www.tulok.net : Earlier Entries
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Entry 68 July 6, 2003 12:00 am |
Finishing a nice four-day weekend (work four 10-hour days, so it's usually a three-day weekend) due to the holiday. Had a nice time on the 4th, participated in the annual department shindig (fifth 4th they've had one since I've been there, third one I've been to: had to work the other two times). Got more exercise that night in their pool than I've gotten in a long time. Boy, I really need to win the lottery so I can get a pool of my own.
Took it easy the rest of the weekend, doing some updates on my road pages. Created new pages for 21 state highways, and made updates on five others. Sounds like a lot, until you realize I still have 37 more state highway pages to do. And that doesn't count the US highway, interstate, turnpike and business route pages, much less the state highways I've still to do from other states.
Some may think I'm going way too fast. After all, I've already far surpassed the number of highways that Eric over at OKRoads has, and he started the state long before I did. That may be true, but you have to consider that Eric also takes road trips all over the country. Just last week he returned from Kansas City.
Via Utah!
Wow! I wish I could take trips like that. Everything I've done so far has been on single-day outings, coming back home when it gets too dark to take any more pictures. But not only do I have a full-time job with only two vacation weeks, I've also got a mortgage and numerous other bills, plus four cats that I love so much I find it hard to stay away from them very long.
Was planning to take a road trip to southern California to see some family later this year, but the person I was going out there with won't be able to afford half of the expenses, I can't afford both of us, and there's no way I'd try to do that long a trip solo. Maybe in a few years. Enjoy and cherish these trips while you can, Eric, they won't last forever.
Meantime, back to my "why-I'm-doing-the-state-so-fast" explanation: when I started doing this I had a goal in mind: to do all the state highways within a period of one-year. So, I have until November, then I'll be finished with the state, and will only have to worry about updates. Like all these little spur routes the state keeps decommissioning. So far, I've found five state highways that are still listed on the brand-new, Official 2003-2004 Oklahoma State Map, that no longer exist, three others that are named differently than the map, two that don't go nearly as far as the map suggests, and one highway that's apparently so new, it hasn't had a chance to even get on the map yet (never mind that it's a completely redundant route).
I am planning my first roadtrip overnighter next month, so I can take care of the panhandle area. Hopefully I'll be through with the state by Labor Day, vastly exceeding my initial goal. Then I can start on Kansas and Missouri.
Don't know if I even want to try Arkansas, because in an attempt to be cheap, that state has made highway-tracking too difficult. They prioritize their highways by type and number, and wherever they can get away with it, they don't duplex.
For instance, if an interstate is duplexed with a US highway, the US highway goes totally unsigned, you have no idea where it is. All of a sudden it disappears, a few miles down the road it's miraculously back (my example here is I-540 & US-71 in the Fayetteville area). Likewise, a US highway will wipe out any visible existance of a state highway (US-278 & most of AR-4). In addition, lower-numbered highways will make higher-numbered highways of the same type seem to vanish (e.g., I-40/540, AR-7/333). Exceptions seem to exist in areas where the duplexing might be for a mile or less, but those are few and far between.
All of which makes even attempting an Arkansas Terminus Guide extremely difficult. May still try it, though, if for no other reason than nobody else has done one yet.
The 254th Sign of the Apocalypse: Banking on the success of shows like Trading Spaces and While You Were Out, cable channel TLC has announced a new series this fall called Clean Sweep, another DIY series featuring regular everyday people.
Cleaning out their closets!
Has it really come to this? Have we gotten so lazy that, instead of cleaning out our own closets, we're gonna plop down in front of the TV and watch other people doing theirs instead?!
Yeah, guess so. I'll probably wind up watching it myself. 3:23am
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Entry 69 July 19, 2003 12:00 am |
Friend from La-La Land came in for a visit, had to go to the Will Rogers World Airport in OKC to pick her up, that's the closest flight she could get. Easiest and closest airport parking space I've ever been able to find. Although I'm still a little leery about any city whose two major airports (Wiley Post the other) were named after people who died in a plane crash.
I took my friend on a quick tour of Tulsa to see what's changed since she moved away five years ago. Lotsa changes, especially along 71st Street. But there were two things that stood out the most in her mind:
One: Gas was $1.37 everywhere! And it wasn't, as you might think, the $1.37 that surprised her (BTW, it's currently around $1.90 out there). It was the everywhere part.
Out in California (and I've seen this in Texas as well), it's not unusual to see gas stations on opposite corners of the same intersection have the prices as much as twenty cents per gallon different from each other. Whilst here, we've got so many Quik Trips in town, they essentially control the price for the entire city. Not a true monopoly, but the end result is essentially the same. We also have some of the cheapest gas in the nation as a result.
Two: Too many Wal-Marts!! This one I'll grant her. At the current rate of exponential growth by the year 2025 every store in town will be a Wal-Mart.
She also gave me a few tidbits about Wal-Marts out in her area. Officials in Santa Barbara flatly refuse to let a Wal-Mart open inside their city limits, since the hidden purpose of these stores is to drive the mom-and-pop shops out of business, the very shops that SB's economy thrives on. Also, The Wal-Marts in the L.A. area are effectively reserved for the poorest of the poor. Even the middle-class avoids them.
Maybe they know something we don't?
The 255th Sign Of The Apocalypse: At the bottom of this article about various cutesy things you can get for your pet is mention of Neuticles. Cosmetic surgery for your neutered dog.
So that he no longer looks neutered.
The 256th
Sign Of The Apocalypse: A
little further up in the same article
was a section about Pet Strollers (accompanying picture at right) . Now
you
can take your pet to the mall to see how the rest of the world lives,
hopefully
realizing how good he has it at home and will never want to leave
again. The 257th Sign Of The Apocalypse: As soon as they show up in Tulsa, I'll probably get one.
And in case you were wondering, I started this numbering system a few years ago.
The 1st Sign Of The Apocalypse: Barney, the Movie
After watching the national news over the past few years, I can't help but think that if extraterrestrials ever intercept our broadcasts, they will probably come to the conclusion that Chandra Levy and Lacy Petersen were the most important people this country has ever had, the only way we can redecorate a room in our house is to have somebody else come in and do it, and that we all know the government is run by complete idiots that we wouldn't even trust our own children with, but then come Election Day we either rehire them or replace them with even bigger idiots (OK, so they got that one right).
Then the aliens will land and demand to see our leaders.
Bill O'Reilly and Hillary Clinton. 5:42am
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Entry 70 July 29, 2003 12:00 am |
Harley Giles
c1985 - 2003
The picture at
right was taken from Sunday's paper, part of a back-to-school ad.Maybe it's because I don't have kids of my own, or maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy who's not "with it", but it seems to me that any parent who would be willing to have their kids go to public school dressed as a French hooker needs to have those kids taken away from them!
For those of you who were wondering, Bob Hope lived 100 years and 61 days. George Burns lived 100 years and 49 days. So Bob Hope officially lived twelve days longer than George Burns did.
I say officially because I seriously doubt that Burns actually reached the century mark. After about the 99-year-and-six-month period, the only people allowed to see Burns were his doctor and immediate family members. Although it's just a theory, and one I'll never be able to prove, I think Burns actually died a month or so before he turned 100, and the aforementioned only visitors conspired to make it seem he were still alive, since pretty much everybody assumed he'd be able to reach the 100-year mark
If this happened, I fully understand the reasons behind it, and don't blame the family members one bit. It the end it doesn't really matter. Both men lived long, happy and successful lives.
In the first of what will probably be many Spike Lee/Spike TV copycat cases, a New Jersey children's musician who goes by the stage name Mr. Ray is suing Disney Studios because the movie Finding Nemo features a manta ray who teaches children called Mr. Ray.
The floodgates have been opened, and there's no going back. Wonder if I can sue Ed McMahon for making it impossible for me to win top prize in one of those magazine sweepstakes, for fear that, even though we're not related, the sweepstakes companies would be afraid the general public would think the whole thing is fixed if another McMahon won.
Being faithful to your spouse is all well and good, but this is ridiculous.
VCR Alert: Saturday at 6pm on TLC, a rerun of the worst While You Were Out ending to date (probably not coincidentally, also the season finale).
Not only did the husband being surprised hate the redesigned deck, he hated the idea that anybody would dare change a thing in his house without his permission, and, unforgivably, berated his wife on national television. Never mind that she was trying to do something nice for him and even won him a $3000 blender-slash-margaurita maker, or that he got to go to an Arena Football training camp and even try out with the team. At one point, on camera, he even asked her if she had signed a waiver. I was one of those undoubetdly thousands of people who were hoping he wouldn't win the final prize, a $900 grill.
According to some people who know this couple and have chatted on the WYWO official message board, the guy's a jerk, always has been. I hope the wife just gets up one day, throws the $3000 blender-slash-margaurita maker under her arm, and walks out of his life forever. Guys like that don't deserve to be with loving women like her. Guys like that deserve to be single and totally friendless.
While going through the message boards again I found this story about the upcoming second season of the show, debuting August 22nd. Seems the show is gonna have a new host, as Teresa is basically just burned out from the season she did (can't say as I blame her: a single season shouldn't last longer than a calendar year; the first season of this weekly series lasted sixty episodes). New host is gonna be a guy this time. The carpenters are returning, as are two of the five designers, a third one hasn't decided yet. The two outdoor designers, including the one involved in the aforementioned fiasco, won't be returning.
A real shame: the two who are definitely returning are the two whose designs I generally liked the least. 5:13am
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