Saturday, March 27, 2010

Bikes are home!

We went to the bike shop first thing this morning, had the bikes fitted, and bought an inexpensive rack for the back of the pickup.

Brought the bikes home, but it's cold, and very windy, and threatening rain...so just a quick spin around the parking lot to test them out, and then, lock em up and get the errands finished....

My cold is mostly better, but now it has gone into my right ear, as often happens, and I am starting to feel that light headedness and vertigo that often portends potential weeks of vertigo.

I really hope that's not the case. I hate that more than I can express. It's been a long time since I've had it, and it's been SO nice to be free of it.

Sometimes it lasts a couple of months. Guh.

Nothing much else to report. Have a good weekend!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Random Updates

So, yeah, we DID get a blizzard on Saturday...it snowed like CRAZY later in the afternoon and into the night.

Fortunately, we were finished with our running around, and home for the evening, when it really started to get nasty.
We went out earlier than usual to get our errands done, and it wasn't too bad out while we were out. The roads and parking lots were mostly just slushy.

We stopped at the bike shop (which had NOT been open because of the blizzard, until just before we got there around 2).

Because we were bold enough to go bike shopping during a blizzard, and because we wanted to buy (tax refunds are trickling in), the guy was thrilled to see us, and gave us a pretty good multi-bike, shopping-during-a-blizzard, discount.

We pick the bikes up this weekend.

Dave's is taxi cab yellow, and more "retro" styled than mine.
Both of them are "one speed" old fashioned bikes. Mine has a hand brake, and an all aluminum frame, and it's purple and black. Dave's has coaster brakes only, I think...I don't remember his as well as I remember mine. His is all aluminum, too.

I forgot to check to see if they have quick release axels on the front wheels. It's a security consideration.

We also got a super duper lock and covers, since we'll have to park the bikes on our ground floor apartment's porch all season--another reason to find out about quick release axels....if you take the front wheel off, the bike is a LOT less attractive to potential thieves.

Fortunately, Dave's parents will let us store the bikes in their garage in the winter.

It's a little odd that I went from a super fancy multi speed mountain/street cross bike to something like this...but my style of biking will be different around here, since there's no place to bike except a paved riverside path.

It will be very good exercise, and I figure my days of being a somewhat serious cyclist are probably over anyway.

Where was I? Oh yeah, blizzard.

All in all, we got about 6 inches, just like they predicted, with serious drifting from the high winds.
On Sunday, Dave went outside and used the shovel we bought last month. He VERY CAREFULLY cleared a path out to the cars, which were already clear because it was warming up outside.

Then the temperatures started to rise...and by the afternoon on Sunday, all of the snow was GONE. Dave could have saved the work!

But, it was his work out for the day, since we couldn't get to the gym (this apartment complex doesn't own plows, shovels, or snow blowers) until well after he'd already had his exercise.

On Monday, it was in the 60's again.

I hear that kind of weather roller coaster is normal for around here. Though getting that much snow at once is NOT normal, and that has happened more this winter than any other winter in recent memory, from what I've been told.

Anyway...remember when I told you I was in orientation last week? Behind closed doors for 2 days with strangers?

Well, one of them had an upper respiratory infection. She sat near me, and she also drove us to lunch both days.

I caught her bug, and have been sick since Sunday (which was why Dave was shoveling snow, and not ME!).

I have not missed work, but I have been miserable. I just took my temperature again a half hour or so ago, and the fever is back. It's been coming and going.

So Dave is at the gym tonight without me this evening. I had hoped to be well enough to go work out by today, but I am not.

It's in the upper 70's and sunny out, but the wind, which is MUCH more a factor than it EVER was back in Chicagoland, is WAY too strong to go take even a leisurely walk about the pond.

I have my 30 day review in the HR office tomorrow. Hope it goes well.

That's about it for now. Hope everyone's having a good week!

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Paula's Avgolemono (Grecian Lemon and Egg soup)

This soup is super easy to make, and was a really easy recipe to develop. Gotta love simple, peasant food!

I hope you enjoy it!


6 cups chicken broth
1 carrot, chopped coarsely
1 small onion, peeled and quartered
1 bay leaf
1 t dried oregano, crushed between your fingers to release the oils
1 t dried parsley, same
1 lb skinless, boneless chicken breast, diced
1 cup or more of cooked brown rice
1 egg, room temperature
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

In a large soup pan, gently simmer the carrot, onion, bay leaf, and crushed herbs in the chicken broth for about 30 minutes. Using a strainer spoon, lift out the onion, carrot and bay leaf and discard (i like to eat the carrot!!).

Add the diced chicken to the broth, and simmer until completely cooked.

Whisk the egg and lemon juice together in a bowl. SLOWLY drizzle one cup of the hot broth from the soup pot into the egg/lemon mixture, whisking constantly. This tempers the egg so that it doesn't "scramble" from the heat of the soup when you add it to the pot.

Add the tempered egg/lemon/hot broth mixture, and the cooked rice, back to the soup pot. Combine all ingredients completely, allow to warm, and serve immediately. Does not look as nice and creamy after it's been frozen, because the egg changes character, but left overs CAN be frozen.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

..jus' sayin'.....

Snowstorm spring day!

Today is my half year anniversary of being here....and it's 27 degrees and snowing on the vernal equinox!

They say we could get up to 6 inches. S-I-X. OKC is only able to handle small dustings of snow at a time.

This should be interesting...lets hope it doesn't "stick," as it is not sticking at this early hour.

It's also odd that, since they changed daylight saving time to start in March, when we drive to work at 7:30 am in March, it's dark out.

Not full dark, but the dark before the dawn kind of dark. Especially if it's cloudy. It's 7:45 am right now, and very dark and gloomy out.

OKC is far enough west in the central zone that it really does make a big difference. It's light out back home by now, but it gets darker earlier, even during the longest days, than it does here.

Had orientation at work this past week. 2 days of sitting in a conference room with people I will never likely see again on the job, watching training videos. 99% of which do not pertain to MY job in the billing office.

Yawn. It gave me a head ache on the first day, which I still have.

It was kind of fun, though. The facilitator made it as fun as possible, at least. He's a nice guy...did one of my interviews during the extensive screening process.

We are heading out early today to try to beat the big snowfall. Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Monday, March 8, 2010

I've noticed....

I arrived in Oklahoma City on Autumnal Equinox, 2009.

In a couple of weeks, Vernal Equinox 2010 will mark half a year since I moved away from everything and everyone I'd ever known, and came here....to redefine "home."

In those 6 months, I have noticed a LOT of things that are different about Oklahoma. Different from Illinois. Different from the "suburbia" I knew. Different from the north.

Most obvious are the things like it takes numerous trips to multiple agencies to get licensed to do everything from drive a car, to run a business ( I think I've ranted sufficiently about those issues in other blog posts!), and that people here talk funny.

They say stuff like "Do what?" instead of "pardon me?" Yeah. Do what. What IS THAT?

They swallow the "laho" in OKLAHOMA, and, instead, pronounce the name of their state (or city) "Okloma."

They call bags "sacks," and grocery store baggers "sackers," and pop "coke," and they listen to a LOT of country music, and sound all southern-like in their general speech patterns. They hang out at boot scootin' clubs, and ride bulls at bars, and party hard at places that are actually called "saloons."

There are drunk men falling down on street corners in the middle of the afternoon....I NEVER saw that, even in the big city of Chicago!

They say stuff like "It's fixin' ta rain," or "I got outta there right quick!"

You can actually see COW BOYS...actual cow boys....walking down the street. Wearing cowboy hats, boots, dusters, and spurs.

Sometimes, coming home from the nursing home, I'd see them riding along the side of the road, too.

No lie! I guess that's why the cowboy hall of fame is located here.

Those cowboys also eat at local restaurants, and shop at the same stores as me....wearing their cowboy hats everywhere...and for real!

Driving along, you can be going along a stretch of businesses, and there, right in the middle, is a big patch of land with cattle or horses on it, and a pump jack or two.

Pump jacks are all OVER the place.

Pump jacks are those things that I remember seeing in Looney Tune cartoons as a kid, representing "oil country..." Those giant things that look like the "drinking bird" novelty toys we had when we were kids.

Let's see...what else?

They don't wash their cars or trucks, here either.

Dave says that's because we really ARE "in the middle" of nowhere here, and thus, the cars and trucks that I see that are COVERED in red dirt must be vehicles belonging to people who live on farms, or along dirt roads. "You don't have to go very far to find that's how most folks live around here...."

Okay...say what you will, Dave...but it still strikes me as strange that someone who parks his or her filthy white sports car in the same urban apartment complex parking lot every day "MUST live out in the country" where the red dirt cakes up on the car so heavily that it falls off in chunks......
just sayin.'

Given that, I think it's a fact that they literally worship the red dirt here. Not that that's a bad thing...but I DO like to get my car washed from time to time....

Every other vehicle on the road here is a pick up truck. They make trailers out of the back ends of old pick up trucks, and pull those behind newer pick up trucks.

There are lots of classic cars, too....which are in great shape, because they don't use salt on the roads here in winter like they do back home.

Every block has it's pawn shop. At least, outside of the more affluent areas. Pawn shops RULE....there is one on the way to my chiropractor's office whose sign boasts "We buy broke gold!"

YEE HAW!

Businesses have "no firearms" symbols on their doors, right next to the "no smoking" symbols.

This is a "conceal/carry" state. People go to the grocery store armed. They're not allowed to carry their weapons into certain types of businesses, though, so those emblems are on the doors of such establishments, like the one where I work.

Yep.

Not only are there swarms of great tailed grackles (that I have previously mentioned are from outer space), but there are also robins in winter, and huge flocks of cedar wax wings!

I used to get excited back home when I would see a robin in March, or 2 or 3 cedar wax wings at a time....yesterday, there were about 40 wax wings in a flock that landed in the tree just down from where my car was parked.

Let's see...what else.... There are "neighborhoods" that appear in the middle of relatively nice areas that are so completely trashed out as to be worse than ANYTHING I ever saw in the slums around Chicagoland.

People LIVE like that! In tiny shacks, and I DO mean TINY, one bedroom homes, with broken windows, that have not been painted since the 50's, with mattresses, cinder blocks, gutted lawn mowers, rusted autos, broken swing sets, faded big wheels, old couches, tractors, and dogs on their front lawns.
They sit, toothless, on broken chairs on front stoops, chewing tobacco, and spitting on themselves.

It's BIZARRE how people live in some of these areas.

There are also parts of town that are simply not safe for a white woman alone to travel through. Period. I am not prejudiced, but it's a true, sad fact.

There are parts of town where broken down businesses, with over grown parking lots, and faded signs, go about business as usual.....though, driving by on a Sunday, you'd assume they had been out of business for decades.

On the other side of the coin, there are the uber affluent areas, where old money lives. Mansions, oil barons' estates, and huge, gated properties are featured in these parts of town.

Surrounding these neighborhoods, there are trendy restaurants and bistros, upscale florist shops, and other expected types of businesses....none of them appearing to be "out of business" when no one's there, like in the other parts of town.

Downtown OKC is something else entirely. You can easily approach downtown on the weekend, and face NO traffic, because it's a grave yard! There are NO restaurants, or shops, or boutiques, or theaters.....downtown is strictly business. It rolls up it's sidewalks at 5 pm, Monday through Friday, and has nothing going on at all on weekends.

Beautiful old buildings, and NOTHING GOING ON! IT's WEIRD!!

Bricktown, and Cowtown, however are a different story. These are areas of OKC that have been redeveloped to attract tourists, and locals, alike, to their restaurants, shops, and sights.

Thank GOODNESS for these areas of town, which give us options for "date night," and for the longed for visits from far away loved ones.

The disparity of one area to the next within the same city limit is probably, in part, brought about by the fact that Oklahoma City is HUGE in area. It's a gigantic metro area that could PROBABLY be broken up into several suburbs.

The stray animal population here is out of control, but the people seem to be used to it. There was a wild dog that attacked someone who worked at the nursing home while I was there. I'd seen him in the parking lot outside my office window. He was a pit bull.

Then, a week or so later, he was dead by the side of the main road near the nursing home. His body laid there for WEEKS before it was either picked up by the city, or carried off by coyotes.

Wild dogs roam everywhere.

Our apartment complex is overrun with wild cats. They piss all around my porch, because they've discovered my indoor cat, and they shit on the grass. Several of the residents here put out food and shelter for them, and the management does nothing to curtail it.

There seems to be a different attitude here about feral dogs and cats.

That's about all I can think of at the moment...I warned you that this was going to be a long post!

Maybe some of you will come down here and visit some time...and form your own impressions of this new home of mine, in the wild wild west, that's sort of the south.....


p.s. I forgot to mention the strip clubs.....strip clubs ABOUND....literally....there are tons of them. Where do they find enough financially desperate women who are willing to demean themselves?

Thursday, March 4, 2010

All's well

Never fear, faithful reader...I have not forsaken you.

I've just been working on formulating my next post. It's going to be kind of long, I think...so....prepare yourself!

All's well, here. New job is going okay, have a new "girlie" doctor and a chiropractor. Getting ready to get tax stuff done.

No real news.