Back after a brief break. Just had nothing to say.

It's been an excellent weekend. Saw the Prassels on Friday night as we tried a new Thai restaurant in Fayetteville. It's Thep Thai. Pretty good. Located on South School...where the Dairy Queen and the Fayetteville Silk Road used to live. I hope this place has better luck. They've cleaned the interior and, more importantly, the food was excellent. I'll be going there for lunch sometime since it's close to the office.

I want to give kudos to Sarah White. She had a review of the book Fat Girl in Sunday Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. That's great! I wish we had known. Saw her on Saturday night and she made not a peep about the review. She's so quiet about her writing and criticism. I'd be shouting out if I had only a letter to the editor that made it to print. So...Sarah....lets us in and share these things. We're your friends and we would like to share in these things and pepper you with compliments. I'm beginning to fear that when you finally publish an award-winning novel, we might just be the last to know.

Played golf this morning with a good friend that will be leaving town by the end of the week. He's a consultant and is rolling off this big project at work. His last day is on Thursday unless they extend his contract. Anyway...he's a really good guy and I'll miss having him around the office. I hope I'll get the opportunity to work with him again in the future.

Then...after early golf...time for lunch, nap, and re-hydration as I also had a soccer game at 4pm. It's been a rough day. I am tired. Oh...and we lost yet again. It's still somewhat of a relief to know that the losses occur whether I am there or not (missed last week - another loss). It would be even better though if the losses only occured when I was not there. That will never happen in this universe...but I can dream.

One last thing in this long post. Jessica and I took Vagabond to the Farmer's Market on Saturday...and, proud dog-parent that I am, he was so good. He still had the shakes a bit and is wary of trash cans but he negotiated the crowd without incident. We'll keep taking him back more frequently after this successful outing. He still needs to be socialized to groups of people...dogs are fine...he's just generally scared of humans (smart dog).

Spent Saturday at the Condray homestead. Excellent time. Went hiking, ate too much, played games, enjoyed good conversation with friends now and old.

Not a negative to be found. Even the ticks weren't too bad.

The elder Condrays are some of the nicest people a person could ever hope to meet, and their hospitality is unsurpassed.

Jess and I had to leave early on Sunday morning so that we could shuffle off to Little Rock and spend Father's day with her father.

Then on Monday, we stopped in Conway to check in on Jack Derden. As far as babies go, excellent. I held him. He didn't cry. I left with a fine impression of the child. His parents are doing well. They seem a bit tired, but genuinely happy.

The photo is of a large tree near the Condray home. Notice the cows...they have a bunch...and we even participated in a micro cattle drive. Meaning a cattle drive of a short distance...not tiny cattle.

The famous Condray corn-dogs...from top left. Being prepped, cooking, then cooling. I opted to take no photos of people stuffing their faces with the tasty goodness.

If you've never had fresh corn-dogs...you don't know what you're missing. They're nothing like the versions you get at the Fair or in the refrigerated section of a grocery store. So light, so fluffy, so irresistable.

I had four(!) and feel not a twinge of guilt.

The happy couple...

Jess' flowers and rings. Kat supplied the flowers. I suppplied the rings.

For Beth...Cats and Fractals.

And Kat...Ancient Germans.

Played soccer today after missing two weeks. I didn't play goalkeeper. Played on the field. First half was okay...but I was spent by the middle of the second half. Time to get back to the gym. Oh...and we still lost (the two weeks I was away as well...which sort of makes me happy in the sense I'm not the only one that essentially sucks in goal).

When will they be done? I'm guessing another month and the lot will be empty.

Links and things...

Cool theme for the animated Batman show...written and performed by The Edge.

Check out this DJ scratching out the “Imperial March” from that Star Wars movie. (via Attack of the Show)

Cool Firefox extension Greasemonkey and user scripts. So many options...

Lastly...it's not my thing...but Peter might like it...

Hot off the Condray Prom press...the bestest couple of the night...of course we're a bit biased. I hope to share more photos if the peeps will not kill me for posting them...

Best Shot of the Balloon Glow

Ozark Balloon Fest on Friday = very lame. It was too windy for the balloons the fill and remain controlled while on the ground. Only six or seven (out of 40!) made an attempt to wow the crowd gathered for the balloon glow. It was funny to see the gondalas without balloons attached launching flame into the air. Still the weather was nice and we were with friends. See photos posted below...more to follow. Tyson had a balloon (or sponsored one) and the team stated to fill it, but then abruptly stopped.

Weekend movies:
Meet the Fockers: Not funny, not fun, a waste of time.
Shaun of the Dead: Clever and interesting for the first 3/4, the it devolves into a standard zombie movie.
Reservoir Dogs: still an excellent movie...great first attempt by Tarantino...easy to see where Pulp Fiction came from.
Jackie Brown: Underrated movie because it's not as "cool" as some of the other stuff Tarantino's done.
National Treasure: Enjoyable pop...but my fear is that too many liberties were taken with history and presented as fact.

Deconstruction of the Mountain Inn is proceeding quickly. I'll try and get some more photos sometime this week.

Gone...

Sill going.....

Sleeping jaguar....Tulsa Zoo. One of the animals that was actually there and visible.

What we paid to see at the Tulsa Zoo.

A link for Mike and the other gamers (video games). It's like the author stole Mike's voice as I could see him writing something similar...

And a link for Kat. (Germans and sex and morality.)

Enjoy...

Thankfully there was very little poo-flinging...

Exhibit Temporarily Closed

Spend Saturday in Tulsa with Collin, Kat, Nich, Sarah and (of course) Jessica. We went to the zoo. It was a great day, as we were footloose and fancy-free. No cares or concerns. Just captured animals to view.

Problem though....see the Tulsa Zoo actually sucks pretty hard. Especially if you've ever been to good zoos. So many of the exhibits had nice little signs indicating they were were temproarily closed. So many in fact that we soon got bored with our makeshift photo record of the missing animals. Over the next few weeks I'll pepper the blog with the better photos from the trip.

To top it off...Jess' left shoe essentially melted and came unglued late in the day leaving her to shuffle around like the Mummy in order to keep her shoe together and on her foot.

After the zoo...we headed to Utica Square for some shopping and dinner at P.F. Changs. Dinner certainly made up for the very average zoo. We all enjoyed or meals and cannot wait for the one to open nearby in Rogers. I had wok-seared lamb that was so good...and while it was delicious I think I enjoyed the shrimp that Nick ordered even more.

Special thanks to Peter and Beth for stopping by and checking in on Vagabond. I now know how inconvenient that actually was...so again...Thank you.

There was one other big thing this weekend and I do not have a lot of details at this point....Wade and J are officially parents of a little boy. J gave birth to Jack on Saturday. I'll post a photo as soon as I have one and have permission from the parents. I know that Wade and J will be excellent parents. Jess and I now have an additional excuse to make trips to Little Rock.

Today...looking forward to some traditional grilling with friends...some drinking and general relaxing. Jess and I just finished our major weekend project, which was to make a gate for our fence that could accomodate a larger mower or tractor.

Mission accomplished. Let the laziness begin!!!

Windy flowers from a walk a few weeks ago.

I'm back.

Spent the weekend in Little Rock. Main reason was to visit the Greek Food Fest.

There, Jessica and I met up with Peter and Beth, Martin and Virginia (Bet's parents), Bryan, and Jess' mother Alese. Quite a crowd. Jessica and I only spent around 1 hour at the event. Long enough to get some food, talk with our friends, and watch some Russian dancing. (I know...you're saying..."But he just said it was a Greek Food Fest." That's right...but they feature other nationalities.) We might have stayed longer but Jess was a bit warm and it was going to be an hour before the next set of dancers performed.

The we went and saw The Interpreter. If you like political thrillers with an overt political message...then this movie is for you. Not for the Conservatives out there as it barely masks it's pro-UN bias. Though, as the first movie to actually film inside the UN it was rather cool the see the interiors of the General Assembly room from different perspectives. Also, the acting was universally sound but Sean Penn always looks a bit too weary in almost everything he's in.

Soccer was a bust yet again. First half we held them scoreless and had a 1-0 lead. We ended up losing 5-1 in another second half blowout. Another member of the team got a red card and was actually kicked off the field due to his constant yelling. The refs did get the call wrong but screaming obscenities at them wasn't going to convince them to change their minds.

Mountain Inn is still standing...no real change. I'll get a new photo when something interesting happens. Right now they appear to still be in prep mode. We'll see if I can snap some photos and not get flagged by Homeland Security.