All Posts Tagged With: "Oklahoma"

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The Oklahoma Tax Commission has just unveiled the new Oklahoma license plate that will begin to be distributed during 2009 when Oklahoma car owners renew or order new license plates for their vehicles.

I haven’t decided yet if I like it or not… but then again, I really don’t have much of a choice, do I?

UN—[CENSORED]—BELIEVABLE!

For the second time this week (that I know about), Oklahoma is again in the spotlight. Earlier this week, it was about a church giving a way an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle at a youth conference. Now, it is one of our own county commissioner’s insane campaign materials garnering attention from those outside the state… again …

Oklahoma County, Oklahoma Commissioner Brent Rinehart is facing a tough reelection campaign.  He’s been accused of abusing his office for personal gain, and will go on trial in the fall on felony campaign finance charges.  But apparently, this is all a conspiracy of homosexuals, liberal do gooders, and good ol’ boys to force Rinehart out of office.  Rinehart lays out his case in a comic book he’s sending out to voters, which—you may be surprised to learn—he wrote and illustrated himself.

Are you ready for this?

For those outside our community who may not have all the background, Jim Roth who is mentioned in the cartoon was one of Rinehart’s fellow county commissioners before he was appointed to the state corporation commission, and he is openly gay. Rinehart, being the close-minded bigot that he is, made this an issue during the time they served together and he is certainly making it a major issue now. Meanwhile, as he points out all the faults of others, he faces felony charges for illegal campaign contribution schemes.

“Let him who is without sign cast the first stone.” Rinehart should definitely drop all those rocks he’s been hurling. You can read more about it here and here.

Unfortunately for the rest of us who call Oklahoma home, there are a sufficient number of idiots, bigots and hatemongers around to make this a regular feature. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Oklahoma, it really is a great place to live and be proud of; we just have more than our fair share of morons crapping on our parade with their idiocy, lunacy and tomfoolery.

OETA’s Oklahoma Horizon television show featured an Oklahoma lawmaker who “has a tourism-generating dream of turning the Oklahoma oil boom into an iconic landmark rivaling the Eiffel Tower.”

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I think it’s a pretty interesting idea. It would certainly be a distinctive landmark and it very well could prove to be a tourist attraction. But I wonder how that thing would handle an Oklahoma severe storm, including one of the state’s other trademarks — tornadoes!

What do you think about the idea?

It never ceases to truly amaze (and utterly annoy) me.

I’m commuting to or from work, or I’m driving somewhere around town, and I see someone roll down their window and discard a piece of trash. Sometimes it’s a plastic wrapper. Sometimes it’s a piece of paper or a fast food wrapper. Often it’s a used cigarette. Most don’t even try to hide it; it’s as if there’s nothing wrong with littering.

How would those people feel if I just came over to their house and dumped my trash in their front yard?

Unfortunately, since we live on a corner lot, we see that as well. Other people’s trash litter our lawn — on a daily basis. Plastic pop bottles, empty beer bottles and beer cans, empty beer cases, empty cigarette packages, fast food sacks and wrappers, and assorted other trash is thrown (or blown by the wind) into our yard on a constant basis.

It completely boggles my mind that people are so lazy, so careless and so [CENSORED] rude. It demonstrates just how self-centered so many in our society have become. They simply don’t care enough to care at all about anyone but themselves.

If you want to live in your own filth, fine. But don’t share your filth with those who certainly don’t invite it. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If you don’t want people dumping their trash into your front lawn — or, better yet, your living room — then don’t dump your trash on the land we all share (and especially on MY yard). It really isn’t that hard to throw your trash into a trash can.

Grow up and clean up after yourself!

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[And that concludes today's rant/soapbox/public service announcement.]

My blog’s soulmate is the blog of my soulmate. Karla’s been blogging for awhile on Blogger with her blog named Rose Cottage Lane. Because of some of Blogger’s limitations, I offered to move her to a WordPress-based blog hosted on my own web server. She agreed and I worked on her new blog over the weekend.

Because we are not only married soulmates, but our very best friends, I thought it would be fun for her blog to look similar to mine, but with her own brand. She liked my blog title, so we worked on coming up with something similar for her. After several different options were considered, Karla settled on “Loving Life in Oklahoma.” It seemed like a perfect complement to my blog and a genuine reflection on her state of mind.

So, without further ado, I am honored (and very proud) to introduce this blog’s soulmate and companion:

It’s been a very busy holiday weekend weather-wise. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen so much tornadic weather hit the state in such a concentrated period of time.

Yesterday, western Oklahoma got hit pretty hard with severe storms, including high winds, large hail, torrential rains and continual threats of tornadoes. That storm complex made it to our area about 2 this morning. Fortunately most of the rotation had died down, but the wind was still pretty fierce.

Today, we’re looking at the possibility for more severe weather as a cold front moves through the state. Like BritGal Sarah, I’m starting to get worn down by all the watches and warnings. I pretty sure most of Oklahoma (and many plains states) are ready for some peace and quiet for a few days (and weeks).

Continued

Last Saturday, our family spent some time visiting Oklahoma History Center. It’s the first time we’ve been since they opened the 215,000 square-foot facility across from the Capital building a few years ago. The center’s materials boast the museum’s “Smithsonian-quality exhibits” with “2,000 artifacts reflecting Oklahoma’s inspiring and adventurous past.” I’m not sure that I would compare it to the Smithsonian, but it was interesting and educational.

There are four main galleries inside the museum — one dedicated to Native American history and the other three exploring Oklahoma’s rich and diverse history and culture. There is also an exhibit about Oklahoma’s contribution to space exploration, including the Gemini 6 Capsule display. The impressive great hall has replica of the famous “Winnie Mae” airplane flown by aviation pioneer and Oklahoma native Wiley Post. There is a new exhibit that will open this week — “Field, Forest & Stream: The History of Oklahomans and the Outdoors.”

There are several exhibits outside the museum, but it was a little chilly on Saturday so we didn’t explore those, except for the sculpture at the entrance of the museum. Continued

“What?!?” you ask. “A tornado warning and you went back to sleep?”

Indeed I did. I heard the weather radio go off (for the nth hundredth time of the night) announcing a tornado warning for our area. I suppose the sheer volume of alerts over the previous five hours had desensitized me to the announcements. I heard it, quickly dismissed it and went back to sleep — until my youngest daughter came into our room and told me, with a good deal of distress, that the tornado sirens were going off.

I quickly grabbed the TV remote and switched on the TV to find live weather coverage on all three of our major local news channels. Indeed the storm was approaching our city, but I waited to see exactly where it was going before I called for any kind of evacuation of our household, which is no minor ordeal with three canines. As a seasoned Oklahoman, I have seen enough weather coverage to know what to look for on the radar and determine just how close it’ll get. We no longer head for the tornado shelter just because the sirens go off and just because our county — or even city — is under a tornado warning. We — as in I — wait until it appears that we’re in its direct path. Continued

After a lovely, Spring-like weekend (or at least most of it), Monday is starting out cold, damp, dreary and drizzly. We’re still waiting for the snow — it’s supposed to begin in a few hours and they are forecasting 3 inches or so.

As I mentioned yesterday, it’s been another extreme weather change. Yesterday it was in the upper 70s. Today, the high will be less than half of that. There were tornado warnings around the state throughout the afternoon and evening, with a couple of touchdowns in western Oklahoma, broadcasted live on the two local channels with helicopters Continued