Sand & Snow

We took a long weekend and went to Portland, Oregon to visit Molly and Brad, our daughter and son-in-law. They have an annual thing in their courtyard square called "Sand in the City." The city trucks in tons of beach sand and corporate teams spend all day Friday building a sand sculpture(s) which are then on display for the weekend.

(Right) A Hungry, Hungry Hippo

I've always been intrigued by this kind of thing, the roots of which were probably spurred by my experience with a snow sculpture contest in college. It ended up being a non-snowy weekend, but we had a friend with a truck, so we trucked in a few pickup loads of snow for our sculpture.

So, what did we choose? Around that time of my life, the big movies were Fiddler on the Roof, The Godfather, The Sting, The Graduate, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, etc. Movies you've all heard of. None of us felt really skilled at creating a statue of Paul Newman or Marlon Brando. So we chose a "B" movie, modeled after the poster for the movie "Frogs." (Tag line" "If you are sqeamish, stay home! Cold green skin against soft warm flesh!") Among my fraternity buddies, maybe one of us had actually seen the movie, and if they did, it undoubtedly was the second feature of a drive-in, and alcohol was probably involved. Anyway, let's face it, a giant frog is already pretty much in the shape of a mound of snow. But we did get the mouth sculpted pretty well, and I was in charge of getting a rubber glove mounted so the hand would stick out of the mouth at the proper angle, not wanting to compromise the artistic intentions of the director. I don't remember how the competition turned out. We were proud of our five foot high reptile and his cold green skin. (We spray painted him green) I was disappointed that our frog was thawing pretty bad by the next day, and the frog had obviously spit out the hand. I never got a picture of it. It was back in the day when there were no digital anythings. In spite of our promotion and homage, Frogs did not receive any Academy Award Nominations, in spite of having Ray Milland as it's headliner.

For you younger readers wondering who Ray Milland was, he was the winner of the Best Actor Academy Award in 1946 for "The Lost Weekend." His role was described as "The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four day drinking bout." After watching himself in "Frogs" I think Mr. Milland went on a five day drinking bout...after making sure his check cleared.

SAT Analogies

On the Conan O'Brien show in the past, one of his bits was to do SAT-type analogies. I often found them funny, and took some pictures on our Ozark trip that I thought would be funny in that setting:

#1 Regarding fund-raising events, with proceeds to go towards a medical research cause, the Greater Puget Sound area is to this:

As the Ozarks are to this:


Comparison #2 - The Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Italy

is to this artwork on it's walls:

As the Stateline Liquor store in the Ozarks is:
to this artwork on it's walls.

Just a little help for any of you boning up for the S.A.T. exams. Good Luck, Y'all

This Is Why They Call it Fastpitch

Ever since I was young, I was intrigued by fast pitch softball. My dad played some baseball in college and played on the church softball team. I didn't get a chance to play little league baseball, but when I turned 14 I would be eligible to play on the men's softball team. Armed with that knowledge, I worked on becoming a softball pitcher. I had a brick wall that I drew a strike zone on, and spent a lot of time pitching a rubber softball against that wall working on gaining control. I got to where I could consistently put the ball over the plate, but couldn't get up enough speed to keep the hitters from consistenly putting the ball in play.

With that I salute the University of Washington Huskies, winners of the NCAA Womens' Softball Championship for 2009. Their pitcher is Danielle Lawrie, a junior who was on the Canadian Olympic Team. They had a media day this week for TV writers and broadcasters, inviting them to get into the batter's box with Danielle. There was a great article by Seattle Times writer Jerry Brewer describing the event. Also, an entertaining video of ESPN's baseball writer Jim Caple. The video gives you a feel as to how fast and dominating Daniell is! The link is below.

Brewer reported "Only three people made contact in the hour or so that Lawrie threw with her bionic arm. Just one, ESPN.com scribe Jim Caple, hit a fair ball, and his dribbler to the right side would've been an easy play for a second baseman." He also describe what it's like to be in the batter's box vs. Danielle. I really enjoyed it, and can't imagine how anyone can get a hit!

The link to Jerry Brewer's column is: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/jerrybrewer/2009315756_brewer09.html

The link to Jim Caples video is:

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=4248716

Baseball Musing

In a recent email to my father, a big Cardinals fan who grew up following the "Gas House Gang" of the 1930's, I mentioned that Ichiro Suzuki of the Mariners was on a 27 game hitting streak, which broke the earlier team hitting streak...also set by Ichiro. I guess I jinxed Ichiro by writing about his hit streak. He was halfway to Joe Dimaggio, who set a 54-game hitting streak back in 1941, if memory serves me correctly. Dimaggio's record is considered one of the most unbreakable records in baseball. After last night, looking for his 28th straight game with a hit, he's now tied with half the league with a new hitting streak of zero. The game went into an extra inning, so he got an extra at-bat which he used to strike out to end the game. Oh well. The bad part of the game was that Minnesota won on a Little-League type error in the top of the 10th. With two outs and a runner on second, the left fielder had what should have been an inning-ending flyball clang off his mitt. Apparently, he's not making enough money to be able to catch, yet.

Speaking of Mariners, I was going through some old pictures and came across this one.

Amidst people with things to sell outside the ballpark, there are often people begging for money. You can give someone money thinking you're helping them get something to eat when in reality, they just take the money to buy alcohol or drugs - things they can't get for free at a food bank or homeless shelter. This guy I found amusing because he was total truth in advertising. It's kind of hard to tell from looking at the picture, but the guy is holding a fishing rod. Attac

hed to his line was a white styrofoam cup which is blocking my right forearm in the picture. That was his "hook,"hoping to catch some money. Like all true fisherman, he had a lure as well, which is the sign just over my should that says "FISHING FOR BEER." So here's a guy dedicated to telling the truth. He's not pretending to be hungry or homeless - he is promising to spend your money on beer. So it made for a fun picture...and the guy didn't get any money from me. It was his personal Beer Stimulus Plan, but at least, unlike the Federal Stimulus Plan, a person would really have a pretty good idea where the money was actually going to go! Unless of course the guy was actually going to use it to purchase a work of fine literature. Nah, I don't think so!

PS, as I'm writing this post, the Mariner game is on the television, and Ichiro already has two hits. If only...

Branson, Missouri Visit

On our two-day Ozark trip, we decided on short notice to go to Branson, Missouri and perhaps see a show. We'd never been before, and I still don't understand why this out of the way place caught on as an entertainment center. It might be that though it's remote, it's 150-200 from St. Louis, Kansas City, Little Rock, and Tulsa, among other larger cities.

We cut due east out of Tulsa to NW Arkansas, then cut up to SW Missouri and Branson. It was a very scenic drive off the freeway.

Shows start at 8:00 and we rolled in at about 6:50. We pulled into a "Welcome Center" that advertises discount tickets. We were rushed choosing something, and ended up going to the Hammer-Barber Theater. The show is Hamner - A Magician, and Jim Barber, a ventriloquist. They throw in a few dancer, add a little singing, and advertise it as a variety show.

Jim Barber is unique in that he has created a dummy that makes it appear that the dummy is holding him, and Jim is the ventriloquist dummy. I thought it was pretty clever. I saw him on Letterman a few years ago. He did a local commercial that is one minute long at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW4gbeeUsNQ

If you'd like to see his Letterman appearance, heres' the link for that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48N4g4DrWUQ

He was pretty funny.

We tried to find a local LDS church, but we didn't have Internet access and had a lousy out-of-scale tourist map of Branson, so we couldn't find the church. Since it was Sunday morning, and we wanted some kind of Sunday worship experience, we went to one of the 8-10 Sunday Morning Gospel programs offered for free at various Branson entertainment theaters. We ended up going to the Dick Clark Rock-N-Roll Theater which offered the "Grand Old Gospel Hour" as shown

on the billboard to the right. The woman holding her hands up was interpreting the music via American Sign Language.

They had three musicians, a drummer, bass player, and sax man, and five singers, one of which played the guitar, on played the keyboard, and the woman doing the signing. On each side of the stage was a video screen, on which they were showing the words, so I didn't really understand what the deal was with the ASL. Then, when one of the people would just speak, she didn't do anything. And she had a part in the program where they gave their pitch for donations, and she didn't sign that either. So I concluded that she wasn't actually an interpreter, but just like to memorize and perform the sign to the words of Gospel music. The pastor shown in the billboard is in real life a little heavier and his face is rounder, and he wore glasses. Reminded me of the Matt Foley character created by Chris Farley. He kind of looked like Chris Farley. He gave a good Christ-inspired message, and cited putting on the whole armor of god as explained in Ephesians Chapter 6. And not once did he have to admonish anyone to "close their yapper."

Branson is spread out, but has a two-lane main street which seems to be in a perpetual traffic jam. I tried to capture it in a picture. But envision the photo as being a video instead. Yup, that's how fast the traffic seemed to move. This was at 11:30. It was the same at 9:30 am, and at 7:00 when we drove through town. It's probably that way constantly, and twice as slow in the summer. Nothing says summer fun like 100 degrees, 98% humidity, and stationary traffic.

More posts about the Ozarks to follow.

Fun on the Road

We were in Northeast Oklahoma for Sonja's open house for her husband Jordan's side of the family. The day after the reception, we took a two day road trip through Northeast Oklahoma, Northwest Arkansas, and Southwest Missouri. We'd never been to this part of the country, and enjoy being off the freeway. I took a bunch of pictures of stuff that just looked fun or interesting.

Our first trip off the turnpike showed this sign leading to a Mennonite church. We decided to take a look. A later sign said that it was 1.5 miles. Two miles later we decided that we'd missed it, but on the way back we came across a few Mennonites complete with horse and buggy.

It's hard to tell from this picture taken in the car, but it was a one-horse buggy with a father and a couple of kids in it. (I heard that they don't like their photo taken, that's why I didn't try to take the picture out of the driver's window.) Being Mennonites, they probably hadn't seen the movie Field of Dreams. So I didn't have the opportunity to have this exchange: "Is this Eden?" "No, it's Oklahoma!"

I felt like I've been on this road before, but now I have proof that it exists!

Another interesting thing was learning about some of the wildlife...or in our case, "wild-death." On our two-lane road adventure we saw a lot of racoon and opossum roadkill, which was to be expected. What we didn't expect was to see armadillos! Lots of them. Here's a typical view of an Arkansas/Missouri backroad:

Wendy made the observation that armadillos looked reptilian with their scaly exterior, yet they are mammals, which by definition have hair/fur. As you can see, armadillos are hairy on their underbelly.

We were at a National Battleground and I asked the Ranger if he was a naturalist. He said he wasn't but would entertain my question anyway. I asked if armadillos have always been in these parts since I always pictured them to be in hot, dry, lands in Texas. He said that he was raised in Southern Missouri & was was taught by his dad that they didn't really live in Missouri, but periodically dead armadillos would be trucked in from Texas and scattered around the state on the roadsides.

I flipped our little roadkill over, and it's easy to see how a car could hit one in the darker part of the day - They're slow, low, and blend in with the color of the asphalt.

(Note - no armadillos were harmed in the creation of this blog post. - The harm had already taken place.)

I'll post more of our midwest adventure in future blogs.

From Finish to Start

Here is the Robert & Wendy Tegeder family with their newest addition: a son-in-law by the name of Jordan Hintze of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. (From l to r, Troy, Molly, Jordan, Sonja, Andy, Wendy, Robert)

Jordan and Sonja had been aquainted with each other for about two years and started dating about a year ago. The courtship began, and here's what kick-started it to where we are today:

On December 28th, 2008, Sonja had flown to the Tulsa Oklahoma Airpost after spending Christmas with us and was going to meet the Hintze family. The Hintze family met Sonja at the airport inside the terminal. Nearby were these five people also greeting someone at the airport. After the initial hugging and greeting it was time to head to the baggage claim area to get Sonja’s bags and then go to the Hintze’s home.

As they started walking, the guy in the red cap approached her with his camera and asked if she would take their picture. They were holding signs that said : “We missed you!” and “Welcome to Oklahoma, Sam!” and “Later Gator – Go OU – Boomer Sooner.” It was obviously they were there to greet a friend at the airport and had made signs for the occasion as part of their greeting. They told Sonja to count to three, obviously to make sure they would all be smiling at the same time.

The guy in the red cap handed Sonja the camera and they held up their signs for the picture. As Sonja looked through the viewfinder to take the picture, she started the count to three. As she did…

They flipped the signs over to display the following:

Looking through the viewfinder, Sonja saw them flip the signs and I think her brain was trying to process what she was seeing as this apparent good-Samaritan act of taking a picture for someone had converted to a marriage proposal! As she was processing the information, she lowered the camera, and there was Jordan on one knee holding an engagement ring. She giddily said “Yes!” The rest is history.

Here’s a picture of the newly engaged Sonja with her suitcase and flashing her brand new ring!