
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Welcome!
Sunday, November 25, 2007
T-minus 2 months
Lora is doing a little bit better. Not much, but a little bit. Some of her HG symptoms have been replaced by other "fun" pregnancy maladies.
Anyway, here is a pretty good segment that NBC News ran on HG this month:
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Target of my hatred, thy name is hyperemesis
Lora's case of hyperemesis gravidarum has improved markedly since July, but she is by no means well. She was feeling good enough to attempt a few half-days at school, but it turns out that it was not a good idea. She became so fatigued and stressed from this that she has had a bit of a relapse. The past week has been worse that the previous 2-3 weeks, with waves of nausea and dizziness, mixed in with good periods. She had been down to taking one dose of the zofran (powerful antiemesis aka anti-nausea med) per day but she is back to the maximum of 3 per day and today, we added back the phenergran gel today.
The work situation, her dwindling sick leave and so on has been adding stress, which is a known trigger of HG symptoms, so Lora's mother and I have been working hard to advocate on her behalf and keep her calm. She is incredibly sick of being sick and her spirits are not doing too great. But she is doing alright. This week we are going to work to get her placed on FMLA and activate her short-term disability.
The baby is doing very well, and Lora has been keeping me up to date with "her" movements and activities. Lora is convinced that it is a girl. We will know for sure next week when we go to her next ultrasound appointment. I will, of course, keep you all up to date with that.
Please keep Lora and I and the baby in your prayers.
Monday, July 02, 2007
There is someone we'd like you to meet...
On or about January 27, 2008, our world will be flipped upside down, in that good way.
This little video will introduce you to a friend we are looking forward to finally seeing. Welcome, little one, welcome!
Some of the more action-packed moments include the cursor measuring the little tyke to establish the probable birthdate (34 mm = Jan. 27, 2008) in the first minute. Then at 1:09 the cursor points out the beating heart (my favorite part, by the way). Then from 1:32 to 2:00 the little guy (or gal...I have already been accused of assuming our new Husker baby will be a boy, but a little Husker baby girl would be just as wonderful...ha ha) starts to kick and frolick and cha-cha.
It was an incredible day!
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Flooding Part Deux
Well, here we go again.Bring back the drought, that is what I say. The picture to the left was taken on the morning of Sunday July 1 looking south along HW 123 towards downtown Bartlesville.
Again, we are safe here at Casa del Whiteguy and Lora's great aunt's house seems to be ok at the moment. As of now, they are projecting a crest at 22 feet, which is 9 feet about flood stage.
The infamous 1986 Bartlesville flood topped out at 27.7 feet. The problem seems to be the fact that the reservoirs are full and they will need to be releasing for several days and the flooding will continue for several days.
Here is where you can go for the best info:
KOTV 6 in Tulsa
KTUL 8 in Tulsa
Bartlesville Radio Group (streaming radio) - good pics, highly recommended.
Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise
Caney River Levels and Hydrology Forecast at Bartlesville
As bad as it will be here, it is nothing compared to what is happening in Coffeyville, KS. The levees have broken there along the Verdigris River and has inundated much of the city. A major refinery has flooded there and is leaking oil and diesel. What fun.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Dewey/Bartlesville Flooding

After living under drought conditions for the last several years, Green Country, as our little corner of Oklahoma is known, is back to living up to its name. And then some.
Last night, a quasi-stationary boundary about 30 miles north of us was the focus for about 12 hours worth of seriously heavy rain. Radar estimates that about 6 to 8 to nearly 10 inches of rain fell along the OK-KS border. In North Bartlesville, where we live, we got perhaps 2 inches. In Barnsdall, 20 miles southwest of Bartlesville, only an inch fell.
But the upper reaches of the Caney River, which flows right through Bartlesville, as well as the Coon Creek which runs between Bartlesville and Dewey, got slammed.
KOTV and KTUL from Tulsa are both covering it quite well. KOTV has some video of a house that caught fire. I found it on Google Earth and it is about 1.75 miles almost due north of our house. No worries for us as we are above the flood plain. US 75, a major highway between Bartlesville and Dewey is currently closed and underwater as is US 123.
The Caney River, in Bartlesville, is forecast to crest about 4.7 feet above flood stage sometime this evening. That will just about bury the Johnstone Park and the surrounding areas (adjacent to downtown) under a good bit of water. This flooding is still about 10 feet shy of what occurred in 1986 in Bartlesville, which I believe was termed a 500-year flood.
I should be able to get home, but I have to cross the Caney to get from one side of Bartlesville to my home on the other. More pictures will probably follow.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Subverion: Some Clever, Some Otherwise
Of course, some are more clever than others. The online Museum of Hoaxes has compiled their list of the top 10 college pranks of all time in 2002. At least one of those, the one about the McDonald's contest entries, should be familiar to those of you, who like me, enjoy horrible yet irresistible early 80's movies like Real Genius, which was loosely based upon the pranks that have really occurred at Cal Tech and MIT among other schools.
There have been others since, including a classic at Harvard pulled off by some Yale students disguised at the fictitious "Harvard Pep Squad", detailed here.
One of my favorites, however, is so wickedly cool that I doubt it will ever be topped.
In 1978, the Michigan Commissioner of Roads (a Univ. of Michigan alum) pulled off a gem. The state highway maps of any given state usually do not end at the border, but feature a small slice of the bordering states. The Commissioner, in an attempt to display his love for the Wolverines and of course, his hatred of the Ohio State Buckeyes, inserted two false towns inside of the Ohio portion of the map, shown below.
If you look to the east of Toledo, you will find the small town of goblu, Ohio, just south of Highway 2. Of course, Go Blue! is the cheer of the University of Michigan. Also, if you look to the north of Archibold towards the left hand side of the map, you will find the small, charming hamlet of beatosu, Ohio. The prank was discovered before the full-run printing of the maps occurred, but a handful of the prank maps were printed, and are collector's items.Of course, for each stroke of genius like that, there are perhaps 20 acts of subversion, not unlike the following.
So, I was doing some reading this morning when we heard the mail arrive. When Lora got it, it was mostly just catalogs, including a catalog from Collections, Etc. Mostly just junk and stuff, for people who collect a certain item or theme, be it lighthouses or chickens or whatever. So, as Lora was leafing through it, she gasped and brought it over to me to see what was so shocking. "This is so wrong!" she said, pointing out the picture of a pair of cactus planters. I was looking at the ethnicity and dress of the pair, which was the stereotypical native American dress.
Well, now then. If one were to concentrate on the plants, their shape and size, rather than the planters themselves, you can certainly see a...well, a slightly suggestive anatomical idea...
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
A Night (or two or three or...) To Remember
On my 10th birthday, I was blessed with parents who decided that "Sure, it would be a GREAT idea for us to let Brian choose 5 friends and have them for a pizza party and a sleep over!". We take them all home on Friday after school, they sleep for several hours, and then their parents come and pick them up Saturday morning. What could be more elementary?
It proved to be a fun weekend as Mickey Tracy, Ryan Petersen, Scott Phillips, Jac Cantrell and Jeremy Bill joined me and my family in a trip to Pizza Hut in Minden after school on that particular Friday March 27, 1987. It was there that things first went wrong. Unbeknownst to me, some of my friends (who I will not name) decided to try their hand at a little home-engineered projectile physics experiment involving straws, their straw wrappers and saliva. After several direct hits and much tasty pizza, we headed outside for a quick snowball fight.
I don't quite remember what that evening consisted of, other than cake and soda and presents. Actually, it was ONE present that I recall. It was my own "Ralphie Parker" moment only slightly less "shoot-your-eye-out" potential. I got a really neat motorized, far-too-real-looking water gun modelled after an AR-15 Assault Rifle. A gift after a ten-year-old's own heart. It would play a central role.
The night got off to a nearly-vertical takeoff when my brother Keith, who was an assistant manager at the aforementioned Pizza Hut got home and his face was the same shade of red that you see in Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, NE on a Nebraska game day. Apparently, a regional muckety-muck showed up at Pizza Hut for a surprise health inspection sometime after we boy-heathens had gone. Needless to say, finding spit balls on the windows did not exactly earn them a gold star for the day.
He lit into us with all of the fury that an assistant manager can muster.
Well, finally, the 6 sugared-up young boys were bedded down in the living room to tell jokes and generally be gross.
When we awoke, the world was a changed place.
From the National Climatic Data Center:
1987 - The second blizzard in less than a week hit eastern Colorado and western Kansas. Snowfall totals ranged up to 24 inches at San Isabel CO. Winds gusted to 50 mph at Goodland KS. The high winds piled snow into massive drifts, closing roads for days and killing thousands of cattle. Snow drifts thirty feet high were reported in northwest Kansas. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
I don't recall exactly how much snow we got, but suffice it to say that the parents were not going to pull up to the curb during the late morning to pick up their respective children. So, you have 6 ten-year-old boys cooped up in a house with a very angry Pizza Hut manager, a 13 year old sister (and we all know how much 13-year-old sisters just LOVE ten-year-old boys, not to mention six of them), two parents, and one overwhelmed dog.
I don't exactly remember all of the debauchery that we concocted, or maybe I have blocked it out. I just remember that Ruth (the 13 year old sister) was a common target, and was obviously not pleased with her station. Another sister, Karen, had wisely foreseen the potential for disaster that 6 boys in one house could present and had retreated to a friends house. Pepper, our lovable mutt, however, had no easy escape. And she presented an easy and tempting target to the birthday boy. It gives me no pleasure to say it today, because I truly feel bad about that weekend, but shooting a stream of water and that poor aggravated dog felt great.
My parents, of course, were eaten out of house and home. Young boys are commonly known by their scientific classification, Bottomlessis Pittis Eating Machineis, and we were most certainly no different.
To make a long story, a bit shorter, and to hopefully prevent any further damage to my stellar reputation as a very polite and well-behaved son and brother, I will cut to the gory details. The first friend to go home was Jac Cantrell and Scott Phillips, both of whom lived in town. I believe that they got home Sunday at some point. Mickey, who lived on a farm, got home Monday because his father was a deputy sheriff and had 4 wheel drive. Ryan Petersen, also a farm kid got home Tuesday and finally, on Wednesday, only 4 days late, Jeremy Bill was picked up.
These days, with the sense of nostalgia and humor that comes with 20 years, we can laugh and reflect on what little jerks we were. I talked to Ruth today and she just gave an audible shudder when I brought up the subject. She was just remembering how horrible it was, how we had no food and how Mom eventually ran out of ways to convince us NOT to have watergun fights in the house.
The real question is, when our son or daughter wants to have a slumber party, what do we do? Having been party to the Woodstock of slumber parties, can I possibly allow it to happen again?
I suppose...as long as there are no water guns.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Just Like Christmas Morning
When I first visited Lora in Oklahoma, it was Christmas 2003. On the evening that we went out to dinner with one of Lora's good friends, there happened to be a thunderstorm rolling through Bartlesville...in December! Of course, I acted like a complete idiot and was giddy because I got to hear thunder and see lightning. I think Lora might have had an idea that she had a tiger by the tail at that point.
This past winter has been a long and actually cold winter, which has been nice. It was a meteorologicaclly interesting winter for a change. First we had our 15" blizzard at the end of November and our lovely January and February ice storms. And NOW....FINALLY...our weather pattern has changed. Storm lovers of the world unite! Our polar-jet stream induced purgatory is over!
And even though we didn't really get much in the way of interesting weather last night, it was certainly a harbinger of things to come! It has to be!! When the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, OK issues a convective weather outlook, they will no longer be relegated to saying "No thunderstorm activity expected". They will get to go on and on about convective assisted potential energy, storm relative helicity, drylines, caps, forcing, mesocyclones and on and on and on...music to a weather nerd's ears!
And of course, my dear poor wife will have to suffer through me trying to get her excited about it all and to convince her that thunderstorms are great despite the fact that they turn our sweet dog into something akin to an off-balance washing machine that tries to climb as close to Lora as she can.
And my dear poor wife will wonder...again...why it is that we should have kids when she has a great big kid already.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Mayhem of the Mooninites Indeed

It isn't every day that one of a person's favorite time-wasting diversions is involved in international terrorism, but then again, not all time-wasting diversions are nearly as cool as Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
You all doubtlessly saw the news that an aggressive marketing firm placed electronic signs featuring Ignignokt, one of ATHF's more foul characters giving a lude gesture in all of his light-emitting-diode greatness, that caused police and federal officials in Boston and other cities to go slightly askew.
I first got turned onto Adult Swim when I was in college and first saw the "Space Ghost: Coast to Coast" show, which was pure genius to a mind as demented as mine. In 2002, when I was in California for my good friend Scott's wedding, our mutual friend Tim gave me a cd with several early episodes of ATHF on it and the rest is side-splitting history.
Of course, it is infantile and sometimes less-than-refined, but that is fine. It is all part of leading a well-rounded life. Life can't just be listening to Chopin preludes, reading Langston Hughes and trying to figure out the vagaries of differential scanning calorimeters (my current hair-pulling endeavors at work). There has to be a certain amount of time to place the brain in neutral...and stupid cartoons just happens to fit the bill.
And besides, who doesn't like to watch very gruff police chiefs with heavy Boston and Chicago accents go on tv to lament the state of movie promotions.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
So, stand by, fellow travelers, for more quasi-wisdom and quasi-wit from an Okie who will never admit to being an Okie.
PS...quick question. Does anybody else find it odd that the spell-checker on a site named blogger.com does not recognize the word "blog"?
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Dead again?
Go visit Townhall.com for a big roundup with updates.