Last night for several hours, all local television programming was preempted by emergency weather broadcasts. When you live in Oklahoma, you get used to the weather guys taking over your television from time to time. It’s a little annoying when they’ve cut off programming to talk about a storm that’s two hours away from you, but it’s nice when they give you an hour’s notice that a tornado may be heading your way. Last night’s weather was simply rain, high winds and an impressive lightning storm, so as the front approached our area, I went out to the back porch and said in a lawn chair with beer in hand to watch the approaching storm. Unfortunately for me the storm front brought with it 65 mile-per-hour winds, so it was impossible to stay dry even under the porch. After being pelted with freezing rain for a few seconds, I relocated to inside the house, and watched the rest of the storm roll in through a window.

Yesterday was Oklahoma City’s yearly City-Wide Garage Sale. Dad and I go pretty much every year, and yet rarely buy anything. A few years ago I bought a TRS-80 Model III (the same model as the first computer we ever owned), but when I got it home the built-in monitor was broken. Of course, nothing will ever top dad’s purchase of a hand-held paper fan-on-a-stick with a picture of Jesus on it. Feeling a bit warm? Jesus will cool you! We laughed about that fan for years, which was surely not its intended purpose.

This year the event seemed pretty picked over. I have often wondered if things like this are slowly scaling-down/going away with the ever growing popularity of online sales (eBay). Most of the tables there were filled with knick-knacks priced somewhere between a quarter and fifty-cents. You have to wonder how long people will be willing to cart a bunch of small junk down to a central location, unpack it, man a table for 8 hours, pack up what didn’t sell and haul it all back home when they (or more likely, their kids) could sell it all on eBay in an afternoon (and make more money doing it). I suppose there will always be people more comfortable buying and selling stuff “in personâ€?, but I wonder for just how long.

After the garage sale, dad and I hit a new Mexican buffet in town. It’s off of May near Northwest Expressway (in between the Big and Tall store and the Charcoal Oven). It’s always a bad sign when you walk into a restaurant that has seating for a couple hundred and there’s only one other couple there dining. Everything about the place was just a little weird. Like the enchiladas were cut into little bite size pieces. And they had stuff out for fajitas, but no fajita meat. And they had lots of … soupy stuff. If you’re curious about the place at all I recommend you go as soon as possible, as they can’t possibly remain open for long. Not recommended.

At the restaurant, the waitress talked on the phone the entire time. Even while getting our drinks she held the phone to her ear with her shoulder. Then as we ate she went behind the counter and leaned onto it, talking on the phone loud enough where we could hear the entire conversation. Then when we started to leave, she moved to the cashier area, still on the phone. I tried to make small talk with her about how long they had been open and how business was, but every time I said something to her she would have to say, “hold on just a second,â€? to whoever she was talking to on the phone and then ask me to repeat what I had just said.

Susan, Morgan and Liz left the house this morning around 5:30am to head out to the airport and catch their flight to DC for the week. Mason and I are just ate some Cookie Crisp, are currently playing Lego, and will be heading out to the Medieval Fair in Norman shortly.