Wow, August flew by on us and now we are smack in the middle of September. Football is already on week three for college and two for the NFL. The weather is starting to get a little cooler and we haven’t updated you on any of this! We’re horrible! So where have we been and what have we been up to? Well for starters Heather has applied, been accepted and is now in the 4th week of Law School at the University of Tulsa. Yea.. you read that right in the past month all of that has happened.
The transition has been a little rough because she is still working full time and going to school part time which makes her days really long and mine really boring at home alone. She seems to be handling it pretty well and enjoying it on most days. I’m really proud of her for making the decision to go back to school and I think she’s going to make a great attorney. How can she go wrong… lots of talking and arguing, yeah she’ll do just fine.
I’m pretty bummed out that Summer has all but ended and we’re moving into Fall and then the dreaded Winter! Winter is so miserable it’s so cold and yuck and you’re stuck inside how boring.
The girls are doing great for those of you who are interested. Bella is about the size of a small horse weighing in at about 65 lbs. and Snickers is hitting about 35 lbs. They’re both awesome dogs and we’re really glad we ended up with the both of them even if one of them did pick us *cough* *cough* Snickers *cough*.
We did manage to make it down to Dallas to catch the Rangers vs. Red Sox game. The Rangers DESTROYED them and then had the favor returned the following day. I’ll post up some of those photos tonight or tomorrow and give you the details on that trip. *Edit: View the Rangers Road Trip Pictures Here
Sorry this post has been so random… just wanted to catch you up on some of the stuff we’ve been doing. We hope everybody is doing well.
- Paul & Heather
My buddy Dustin hits me up a few weeks ago and tells me about a TKE Alumni conference being held in Indianapolis the first weekend in August. With very little prodding he convinces me to go with him. The original itinerary is for me to leave Tulsa on Friday morning around 7:10am and be in Indy at approximately 1pm with a connection in Minneapolis. I arrive at the the airport and find out that my flight has been delayed which in turn is going to make me miss my Minneapolis connection, GREAT! So they shuffle me around and put me on a different airline heading to Houston at 9am and getting me to Indy around 4:30pm, SUPER! I love spending my entire day in airports.
The conference is from Friday through Sunday, a nice short weekend to network with other Tekes. The actual conference was great with a lot of good material for me to take back and hopefully use to help our chapter move towards a Top Teke chapter. So the conference was great I had a good time, learned a lot and all that jazz.
My departure is Sunday morning at 7:45am and no I didn’t book these flights! Who in their right mind would want to fly that early? I wake up Sunday morning around 6 o’clock to get packed and ready to leave. The hotel we were at was within walking distance of the airport so I take off on my morning walk to catch my flight. As I’m walking through the airport I see all of two people until I take the escalator to the second floor where I’m greeted with a line of about 100 people all waiting for the same airline I’m flying. There are all of 2 or 3 people at every other ticket counter with my counter packed to the gills.
I patiently wait for my turn to check-in only to be told that I can’t check-in. I was expecting this because for some reason I’m on a TSA watch list. I’ve had to go through extra security each time I’ve flown this summer which has been a total pain in the butt. This time however it’s not a you can’t check-in for extra security it’s a you can’t check-in because you have to check-in 30 mins before the flight departs, I was checking in with about 25 mins until departure. I’ve never heard of this and for this reason I will never fly Northwest again. They are zero help from this point on. Flat out YOU’RE NOT GETTING ON THIS FLIGHT. Gee thanks lady, do I have any other options? She offers to put me on standby which departs at noon but it doesn’t look good that I’ll make that flight either. I then pick up the phone and call Northwest’s reservation number. They offer to put me on a 5pm flight for an additional fee of $400 bucks, yeah right! She then says I can get on a flight the next morning for about $125. Which $125 plus another night in a hotel and having to call into work doesn’t sound like a great option either.
I do some quick thinking, which at 8am isn’t very quick. I call Heather and have her research a one-way rental car to Tulsa. This option is going to cost me about $145 plus gas. After weighing my options I rent the car and head home. I was dead tired so I stop for a quick hour nap somewhere outside of Indy in a lovely Mickey D’s parking lot. After the nap I’m ready to head out again…. 10 hours later I arrive at Tulsa International Airport, yea back to the airport where I was supposed to have arrived at 11am that morning. I drop off the rental car, catch a ride to the parking garage to get into my car and drive home.
This has to be the worst experience I’ve ever had traveling. I’m currently working on getting myself removed from the TSA watch list and I’ll probably do a write up of that process to hopefully help some other poor soul like me. On a side note… I did get to see the St. Louis Arch and the new Cardinals stadium.
So here it is, my first blog. Apparently I am in high demand or something. Anyway, Paul and I made a deal, if we went to see Phantom of the Opera, I would blog about it. I got to see Phantom, and now Paul gets his blog 
I am slowly trying to introduce a little culture into our (read: Paul’s) life. We went to see The Nutcracker last December, which Paul seemed to enjoy quite a bit and we saw Cirque de Soleil “O” in April in Las Vegas. When I saw that Phantom was coming to the PAC this July, I knew we HAD to see that! Ballet is great and all, but with a musical you get singing, dancing AND talking. Way easier to follow for a boy! Usually I like to sit in the mezzanine but for this I was willing to sit up in the balcony to help save a little money. We packed up the binoculars and headed off for a short night on the town. There is just something about going to see a musical or ballet that makes me want to get all dressed up and make a night of it. Apparently I am one of the only ones. The things people wear out of their house to a public venue leave me dumbfounded. Some of these people were dressed like it was Senior Prom 1996 while others looked like they had just rolled out of bed! Seriously people, would it hurt you to have a little class?
Fortunately, Paul and I were seated next to some older people who understood what it means to attend a musical. They were dressed appropriately, quiet during the show and did not try to make small talk. The show was great, the singing was fabulous and the story was easy to follow along. Every time the Phantom’s theme music played, I would get chills, it was THAT good! Paul seemed to be having a good time, he stayed awake for the whole show anyway. And he was always looking through the binoculars, trying to get a better view of the show. I take that as a sign that he had a good time and would be open to maybe going to see “Wicked” next summer?
So now you have read my first blog and maybe now you understand why I don’t typically blog…I am not so great at it…but I will see what everyone thinks of this and maybe I will do another one…guess you will just have to keep checking back to find out!
Heather and I spent last weekend at lake Tenkiller with my Dad and Susan. We weren’t camping unfortunately so we ended up making two trips from BA down to Tahlequah but it was well worth it. Saturday was overcast and a little bit chilly on the lake which is the main reason we made a return visit on Sunday and Sunday is the main reason for this blog so I’ll get to the funny part.
A little back story to set everything up. Most lakes allow you to make reservations for camping spots in advance. We had made reservations on Ft. Gibson lake for the 4th of July, but with all of the rain we’ve had Ft. Gibson has been a little less desirable than other surrounding lakes. So the opinion was we’d like to camp at Tenkiller if we were able to find one of the few spots that are first come first serve. Sunday’s mission was simple find one of those spots at one of the many campsites around the lake.
As Heather and I are arriving at the lake we pass David and Susan who are just leaving on a reconnaissance mission by car to stake our claim. We pull up to the current campsite and start relaxing for the day. A short while later we get a phone call from Susan telling us they just found a great spot but they’re in a standoff with some other people for the spot. The apparent campsite rule is you can’t pay for a spot until you have a tent setup. So Susan instructs us to grab a tent throw it in the boat and get it to the new spot ASAP. She also tells us that the people they are in a standoff with have people bringing a tent by boat as well. My Dad, Heather and I look like we’re doing some crazy Chinese fire drill by securing everything at the campsite and running down to the boat holding ice chests, towels, a wiener dog and a tent. We load the boat in record time, pull anchor and prepare for hyperdrive. We had a general idea of where the new campsite was from the water but weren’t 100% sure as we pull up to one site we ask some swimmers where we are and they tell us “Cookson” which is the wrong spot. Back to hyperdrive and on to the next site which was luckily the right site as we see David coming out to meet us and get the tent.
I don’t have any pictures of any of this because we were so rushed getting everything finished up. The good news is that we secured a great spot for the 4th of July and will be headed out there sometime this weekend. We hope everybody has a great holiday weekend and be safe!
Heather and I survived another year at Frosty Keg Float and would probably have to mark this one down as the worst one we’ve ever attended. It was a pretty bum deal to spend the last 5 months planning and working to make sure this years event went smooth and then have it ruined in a matter of minutes by some bored officer. We headed down to Tahlequah on Friday afternoon to start setting up the registration booth, put some finishing touches on the stage and to get our campsite setup. We then spent most of Friday getting about half of the 350 people who attended registered for Saturday’s float trip. Around eight that evening we shut down registration cooked up some burgers and then sat down to listen to Standing Ape Count and The Bedouin Duet play for the evening.
Saturday was the big day and the morning started early with people banging on the RV door wanting us to wake up so they could get registered for the trip. Sooo it was back to work for both of us. We started loading up buses at about 11am sending them on their way to enjoy the FKF Experience and after about 3 hours we finally got to board the final bus of the day. When we got to the landing we were greeted by about 100 very angry FKFers who were waiting on rafts that weren’t available. As soon as I stepped off the bus the mob started demanding answers and I start to scramble trying to find out where rafts are and why they weren’t at the landing. After about an hour of dealing with this we finally get to push off and enjoy our float trip, or so we thought.
There were four rafts in the final group of FKF and we hit the water around 3:45pm which by floating standards is a pretty late start. We did have the river working for us though since it was flowing pretty fast due to the recent rain. After we hit a couple of stops we come around the bend to a beach full of Oklahoma Scenic River Commission Officers who are instructing us to pull to the side of the river. I have no problem with OSRC officers and I understand they are just out their doing their job. I just so happen to get pulled over by the one officer who wanted to prove a point that day. After answering a few of her questions and asking a couple of my own all in a calm voice and very level headed this officer decides I’ve had enough fun for Saturday and I should spend the evening holding down a concrete bench at Cherokee County Detention Center (CCDC). She was such a super nice lady and gave me a nice trifecta of tickets including Public Intoxication, Consuming Liquor in Public and a Violation of Posted OSRC Rules. I’ve floated the Illinois River probably 100 times and have never had any issues with the troopers patrolling it until that moment. The more questions I seemed to ask the more ink she seemed to put in her ticket book. I soon realized it was pointless to talk to her and observed my right to remain silent. She then gave me a ride to my new room at the CCDC where I would get to spend the next 8 hours with 8 of my not so close friends.
Eight years we’ve had this float trip and the first year we have any issues. I suppose I can look at it like that but where is the fun in that, right? I’m actually much more pissed off about this situation than I am letting on in this blog, but since the internet is the information superhighway I’d rather not let my frustrations get out and ruin any chance I have at fighting the tickets. I’ll keep everybody posted on the outcome of this little fiasco.
Anywho… we’re hoping for a much less eventful weekend coming up and the short week next week for the 4th of July. We hope everybody’s having a great summer!
Heather & Her Criminal Husband
We did manage to make it down to Dallas to catch the Rangers vs. Red Sox game. The Rangers DESTROYED them and then had the favor returned the following day. I’ll post up some of those photos tonight or tomorrow and give you the details on that trip. *Edit: View the Rangers Road Trip Pictures Here
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