of the latter from thinkgeek.com. Also got Stephen Colbert's "I am America, and so can you!" which is a great book.

Why does it take so long to wrap and so little time to open?

We're gonna have enough wrapping paper and cookies to clothe and feed a small tribe.


I'm overly proud of my decorating job on that cookie.

Had Christmas with the in-laws today. First of many steps of Christmas. Got a woven Star Wars throw. Like one of those things that usually has a farm scene or some deer on it, but this one has Darth Maul. I'm attaching a picture because I wouldn't believe it myself if i hadn't seen it. How obscure, yet rocking in it's obscurity.



The kids got those V-smile consoles. The ones with the commercials featuring moms yelling at their kids to "go play your video games." I undertand the joke, but it was old the second time I heard it.

P.S. Am I the only one who finds "Degrassi the next generation" to be a bit much?
P.P.S. Someone please change the channel for me. I'm watching Degrassi.

Slept until 10AM which was awesome. Replaced my jeans and phone holster which both broke in the last week. Did pretty much nothing else of any relevance and it was great. Been going through potty training with my daughter which is surprisingly more time consuming than I thought.

Was a pretty tough day. Seemed like I crammed 4 days of work into one. Spent two hours cleaning up viruses and spyware on a WickerMonkey job and built a few servers. Also had church and a few other responsibilities to take care of. Cracked up when I heard about one woman in the office looking for information on a dog that ended up accidentally googling a bestiality site. Was quite a culture shock.

I also got to charge mileage and overtime for my guide work last week which was cool. Also got paid for some website work I did awhile back and got to tour this Artist guy's house who is doing a lot of mural and detail work to his house. It looks like a fancy European villa or something on the inside. Definitely high quality stuff.

After today, only one more work day this year. Pretty sweet. Trying to get all my work done, also submitting expense reports, planning a last-minute Christmas party, and correcting my time reporting from last week. Found out I'll even get paid overtime... Sweet.

Saw a car wreck today. There was an intersection where N-S stops, but westbound (one way) doesn't have a stop sign. Car traveling north drove right on through the intersection. When a Dakota hits a Kia, the Kia becomes a brushguard. The Kia lived up to it's name and was killed in action. Luckily no-one was injured but it was quite interesting to see close up.

Kinda pissed that Journeyman got canceled. It was like Quantum Leap, but a lot better. It had a slow start but the real intrigue and cool stuff came later. Apparently tomorrow is the last episode. Dang writer's strike and inaccurate ratings system.

Trying to get back to life as normal. Quit my volunteer guide job Saturday night so I could go to Church and figure out what my family looked like. Also had 3 different mystery shopping assignments I had to crank out this week.

Yesterday, I went to a store to ask the staff about how a vendor representative was doing. Generally they want all mystery shops and audits to be like "5 out of 5" or "9 or 10 out of 10." This guy got a 2 out of 5. Barely.

Also it was kinda funny that tree crews, like those I'd been guiding, were staged in the store parking lot and the store was providing donuts, coffee, etc.

Today, I'm trying to catch up on my work and get everything lined out. After Wednesday, I am off until January 2nd.

More trees, more cleanup, plus some winter weather hit us again. Here you can see two tree crews working, while the line crew, which grounded out the line, wait to make the line hot again. The white bucket truck facing the camera was amazing. The whole bucket mechanism in the back of the truck could lift up out of the truck hydraulically and give them another 8 feet or so of reach. At some points the went up, straight over the lines, and back down on the other side.

Had to move a caravan of near 50 trucks from Broken Arrow to Central/East Tulsa when it was 26 degrees and snowing. Not sure why people can't just yield for a caravan and feel the need to get in the way and generally hamper progress. Also, if I'm driving 30mph on the highway with my flashers on, GO AROUND!

Nothing exciting happened today, other than they broke up our group at the end of the day to be reassigned to new work areas in the morning. Not sure where I'll be tomorrow.

Talked a lot to a guy named John who I believe works in southern Oklahoma normally. He would tell you exactly how he thinks it is on every topic, with plenty of colorful verbage thrown in. It was the next best thing to watching movies on my iPhone, especially since we were staging in a high school parking lot in the middle of nowhere.

Brought three trucks to this neighborhood on the west edge of the BA. Here's two of them trying to clear a thick overgrown brush/tree mix. These three trucks cleared three streets altogether and a few dozen houses. Some residents were out clearing their own trees, buying more dry ice, and one carload offered to pickup coffee. The line crew were right in behind to replace the downed line cause by the tree damage.


Talked to a few customers (including a major car dealer) and tried to stay out of the worker's way and traffic. All while trying to stay warm. Saw some cars beat up as well as some trees that just tipped over, unbroken.


This hit me as funny, because camouflaging something designed to stick out is just silly. Yes, that is a trellis attached to a sign warning of a dangerous 90degree turn. The upside-down pot at the bottom befuddled me a bit too.

Quick picture I took when I arrived at the fairgrounds which is the headquarters fro the power restoration efforts for Tulsa. Something close to 1,000 trucks running around trying to trim trees and restore power.

I met up with 14 guys from ohio here to trim trees. I took them out to a staging area outside of town and got them to their work areas, lunch/dinner, etc. Wasn't real hectic because tree crews can only move in when line crews need them.

Power is finally restored to my house. Most everyone I know is still out however. It was nice to sleep in a real bed instead of the church floor. While I wasn't excited about living with a bunch of others at the church, it was fun at times. Some were too homesick for it though. I'll trade a little lack of privacy for friends and warmth, especially amidst crisis.

I volunteered to help out-of-town crews find work locations so I'll be doing that for the next few days. So far all I've done is sit and wait.

Had Natalie's 3rd birthday party today as well as our first trip to the PSO Parade of Lights. Both were very fun events. Work provided lots of fun activities for kids and a place to warm up in. We also had a decent place to watch the parade, although we could've been a bit better prepared. The Parade was good and lasted over an hour which surprised me. Having never been, I thought it was only 20-30 minutes. Saw a few friends form the Mayfest crowd who were working the parade... Only 5 more months until Mayfest time again...

My shoulders are a bit sore as you can understand from the picture and more pictures are available on dropshots.

3rd haul for someone else in a week. Many may wonder why I own a truck, but the question becomes, if I don't who's gonna haul all this stuff?

Also, TulsaNow.org has their domain name back. Woot!

The image to the left is just one of many examples of how the holiday season inspires idiots... Not sure where this picture came from but I got it in email and with recent experiences with my cable company and the story below, I can really understand how this would happen.


Went to Target today for some much needed grocery shopping. Was quite impressed by the woman in front of us who decided checkout time was the time to price everything she found in the store. The woman inspected every item as she took it out of the cart and put it on the belt, then she asked the checker for the price on almost every item as it was scanned. Many of them she decided she didn't want for that price and had them put back. Her return pile was almost as big as her keep pile. It was nuts. Then they gave her the obligatory "if you sign up for a target card, you can get 10% off your purchase" line and she decided to consider it... Then, she asked if she could get 10% off TODAY's purchase if she signed up for the card TOMORROW... Really? Explain that one to me HG Wells...

On the upside, it's my daughter Natalie's 3rd birthday. The weather kept us from doing much too exciting but she did get to open presents and got free birthday ice cream from Cold Stone. While still being resistant to leave the diapers behind, she was extremely excited about getting a doll that uses a potty. Maybe toys can cause peer pressure. We also fixed up and loaded a viewmaster projector with Spongebob and Cars slides and she played that for almost an hour straight.

I really do like burning vacation at the end of the year. 3 day work weeks rock!

Have to say today is the first day I saw a PC get virus infected. It's quite impressive. Just when I was thinking I didn't have enough billable work hours...

Also found out today that South Park is porno... at least some people think so. I'm gonna have to look harder. I kinda thought porn involved naked people and sex. Maybe I'm wrong...

On my friend Debbie's blog, this post suprised/scared me. Why is a lighter a kid's toy? Is it just me, or don't they require you to be 18 to buy it? Why should you be LIGHTING THINGS ON FIRE at age 9? Were the parents all out of shotgun shells and unexploded munitions?

Learn something new every day...

For once, I really enjoy getting diet and exercise advice from scientists:
- Exercise plan #1
- Diet & exercise plan #2

Gotta love scientists...

For the second time in less than a week, I helped with a move. This time the move was so far out, I discovered that the middle of nowhere actually has a suburb. It's okay though. It's something that I can do to help someone who needs it and it costs time but little or no money.

When I did finally get home, got to see the Heroes semi-finale. I really like the show and am left really wanting for more episodes. This season was a bit slow but I fully expect it to rock when it comes back. Hope the writer's strike ends soon. This half-season stuff sucks.

This Sunday, and actually, most Sundays.

2AM - Help someone fold papers for delivery
5AM - Nap
8AM - Back up, head to church
12PM - Lunch
2PM - Merchandising assignment (like Mystery Shopping)
5PM - Working
6PM - Back to Church
8PM - Trying to fix home PC

When is the weekend again?

Upsized to C-9 light bulbs this year to go around the roofline and the path to our mailbox. Because I'm not one for heights, my wife did the highest ones leaning over the edge of the roof. She discovered she's not that big into heights anymore either. Got the roof lgihts and our two inflatables put up. Have some more left to do, but snapped this picture in the dark.