Sunsets in Oklahoma

Some of the most beautiful sunsets you'll ever see, anywhere.

The Oklahoma Blizzard of 2009

The great Oklahoma Blizzard of 2009 started out looking relatively weak.  The rain started at 3:15am on Christmas Eve, then became sleet around 7am and then turned to snow around midday.  But then the wind picked up, and the gusts topped out at 53 mph.  Just after noon the National Weather Service canceled the Winter Storm Warning and upgraded it to a Blizzard Warning, and then we began to take notice.  The news stations began reporting accidents on every major and minor highway, and by the time we got news of a 50 car pileup with injury on I-40 including two police cars and an ambulance, the highway patrol had decided to close all highways in the Oklahoma City metro area.  The governor declared a state of emergency and asked President Obama to declare a federal state of emergency.

Churches began canceling Christmas Eve services in droves, and by 2pm my church, St. Michael's Episcopal, had followed suit.  The snow continued until about 6pm, and once nightfall hit the town became the quietest I've ever heard it. 

Norman, Oklahoma gets a white Christmas about 3-5% of the time, or 5 times every 100 years.  From my personal memory, this was the first White Christmas in more than 20 years, since 1987 when I was 5 years old, and only the second one in my lifetime.  This storm went into the record books as the biggest blizzard in Oklahoma history, with 14 inches of snow in less than 8 hours.

On Christmas Day I tried unsuccessfully to take advantage of all the snow and go sledding with a friend.  The biggest problem with going sledding in Oklahoma usually is having enough snow.  If you have enough snow, the second biggest problem is finding a hill.  It's a plains state, so in general everything is flat.  Once you have snow and a hill, the third biggest problem is finding a sled, and that's where we ran into trouble.  It's not something most households in my town readily keep in stock because we only get to use it once every 5-10 years, and nobody I knew had one.

A layer of sleet on the ground at 11am.

The storm was just upgraded to a Blizzard Warning.

UPS was still out delivering.

As was the postal service!

Sunset.

Henry got tired of being coopeed up inside and tried to go out . . .

before realizing that was a really bad idea.

Complete silence.

Christmas Day 2009

Time to start digging out.

Couldn't get the cars out without shoveling the driveway.

The drifts here were 2-3 ft, but elsewhere were 5-6 ft.

Our front door was the only one we could get open.

You Know You're in Oklahoma When . . .

you see this license plate in front of you.

you see people in enormous cowboy hats getting their third refills of coke.

you can't escape OU football no matter where you go.

instead of writing a nice feel-good Thanksgiving Day cover story, the local paper sends out a big ol' "F*** You" to the county inmates.

your Christmas ornaments look like this . . .

and this.  Like I said, you really can't escape OU football.

this is what you wear to Walmart.

and you're not the only one.

Playing Lawyer

I worked at the law firm for a total of about four weeks, and it was quite an interesting look into the world of law from my safe perspective as a temporary employee.  The two partners were constantly getting referred potential new clients from friends, relatives, and former clients, so every day I had a new and often theatrical message to take down from call-ins.  Most people needed so desperately to tell their story that they would launch into it with the first person they could get on the phone - me - who had no professional law training other than the two classes I took in college - and I would have four stickies of notes scribbled down before I could stop them long enough to tell them I wasn't the person they needed to speak to.  One woman wanted to sue the public schools because her teenage daughter wasn't allowed to play basketball; one woman wanted to sue the university for wronful termination because they let her go after accusing her of setting fires in the buildings; one woman wanted to sue for excessive force after her 14-year old son had his back fractured by the police officer who was arresting him; one family wanted to sue the county sheriff for negligence for not arresting the man who had admitted to murdering their son; and one guy needed legal advice because the 18-wheeler truck he drove had been hijacked and he had been tied up, kidnapped, and held at gunpoint.

In addition to hearing people's crazy stories, I also had to take down informational messages from the District Attorneys, investigators, police officers, and judges who would call our office.  With only a basic knowledge of court proceedings, I would have to record messages such as "Please tell Mr. Glass it appears to us that Mr. Smith failed to file a damages claim, therefore you can move for a summary judgement to dismiss the case", and hope that I didn't reverse a word somewhere in the middle that changed the meaning.

At the end of my four weeks they offered to help me out with anything I needed in the future - from legal advice to writing a reference.  I was sad to go.

The building.

The developers had big plans to create a 200,000 sq ft business center on this plot, but they only built 2 buildings out of 20 that were planned before they ran into financial difficulty, so my view was of brown fields and an abandoned prefab office.

The office was on the edge of town and I worked across the street from bales of hay.

Front entrance.

The lobby.  My desk is in the middle there.

My fun little headset!

Sarah Palin Book Signing

While Sarah Palin was on her national book tour, she made only one stop in the state of Oklahoma, in my hometown Norman, at our local bookstore Hastings.  Hastings is a southern chain of bookstore/music store/video rentals that quite successfully competes with Borders and Barnes and Noble.  People began lining up at 3:30pm the day before she was scheduled to be there in order to be among the first 500 who were guaranteed to get their book signed.  I'm not a Palin supporter by any stretch of the imagination, but since she is a major part of the current political gossip circles, I was curious, so I parked and walked in to see for myself.  Also, I'd been invited by some friends to join the picket line of anti-Palin supporters, which was the side I preferred to be on anyway, so I thought I should show up and join in for a few minutes.

For as much hype and publicity the event had received, there really weren't very many people there.  It started at 7pm, and when I got there at 8pm there were maybe 300 people in line, looking quite cold and wistful, as if they were beginning to doubt how good of an idea it was to come out and stand around in a parking lot for 5 hours in 30 degree weather to see a one-time governor with lofty ambitions of becoming president.

I spent about 20 minutes walking around snapping pictures of freezing Palin supporters and chatting with the picketers.  I voted against waiting until the end for her to come out, and instead gladly hurried back to my warm car.