Category Archives: Life and Family

My wife and I love our furry children but SHHHHH, don’t let them know. They are spoiled rotten!

Coyote Lake Park camping (July 26-28, 2013)

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IMG_6803It’s 7:10pm on Sunday afternoon and I’m feeling quite tired, yet incredibly refreshed.  Brandee, Jack and I just spent the weekend camping!

While I would have loved to grab our cat, Bella, and her new collection of fishie-family friends, The Hatfield’s and The Macoy’s, it just wasn’t practical to bring the 55-gallon fish tank and a finicky-feline with us camping.  So the three of us headed out to Coyote Lake Park in Gilroy, California which is only about a 30-45 minute drive from where we live for a few days of fun.

This was the first camping trip for both Brandee and Jack so there were a lot of potential issues that could have arisen.  You see, typically when I went camping previously I only have had to contend with my needs and not others.  Therefore, I packed limited supplies and was ill-prepared, quite-frankly.  This trip, however, was the kind of comfortable camping I had never experienced due to Brandee’s amazing (and slightly obsessive) planning.

Camping In Style

IMG_6806I must admit that I had concerns about Brandee’s natural instinct for planning the most meticulous details of events might conflict with the pure nature of camping, which in my experience, is ‘toughing it’ and ‘do without’ in dust, missing supplies and a generally a lack of comfortable living environment.  After all, that’s what camping is all about?

And although this camping trip still involved the traditional dusty ground there was absolutely no worries for supplies.  Brandee had done a wonderful job to consider so many possibilities that it made the trip extremely enjoyable.  Truth-is that I was slightly teasing her for over thinking her first time camping experience with food lists, equipment lists and a schedule of events however, in retrospect this was the way I ought to have been camping for years!  I regret not having on insisted that she join me on camping trips of the past.

 

IMG_6887The Great Outdoors

This camping trip was a memorable collection of firsts.  First, it was Jack’s inaugural experience to dip his feet in a mass body of water whether it was pond, ocean or lake.  In this case it was lake and it was exciting and scary for Brandee and myself.  While it’s a fact that most labrador dog’s enjoy the water, as a rescue-dog, Jack had never experienced the water with us before.  In fact what little exposure he had with the garden hose while we water the lawn, he would be scared and skittish, which led us to think he might have been abused with a water hose when he was a baby because that is just not natural for his breed.  Anyhow, we took him down to the shore of the lake and without any coercing he freely dipped his paws in the water like it was completely comfortable.  It was such a relief to me because I would like him to enjoy the water for his enjoyment in the future.  He was on a short leash at the time and couldn’t go deeper into the lake but I think his love for the water is clear if we can just expose him to more opportunities to swim.

Second, we had the opportunity to witness true wildlife in their element.  We saw blue jay birds galore!  They were quite friendly and probably the most abundant among the campsite.  These birds were fairly large and would swoop-in to get Jack’s dog food, sometimes the bread Brandee would feed them or sometimes simply to come visit and show off their great flying skills in the trees.  There was also deer, ground squirrels, cows, ducks, geese, crows, and other types of unknown birds, fish and then, of course, coyote that we witnessed.

IMG_6863One of the most humorous animals/events we did not see, yet clearly saw the evidence was a food raid on our campsite earlier in the morning of our first night there.  While we packed away all the human food into the tamper-proof bear food locker, we naively left Jack’s dog food bowel out with a minimal amount of food.  Little did we know that this was a major invitation for the critters of Coyote Lake Park to come visit us on this cold, Saturday morning.  We woke up to an empty dog food bowl but apparently clear, muddy raccoon size paw prints all over our outside food cooler.  Apparently these animals are very smart and savvy about getting into these.  The evidence of their paw-prints strategically placed around the cooler was hilarious in that they had a clear plan to raid our food.  Nice try guys but better luck next time – and we have your paws-prints on-file now!

We had two adjoining campsites and I have to say that although we camped In Style and in The Great Outdoors, my fondest memories will be spending time with the friends that joined us for this trip.  A majority of our time camping was spent socializing with them about everything from what is the best strategy in the Connect 4/Uno/Battleship games, tips/tricks/recipes for good BBQ cooking or interesting life events and experiences.

IMG_6876Coyote Lake cleanliness and kindness of staff

I cannot finish this blog post in good faith without acknowledging the overall cleanliness of the grounds/facilities and fantastic staff at Coyote Lake campground.  From the day we checked-in on Friday afternoon until we left Sunday morning they were great.  The maintenance staff was regularly cleaning the already clean restrooms often.  The ranger staff drove around the campsites during the day to offer fire wood bundles, which we quickly jumped on and appreciated.  Then, as we were packing up to leave, one of the rangers got out of his truck to ask Brandee a few follow-up questions and take a sincere interest in asking her about what she thought of the experience.  They really take care at Coyote Lake and want their visitors to have a good, safe and positive memorable experience.

 

 

Here are some supplementary photos of our camping trip:

IMG_6787 IMG_6805 IMG_6863 IMG_6889

Eugene (“Gene”) Latimer 1916 – 2013

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eugene latimerEugene Latimer, born Sept. 23, 1916, was raised in a small community south of Sallisaw called Brent, OK. He graduated from Sallisaw High School and attended and played baseball for Connors State College in Warner. He later signed up for NYA (National Youth Administration), a WPA project where he served as president of the student body.

His amazing uncle, Earl Latimer who lovingly helped raise him when he was younger, paid for him to attend Aircraft Mechanic School in Wichita, where he obtained employment with Beechcraft after graduating. He was drafted into the U.S. Army, but Beechcraft got him deferred twice. After receiving his third draft notice, he declined another deferment and excitedly wanted to go! The U.S. Army transferred him to the U.S. Army Air Corps when they found out he had experience working with aircraft. He served honorably during World War II as supervisor of aircraft mechanics at Lavenham, England from one month before D-Day until one month after VE-Day.

After the war, he returned to Oklahoma to use his G.I. Bill to obtain a degree. He enrolled at OSU (then Okla. A&M) in architecture. He graduated in four years—with two five year degrees (Architecture and Architectural Engineering). While attending college, he met and married Gaynelle Johnson, who was working at the Registrar’s office at that time. They were married 22 years prior to her untimely death in 1969.

He worked as an architect in Ada, Okla. City, Ponca City, and finally Muskogee in 1956, where he went into private practice a few years later. He was a lifetime member of A.I.A. (American Institute of Architects) and designed and supervised the building of numerous commercial and medical buildings, churches, banks, and residences in northeastern Oklahoma. He was proud of the fact that he designed churches for five different denominations.

He is survived by two daughters, Lee Ann Langston (Dan) of Muskogee and Janet Lefler (Rodger) of Tulsa, and two granddaughters, Casey Langston and her fiancé, Brandon Smalley, of Muskogee and Jordie Lefler of Tulsa. He has two surviving brothers, Carl Cook of Sallisaw, Floyd Neal of California, and one sister, Mary Alice Blackford of Sallisaw. He is also survived by numerous loving cousins, nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his wife, Gaynelle Johnson Latimer, his son, Richard, his mother, Georgia Latimer Neal and one brother, Jewel Harmon.

Funeral service will be Thursday, May 23, 2013 at 2 pm at Agent Mallory Martin Chapel in Sallisaw. Burial will be at Sallisaw City Cemetery under the direction of Agent Mallory Martin Funeral Home.

Viewing will be Wednesday from 8 am – 8 pm at Agent Mallory Martin Funeral Home in Sallisaw.

Cat Cake and Dog Cake for Brandee’s birthday

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Brandee and I spent the last two wonderful days creating two cakes.  The inspirational theme was our animals, Bella the Cat and Jackson the Dog.  Bella’s cat cake is entitled: “Happy Furr-Day” and Jack’s dog cake is entitled” “Happy Bark-Day”.

Below is a slideshow and a video of the wackiness!  Hover your mouse over the image below to navigate the photos.

 

IMG_0746 (QuickTime format video)

End of September, Beginning of October 2012 updates

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Work:

I’ve been very busy the last few weeks.  Most of it self-imposed work too but I like it that way.  I really, seriously can’t stand complacency and I see way too much of it, frankly.

One of the projects I’m working on is a set of technical innovative solutions.  Some of these solutions are simple just put the piece-parts together kind of stuff which is rather easy for me with my fortunate networking experience.  Others are conceptual and require some level of custom software development work.  The main points I would like to portray is that we are at an incredible time in technology innovation where people with basic knowledge can design incredibly efficient solutions without the enormous costs, time and complication needed historically.  I’m passionate about sharing these new ideas and having constructive conversations because I realize that it takes vision to get organizational support for radical ideas even though the benefits can be tremendous.

 

Stanford Cardinal versus Arizona Wildcats college football game:

Our annual Stanford Cardinal football game and, most importantly, pre and post tailgate adventures took place this past Saturday.  It was a wonderful pleasant day, weather-wise and the game did not disappoint.  First, let me briefly describe our seating position because this was very unusual from our past games where I have participated for about the past 5 or so years.  One of our mutual friends is a Stanford Alumni and always gets the tickets.  Usually they are great seats and we are only a few rows from the field.  Well, this year we weren’t so close to the field.  In fact we were barely in the stadium!  How can we go from one extreme to the other is beyond me.  We were literally three rows from the very, very top of the stadium.  Fortunately Stanford Stadium went through a major remodeling a few years ago and the stadium is a wonderful place to watch a game regardless of your seating position.  I wish I didn’t have to witness these ‘bleacher seats’ for myself to get that perspective but none-the-less we did.

We were able to see all the plays and also could follow the action on the big screen displays on either end of the field so it wasn’t that bad at all.  The game itself was exciting.  No defense what-so-ever.  Each team compiled 617 yards of offense for a grand total of 1234 which is amazing.  Stanford was looking really bad because they were down by two touchdowns with only about 9 minutes left but they rallied to tie the game.  Then they eventually won in overtime.  Very exciting.

The pre and post game festivities are always the highlight of these events though.  There is a group of about 6-8 of us that do it annually.  I can’t wait for next year!