He was surprised by several of the people that showed up, and we only had a couple that couldn’t make it do to the snow. First in was Gerald, then Kens dad and his sister and her husband showed up. After that the trickle really started to flow. We had Mary, Larry and Wendy, Larry and Amanda, and finally Rob showed up. It was good catching up with everyone and it seems everyone made it home without any difficulty.

The photos, well they stink. My camera (small Ricoh) was not set correctly and I let others use it, so they didnt know any better…my fault. Did get a couple to share though.

I took a few pics of new sites since the last time I was here. It is the Christmas season so there were plenty of festive lights along the canal and a nice size tree by the plaza. It was a nice night tonight so plenty of people were out enjoying the last weekend before Christmas.

They have a place called Redpins, a bowling lounge and restaurant. Its an interesting concept, a high end restaurant and bar that has a bowling problem . It has 10 lanes and basically you go in and request a seat at the bar, the lounge or the alley. Then you order whatever you like, including shoes and a bowling ball. Prices are more than a regular bowling alley, but still on the low side in my opinion ($5.25 for a game in the evening). May get some people together the next time I am in town to try it out.

And since Oklahoma tends to have far more ice than snow, some smart people decided to bring some snow activities to town. They setup a ramp in the baseball field from the second tier seating area to second base. Then filled the ramp with man made snow and charged people by the hour to go tubing. It was fairly active, but I am guessing with the holiday weekend they probably had more active nights than this.

Well as anyone, regardless of species, gets older they tend to get set in their ways. And this old spoiled cat, Pumpkin, will now only drink water coming out of the faucet. And since she is 15 and not quite spry anymore, she gets my dad up about 2-3 times a night to lift her up on the counter and turn on the water for her.

So I ordered them a water bowl with a fountain built in, from Petmate. My cat has this and loves it, but we will see if you can teach an old cat new tricks.

The main reason that I came to Oklahoma this week was to help support my mother as she went through knee replacement surgery. Originally they were thinking that she would be in the hospital for a few days to recover then come home and commute daily for rehab. As it turns out, and what I was originally figuring, she is staying in the hospital the entire time. This is really best as it does not cause any burden on my father after I leave. She will be able to get fairly mobile before she leaves the hospital.

And in the mean time, my dad has a mule to help out around the houses. I have a rental and between that and my parents home there were quite a bit of tree surgery to be done. My dad did a lot of it at his place (luckily not many trees too) before I got into town. But the rent house has a lot of trees in the back so we spent two mornings over there cutting and hauling to get it all done. In many ways I enjoyed myself, besides all the minor cuts and scratches. But also glad that we got it done.

Today me and my dad went to Lake Eufaula to do some work around the cabin. Nothing big, some winterizing and moving things around. It was nice being down there, even in the winter, I do miss the place.

Here’s my dad playing king of the world on top of their motorhome.

But mysteriously United decided to cancel my flight due to weather. Not sure where the bad weather was but I got to take a taxi back to my car…At least I didn’t get stuck in someplace like Detroit.