One Last Swim with the Frogs

Yesterday, for the second day in a row, we swam in our neighbor’s pool. We have an agreement with the neighbors. Each time they go out of town for the weekend, we watch their dogs and swim in their pool. Mason lets the dogs out a couple of times a day and feeds and waters them. While he does that, Susan, Morgan and I swim. Occasionally, the dogs swim, too. Mason also used to swim but now he says he doesn’t like the way the pool’s salt water makes his hair feel. Don’t feel too bad for him; he’s the… (read more)

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A Trip to the Chinatown Supermarket

Rob O'Hara at Chinatown Supermarket

I like sushi, and ramen, and colorful packaging, so I’m not sure why I hadn’t visited any of Oklahoma City’s several authentic Asian grocery stores before. Yesterday, in search of ingredients for Susan’s sushi night for her Girl Scouts, she and I did. It was awesome. Much like the Thai place I visit in Kansas city named “Thai Place,” this supermarket in Chinatown (OKC’s Asian district) was named “Chinatown Supermarket.” I like businesses with names that get to the point, and this certainly does. On the way in, an older Asian man stopped me in the parking lot. “Lovely weather… (read more)

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Feeling Outshined

One of my favorite Soundgarden lyrics came from one of their most popular songs. I never heard Chris Cornell explain what he meant by “I’m looking California, but feeling Minnesota,” but nobody my age needed him to. I was eighteen when Soundgarden’s “Outshined” hit MTV and radio airwaves, and all of my friends and I had just made the transition from high school students to adults in the real world. No matter how California we looked on the outside, inside, we all felt a little Minnesota. The irony of the lyric is that nobody involved in grunge — not performers,… (read more)

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Operation Empty: How to Waste 28 Gallons of Gas in 96 Hours

Rob O'Hara at Panda Express

scam (n): a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation Last month my truck was involved in a minor fender bender. After a month-long investigation, Geico determined that I (the guy who was stopped at a red light) was not at fault, and agreed to pay for the damages. I took my truck to Service King in Oklahoma City. I like Service King for three reasons. First, they do good work. Second, they text me updates instead of calling me. And third, both Geico and Enterprise have representatives co-located there. It’s a one-stop shop; you drop off your vehicle and before… (read more)

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We All Scream for What I Paid for These Geni Ice Cream Cone Cups

That escalated quickly. Six months ago, after years of searching, I purchased an ice cream cone drinking cup similar to one I owned as a child. The one I found was very, very similar to the one I had owned, but it wasn’t 100% identical. I spent close to ten years looking for one of those cups, so “very, very similar” was good enough for me at the time. One week after I purchased that cup, my mom found a second green one for a quarter at a garage sale exactly like the ones we had growing up. With a… (read more)

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Thank You For Stealing Our Ram Skull

Last week, Susan noticed the ram skull that sits in our front flowerbed was missing. When someone steals something from your lawn, it’s not always easy to tell exactly when it disappeared. When neighborhood kids broke into my truck at our previous house, I came out the following morning and found my truck door ajar, my battery dead, my glove compartment open, and my GPS missing. I knew exactly what had been stolen, and when. Lawn ornaments — of which ram skulls are a subset — are different. It’s not like we kept our spare house keys in the ram’s… (read more)

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A Rough Semester Comes to an End

Wednesday, January 18, 2017, was the day I realized I had made a mistake. It was 9 p.m., and my third class of the evening had just ended. I was exhausted, and I still hadn’t eaten dinner. That day, and every Wednesday for the next four months, I woke up at 5 a.m., started work at 6 a.m., worked eight hours, left work and drove directly to Norman, ran to make my 3 p.m. class, sat through three back-to-back-to-back classes until 9 p.m., and then made the hour-long drive back home. As I stepped out into the cold January wind… (read more)

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What May the Fourth Means to Me

Star Wars Cake

Today, May the Fourth, is Star Wars Day — you know, as in “May the Fourth be with you”? Prior to all this “May the Fourth” stuff, the day I most closely associated with Star Wars was Memorial Day. After all, the first six films were all released on Memorial Day weekend (1977, 1980, 1983, 1999, 2002, and 2005). The only other date that remotely reminds me of Star Wars is Christmas, which is when I got the majority of my Star Wars toys. But nobody likes it when I show up for Memorial Day cookouts or Christmas family gatherings… (read more)

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Sun Valley Garage Sale Leads to VHS Gold!

Last Saturday was Sun Valley’s annual neighborhood garage sale day. Rain or shine, whether we’re looking for anything in particular or not, we always go to garage sale, because it’s a tradition. Susan, the kids and I arrived at dad’s just before seven a.m. and had doughnuts and drinks (coffee for some, chocolate milk for others) before venturing out. (Note to self for next year: most of the garage sales didn’t open until 8 a.m. — wait until then to go.) This year’s garage sales were kind of a bummer. There were a lot of clothes and a lot of… (read more)

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The Criminal Case of the Treacherous Trespasser

In February, Mason made a poor decision and decided to leave his closed campus school for lunch, along with ten of his classmates. (Juniors and seniors are allowed to leave for lunch; freshman, like Mason, and sophomores are not.) When I was in school, kids who left campus usually did so to smoke. Not my kid. My kid got caught going to Little Caesar’s. The kids’ path led them out the backside of the school and through an adjacent parking lot, where a police officer was waiting for them. To teach the kids a lesson, the officer cited each of… (read more)

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