Friday, July 18, 2008 | by nathan

The Color of July

I love when these things start to bloom, even though it always signals that summer is about to get seriously brutal.

Thursday, July 17, 2008 | by nathan

Putting Jack Chick To Shame

This is a sample page from the recently-released comic book by Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart, produced for his re-election bid. Rinehart is some piece of work; this fall he’ll be tried on felony campaign fraud charges. You can read the entire comic book here (links to a .pdf) and some background over at NewsOK. (via dustbury). It’s one of the better mental illness pieces I’ve read in awhile; because, as you know, elections to county commission are actually, secretly, battles of Satan versus God.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 | by nathan

Pander To Me!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 | by nathan

In My Mind I’m Going To Colorado

In just over a week my family and I are piling into a car - or a couple of cars, we haven’t decided - and driving to west-central Colorado for a week of relaxation. I think I speak for all of us when I say that THIS VACATION IS SO DESPERATELY NEEDED HOLY GOD IT CAN’T COME FAST ENOUGH.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 | by nathan

There are these skies

I couldn’t provide adequate caption for this photo, so instead I’m going to reprint some words of Rich Mullins’ below:

"There are those skies - skies stretched so tight you just know they’re about to pop - skies in whose seamless blue reaches you hear the snap of sails full of wind, sails moving ships like these skies move you, like these skies move oceans, worlds, time… skies stretched tight like balloons at birthday parties, full of breath, light like helium, so light you have to tie them down.

There are skies like that. Skies so light they look like they could easily be lifted away, so light they seem almost to lift you, to suck you out of the grip of gravity.

But it is the sun they lift, these skies - skies into whose perfectly arched and balanced heads any sun would rise and find room therein to shine. These skies stay poised, enormously gentle, like giants across whom children and crawl and play - giants who are strong enough to feel the touch of these little ones and not move one muscle to risk unbalancing or frightening them.

There are skies like that. You have to look up to see them. You cannot find them beneath you or within you. They are "out" there… they are "up" there.

There are these skies.

Skies stretched so tight you just know you’re about to pop standing beneath them. Your lungs may burst from breathing their sizable air - air from their cool heights so tall they scrape the footings of heaven - skies so pure and strong that God built His New Jerusalem on their back. And they reach up toward that Holy City like Romeo scaling the forbidden wall beneath Juliet - skies that go endlessly, nearly forever with the beauty of her face, the quiet, unshaken gaze of her eyes, skies alive with all the virility and tenderness of young love - skies as ancient as time, as innocent as babies held in the Hands of Eternity.

And I was trying to think of how I could encourage you - of what I could say to spur you on, just trying to come up with something. And then I was overcome.

And you might say, "but it’s just a sky" - but you could say that only if you’d never seen it. And you might say, "Oh, the sky is just a metaphor and he’s really overcome by something spiritual, like, say, the love of God." But if the sky is only a metaphor, it is God’s metaphor, and if you’d look up - if you’d just look up…well, I haven’t the words, but…

There are those skies - skies stretched so tight you just know they’re about to pop…"

Monday, July 14, 2008 | by nathan

Produce

It’s really going crazy now. Does anyone want any cucumbers? The tomato, unfortunately, is mine.

Friday, July 11, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam Hits The Road

So the other big thing that happened this weekend was that Sam got a test. We’re headed up to Colorado for a week later this month, where we’re renting a cabin that is pet friendly. I had really, really wanted to bring Sam along for this vacation, but he’d never spent any prolonged period of time in the car, and given how excited he usually gets when going for a ride, and the fact that our old, stupid vet had told us not to let him get too excited, I was leary.

But, last week, Sam had a checkup, and the doc said that his heart was fine, go ahead, get him excited, let him run and exercise. He’ll love it. That Friday, we were planning to head out to the Panhandle, and we were taking two cars, the Flynns and us, and they were bringing Hera along.* So I figured it was as good a time as any to test Sam out - if things didn’t work, if he didn’t do well on the long trip, at least it was a short one, comparatively. If he did fine, then at least we’d know.

Sam likes the car:

He was very excited to get to go on the trip. He did really well on the drive up. We kept the windows open a crack so that he could stick his nose out and sniff things as we went by them, and he loved this. After awhile, though, it got too hot for anyone in the car to have the windows cracked, and Sam, like a good boy, laid down in the backseat and just rode along.

He did really, really well the whole way up, as did Hera. Both dogs were so excited every time we let them out to go pee that they actually forgot, for quite some time, that they had to go at all. Particularly funny was when we let them out in Boise City, and Hera decided she NEEDED TO SMELL EVERY INCH OF THAT TOWN OMG.

No less hilarious was Sam pulling me and Brian all over creation. When we stopped in Woodward to let the dogs do their business, Hera and Sam dragged us almost a block away before finally going, and even then, they only did it reluctantly, like ,"if I pee, I have to go back in the car! OMG THE CAR!"

When we finally arrived at the Bed and Breakfast, we found it populated with some other dogs for Sam and Hera to befriend. One of them, Angel, was a dalmation who was mostly averse to Sam’s amorous advances, if you know what I mean, and who snapped at him every time he got close. Another, however, was Star, who was just really friendly and sweet:

Aside from their new friends, Hera and Sam were in Dog Heaven at the farm. Not only were there all kinds of new things to smell, it seems that Sam’s dads didn’t feel the need to keep him constantly on the leash while he was there. He had plenty to occupy himself, and spent a lot of time exploring:

We did leave them in our rooms when we went out to the Three-State Marker at night, and anytime we were away from the ranch, so as not to bother our hosts with their care. But Sam seemed to like it all right in our room, too:

The afternoon after our hike to the top of Black Mesa was mostly spent lazing around in the air conditioning. Once the sun started to go down, however, and the heat waned some, Brian and I took Sam for a walk on the nature trail directly behind the B&B. I kept the leash in my pocket, just in case, but Sam was having such a good time and mostly staying close to us, and so I decided we’d let him walk freely. Which is what he did. He mostly stayed close to us at first:

But after awhile he started getting braver:

When he’d get too far away we’d call to him, and he’d come running back, sorta reluctantly, only to whip around and take off in a different direction:

Boy, he sure did like it out there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sam happier than those two days we spent at Black Mesa. He was into everything:

When it was time to head back up to the Bunkhouse, we called Sam to come, and he ran ahead of us, where we figured he’d wait patiently while we opened the gate and let him through, like he had before. Something had come over him, though, his indominable dog spirit, I suppose, and my sweet, timid dog went squeezing through the barbed-wire fence. Brian and I shouted, and watched with horror as he made his way through that barbed wire, emerging safe and sound on the other side. We checked him for scratches or injuries, but there were none. He had, however, left a present on the fence:

At some point on the walk, Sam did slow down enough that I could capture this photo, which is going to be framed somewhere in our house in the coming week. I love it so much; how awesome is our little family?

Or perhaps the black and white version?

*I’ve been told to say that, for months, I’ve been misspelling Hera’s name; I’ve been calling her Harrah, which is wrong. It’s Hera, like the wife of Zeus. For that, I apologize, and I offer the following: I’ve searched this site for misspellings and corrected them, and here’s photo of lovely Hera’s lovely face. She, like Sam, was crazy happy the whole time we were in the Panhandle. She and her parents went on to Colorado from there, where I also imagine she had a wonderful time:

Friday, July 11, 2008 | by nathan

Windmill

Thursday, July 10, 2008 | by nathan

Dinosaur Print

There wasn’t a sign or literature anywhere saying what specific kind of dinosaur left these prints. But because my inner six-year-old is basically Calvin (see above and at right re: "Currently Reading"), I spent the whole time imagining it was a one of these:

Wednesday, July 9, 2008 | by nathan

The Great Oklahoma Road Trip #2: The Panhandle (Part Three)

When Jayson spoke to his family the week before we left, they informed him that they were planning a trip to Durango this week. They decided that, since Durango is only six hours’ drive from Black Mesa, they’d go ahead and meet his family in Colorado. Brian and I, having to be back at work on Monday, prepared Sunday morning to leave the Black Mesa Bed & Breakfast and drive home. We packed up, readied the dogs, and Vicki fed us a wonderful breakfast. I promised her to tell everyone I know to come stay at her place, so here goes:

YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD STAY AT THE BLACK MESA BED AND BREAKFAST. IT’S WONDERFUL.

Okay - whoops, okay.

On our drive in to Kenton we’d passed a Dinosaur Quarry on the highway near the entrance to Black Mesa State Park. We’d been ready to arrive at our destination by then and so we hadn’t stopped; Brian and I decided we’d give the Quarry a quick look-see on our way out:

There’s a big, mounted dinosaur bone on a pedestal by the road there. The Oklahoma Panhandle has been a hotbed of paleontology for quite some time, as evidenced by our visit to the dinosaur tracks the previous evening. The Quarry is a place where a fairly-large dig had taken place in the past; unfortunately for fossil lovers and Panhandle guests, the large bone by the road was not labeled. From whence and what dinosaur had it come? THE CURIOSITY WAS KILLING ME.

Across the road from the Quarry was Black Mesa State Park, which was host to some incredible rock formations:

After checking out the Quarry, and becoming horribly distraught at the lack of information on the Large Giant Dinosaur Bone, we got back on the road:

I had asked Brian if he would mind changing our route. I’m writing a novel that’s set along the Kansas-Oklahoma border, and I wanted to see more of the countryside. So, we took this route home:

We got to see some very, very cool stuff on this drive, including the town of Hooker, where, as one might expect, all the signs sound dirty. Not kidding - you try driving past a sign labeled "Hooker Health Club," or "Hooker Horny Toads" (honest to God that’s their high school mascot), and not laughing like an idiot. Even something that normally would be innocuous, like "Dan’s Upholstery," in a town called Hooker, takes on a whole new level of funny. Still, a certain sense of decorum prevented me from stopping and snapping photos; it just seemed wrong somehow. Also, I was tired.

The towns in northwestern Oklahoma are fantastic. Lots of small towns all over America, including many parts of Oklahoma, are falling apart, it seems, due to poverty and an aging population that’s not being replaced, as young people flee to the cities. This may be happening in northern Oklahoma, but for the most part the towns seemed really nice, very clean and in general were doing well. For instance, the town of Gate, Oklahoma ("The Gateway to the Panhandle"), featured a cafe named after our buddy Laurie:

And across the street was this little piece of Americana:

The plains in this part of the state were rolling and hilly, unlike the Panhandle. Calvin would struggle a little bit up a hill, and then we’d have an awesome rollercoaster ride down. Our eventual goal was the city of Alva, where I’ve set the story I’m working on, but where I’d never been. Kinda dumb, right? So, we stopped and I got some photos. They’re terrible, and awfully uninteresting really, though the whole thing did help me get a sense of what I’m writing. We only stopped in Alva for some lunch at McDonald’s and drove around the campus of Northwestern Oklahoma State University before getting back on the road, where we encountered a wildfire:

And got pulled over in the city of Hennessey before finally making our way back home. Boys and dog were very glad to arrive back at Casa Okay City, where the garden and flowers were in desperate need of some water, but where everything else was mostly in order.

Thanks for riding with me through this three-part debrief of this trip. It really was the best three-day weekend of my entire life, and I feel completely refreshed coming back from it. I haven’t worked through the whole thing spiritually, except that I know it was good, and I feel good about where I am right now. Thanks, Oklahoma Panhandle, Thanks, good friends and my wonderful husband, and Thank You, Jesus.