August 2005 Archives

I had a great time at my 20th high school reunion.

Friday afternoon some of the gang met up at my friend Joel's parents' place for dinner before we headed over to the first Official Event. It was great to hook up with these guys again, some of which I hadn't seen in twenty years.

Here I am with Rick Sandoval (left) and Kris Robnett (right). I put Rick through a wall our sophomore year.

After dinner we headed over to the town bowling alley for the first event. The bowling alley, like the town, is small - six lanes! - but it was the perfect venue. I remember having a bowling segment in P.E. in sixth grade here, and it didn't seem like it had changed a bit.

Dean and I were having a great time.

It was really fun to see people again. I won't lie, it was also very gratifying to hear people say things like "You look exactly the same!" and "You look great!" I know I didn't have grey hair in high school but it's nice to hear it just the same.

After bowling I talked Dean into joining me at the dive bar between the bowling alley and the (now closed) theater I used to work at. When I was a kid, this bar was an Official Scary Place. I didn't even like to walk by it. So it was fun to go in and check it out. I also think I surprised some of my old classmates that I was interested in going to a dive bar to have a couple beers.

Here's a picture of the 117 in broad daylight.

So Dean and I walked into this place and headed to the end of the bar where there were a couple empty barstools. As we sit down I hear a "Hey!" from the corner. I'm thinking, oh boy, we sat in somebody's seat, I'm about to get beat up in this stupid bar over somebody's barstool.

I turned around and saw that it was another classmate, Rob "Stormy" Walker. See? Dive bars are good, you see old friends in them!

The next night was the big dinner event. Again, it was really fun to see people and talk to them about what was going on.

Here are the attending members of the WHS Class of 1985, plus one imposter - me.

And here's some of the gang. Left to right, Dean Thompson, me, Joel Decker, Mike Fredley, and Rick Sandoval.

After the dinner, a bunch of people went out to J.C. Cowboys to have a few beers and hang out. J.C. Cowboys was another one of those places I had never been - a cowboy bar west of town. I liked it! The beers were cheap and it would have been great if the band had taken longer breaks.

The next morning we drove around town a bit before we headed back to my Mom's in Oklahoma City. We went out to the drive-in where I was once held up, and I took this panoramic picture of the now reopened theater. Frankly it's looking a little rundown, but it is open.

This is the box office where it all went down, lo these many years ago.

So that was Weatherford. Will I be back there any time soon? Probably not. Am I glad that we went? Ab-so-freakin'lutely.

Yep, it's been a busy summer. (Not that you'd know that from reading Flying W Things.) In an effort to catch up a bit I thought I'd post some Summer Stories over the next few weeks - you won't get all thousand but I might crank out five or ten. Here goes nothing:

Story One

(In Which You Learn That I Am Vain And I Learn That I Am Becoming A Woman)

Earlier this summer we went to my 20th high school reunion in Oklahoma. Technically, I am not an alumnus of Weatherford High School but the students of the WHS Class of 1985 are My People in a way my graduating class in California will never be.

Anyway. Not pertinent to the story.

As I have lived in California these last twenty years, I felt it was important for me to look the part of a Californian. Since I am an engineer with limited capabilities in the realm of style, I relied heavily on my wife and fashionista sister to help me put together an ensemble for the reunion dinner. After a couple marathon shopping sessions I had everything but a pair of shoes.

And so, two days before we left, I was still short shoes. I could picture the pair I wanted in my head and just needed to find some. How hard could it be?

After work I headed over to the mall to hunt me down a pair. Being methodical, I started at one end of the mall, expecting to be done by the time I walked out of the second anchor store.

Thirty minutes and a third of the mall later, I had seen three types of shoes: Wrong, Too Expensive, and Too Small. (Guys that wear size 13 don't often run into shoes that are too big.)

After another thirty minutes I had seen a lot more of these three types, but the Too Expensive category was shrinking fast. Too expensive? Ha! I Need Shoes! I found myself having interesting dialogue with myself. The inner voice was saying things like "Does the price of the shoes really matter if they complete The Ensemble?"

I was running out of options fast. All of a sudden, I stood before The Last Store In The Mall That Sells Men's Shoes. I trudged back to the men's shoe department to look around. They had a pair of shoes that looked like the pair I had imagined! But of course they would not have my size, no, of course not, of course I would find myself back at the Foolishly Expensive Boutique of Shoes where the smarmy manager had a $1,000,000 pair of "Mr. Right Now" shoes on hold for me. I approached the sales guy, shoe in hand, and asked for my size.

With a disinterested "hmmph" he disappeared into the bowels of the store to check. (Strike One.)

He was gone for a long time. (Strike Two.)

When he reappeared he told me that some other clerk would be helping me. (Strike Three!)

But then a woman appeared holding a shoe box. "Were you waiting for these size thirteens?" (But wait! The ball gets by the catcher! I race up the line and beat the throw to first base! Safe! SAFE!)

The shoes fit! They looked good! I could not freaking believe it! I was absolutely giddy. I made stupid chirpy small talk with the clerk while she rang up my shoes, and I floated out to my car, happy as a clam.

And then two things hit me like a ton of bricks.

First, women probably go through this all the time they need a pair of shoes for an outfit. Boy, that must really suck. (Unless of course they find bitchin' shoes like I did and then it would be great!)

Second, getting that excited about buying a pair of shoes makes me think that I am turning into a woman. Where do I sign up for Oprah's book club?

Want to eat something delicious? Yes, you do.

Here's what you do. Go get some flour tortillas and vegetable oil. Cut the tortillas into wedges and heat up some oil in a frying pan.

Fry the tortilla wedges in the oil. Drain them and let them cool on some paper towels. Eat them. A little fresh salsa and guacamole would go very nicely with them, yes, indeed.

Oh they are so delicious. The Gods themselves, who worry not about such petty matters as blood cholesterol, undoubtedly feast upon them daily in Valhalla. But you, puny mortal, you will pay for eating such things.

But have some anyway.

This morning I got on the train and sat down next to a woman perusing a catalog. Not all that unusual, really.

Then she gets out her cell phone and proceeds to place an order. On the train. After requesting the items she wanted - some clothes, I believe, because there was a fairly lengthy discussion about whether "small" was equivalent to a size 6 - she got to end of the transaction. I was amazed to listen as she read off her credit card number and gave her name and home address. Out loud. On public transportation.

I do not understand people sometimes.

While I've got you - what is up with The Da Vinci Code? I thought that by now all interested parties would have read it, but that thinking is apparently wrong. Today I saw two people reading it on the train.

[UPDATE: The Da Vinci Code is currently number 3 on the New York Times' Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list, and has been on the list for 124 weeks. Don't spend it all in one place, Mr. Brown.]

I was walking to my car after work today when I noticed two young ladies standing by a car with a flat tire. One of them was talking on a cell phone.

I assumed that she was talking to AAA, but I decided after a moment's deliberation that I should extend a little courtesy anyway. I asked the other woman if they needed any help, fully expecting to be thanked and told that somebody was already en route to give assistance.

Nope, they needed some help.

The tire had a large nail in it and was 80 percent flat. The owner of the car was pregnant and a little frantic. I offered to change the tire, somehow still expecting to be told not to bother, and the next thing I know the owner is saying "don't worry, somebody is here to change the tire" into her phone and her friend is helping me locate the jack and lug wrench.

Well, here goes nothing, I thought to myself.

My great fear was that the lug nuts would be torqued on so tight that I wouldn't be able to loosen them, revealing me as the puny fraud that I am, but luckily this was not the case. All five lug nuts yielded quickly to my lug wrench technique, which of course included the standard invocation of "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey." Flush with this success, I had the spare mounted and the flat tire and jack stowed in the back of the car inside of 20 minutes.

So chalk me up for some good karma or less time in purgatory or whatever, because today I changed a pregnant woman's flat tire for her. WooT!

When you have a space shuttle in orbit, all pictures should be From Space. Okay, maybe the occasional shot of the mission control center, but only if at least 2/3rds of the big monitor walls are visible.

If you're having a press conference, fine. Show pictures from space and run the audio from the conference underneath it.

I do not want to see engineers and technologists wearing sports coats made of burlap stumbling through their prepared statements and giving "technology demos" involving falconry gloves and large c-clamps.

I want to see the earth slowly sliding underneath the space shuttle. I want to wonder what it's like to try to get work done in space when there's so much cool stuff to look at. I want a vicarious little taste of what the astronauts are doing and seeing.

Seriously.