Just Pixels

As promised, a sampling of the Labor Day weekend photographic bounty, wherein a Thoroughly Enjoyable Contingent (TEC or simply "posse") didst venture all the flipping way to Wyoming from Stately Norman, Okla., to visit a wide-eyed, getting-his-feet-wet-with-a-real-job city boy like me. Wow. That's just pretty awesome, no matter what side of the tracks you're from. Great amigos...how can you top that? Please, tell me. Needless to say I was (am) feeling the love.

So let us get on with our adventures. We went camping...


Name brand nylon lodgings. Tent Set-up 1113 in action, Molly officiating (Note Dan's rumpled undergarments rippling in the wind, still fully exposed after a smacking wedgie performed by the adolescent-like cameraman).


The bodacious campsite. It had it all - mountains, streams, a pond, trees, stars. (no man-eating bears - though admittedly i got a good bit concerned when the sun went down. this is bear country after all. sweet fancy moses!)


Flashlight experiments.


Sooo many stars! Wyoming is good for that.


Breakfast on the Coleman stove. Is there a better way, honestly?


Molls washes down a pre-breakfast Double-Stuf Oreo with style. Don't tell our moms we spoiled our breakfast on cookies.


Backrub w/random toilet paper cameo.


Natural beauty.


"Pensive." Or..."Recovering-from-tent-sleep-cholesterol-b-fast-overload-AM-hike-fatigue"


A shrubbery! w/stream.


Hmm. So innocent looking, that mystery fried food there...
In the end I have to say Rocky Mountain Oysters are quite palatable. Christina thought so too...


Power Pose.


Impromptu shoot.


Wouldn't you know it. Milt was on his way to Yellowstone and met up with us just when we were getting our cameras out. His timing is impeccable.


I'm afraid Milt is getting a little edgy these days. I apologize for his behavior, but he won't be thwarted.


AH IT'S SO FUN ANd...then we swing so much that we get sick and want to puke and die...



THE END!

...until more peeps come to visit...

I was graced by a visit from some beloved Norman amigos (Danimal, Dina, Molls) last weekend, who popped up for some Wyoming style Labor Day good times. It was a great weekend. Thanks for coming ya'll! Makes a man feel sincerely loved.

We went camping one night at a sweet place an hour from Douglas. Here's a pano (Dina, featured) of the mountains overlooking our campsite (we were down by the pond). Great campsites to be had in Wyo it seems. Any and all are welcome to visit! The weather is PERFECT (60s daytime, 50s at night) for more camping and/or just general amusement. Think about it...

More Labor Day weekend pics on the way!

It's pretty remarkable the experiences you can have by putting yourself "out there." Living on the edge, riding life hard into the corners and seldom pitting, even when when there's 40 laps till the checker and Harvick is down three spots and getting tires (that's my first ever NASCAR metaphor/reference on this blog, I think. curious).

So sometimes life is lived on the cutting edge, amidst gulps of provocative high-risk cocktails.

And then, sometimes extraordinary adventures just come along and fall in your unexpecting lap. Like a wet herring.

Thus, I saw the best live concert performance of my life only weeks ago in my first ever visit to Casper, Wyoming (the state's 2nd largest metropolis w/50k. yeah! go rurality!).

So entered Mr. Nelson with his bag of magic. And I won't belabour the point, but just to say friends. Amigos. Compadres. Cohorts. Dudes. Dudettes. Musical patrons of the world — if you have the chance, you must see Willie in person. Just an all-around amazing performance by an old-school legend. I wanted to cry, I wanted to dance, I wanted to tap my foot till the cows came home, I wanted to drink cheap beer (oh, wait).

And magically, the tix were free through a friend who works at the Casper Star-Trib who wrote a piece about the concert for the paper. Choice.

So, you NASCAR folks can keep your haphazard cocktails to yourselves for now. I'll take the unexpected pleasures on this go-round.

p.s. Willie said he's not ready for that kind of relationship commitment yet...

The PICS!!!


can't quite remember what state he's from...
oh, the Lone Star hubris...






Good representation of the experience. Incidentally I sat beside a lady who went to OU and has a sister living in Norman. Random, but intriguing.


GOODNIGHT, CASPER!

Alright ya'll, don't pretend like you want me to keep rambling about life and put off the photographic bounty even longer. I'm a blog READER too, as well as a writer. I'm no dummy. I know what we (I) generally want in a blog experience. We blog consumers will tolerate only so much text. Then we get bored and go watch Sesame Street.

So, here are a few snaps around town. Welcome to Douglas, Wyo, er'body.


The office, where The Man lives (and where I work). Though through initial observations, the rural, Wyoming-based The Man is significantly less intimidating and all around more approachable, I've found. Go The (Rural) Man!


Nice house in town on the North Platte River. Ask my Okie compadres who just floated the waterway with me over the weekend. It's cold, even in August. *shiver*


Doubles calf-rope.


Natural Bridge State Park.


"Behind the Times."


Demolition Derby panoramic.


Corgi contender. (i'm going to track this pooch down and steal it)


Wyoming State Fair delights on a setting sun.


Hide Riding, old school.

more to come...

If I'm honest, it's all a bit blurry.

The past month. The past summer. Three months. Half-year. Whole year.

All of the above.

If you'd told me in May '07 that by Aug. '08 I'd be living in eastern Wyoming and working for a weekly newspaper (Converse County's "leading" paper, no less), and living in the basement of complete strangers (who happen to be quite lovely folk), I would probably say you are a lying son-of-a-bee.

Thus, the curiousness of the situation is apparent, in that I am indeed living this very lifestyle in the above place in the above mentioned accommodations.

But fortunately, when you learn to sky dive, there's a bit of schooling beforehand. Royally Dismayed is the name of the man who finds himself suddenly at the yawning airplane portal with a chute on his back, not knowing how he arrived at that point in time, and awakening from an amnesiac stupor to the sound of whirring props and the imperative "JUMP, DUDE! JUMP!"

So, thankfully life comes in transitions, if only brief ones, that give us some heads-up context (and prevent us from wetting ourselves completely).

But that doesn't mean it's not an interesting or scary ride by any means.

Shoot.

So as I consider my new home of Douglas, Wyoming, perhaps the seeming randomness of my new place of residence is in keeping with my previous year's sundry wanderings.

For different reasons and at the behest of Adventure's beckoning, I've traveled to South East Asia and back (OH, the food!), lived in Costa Rica for some months (so much rain!) and seen the better half of 27 American states, from Florida to California to Maine. It's been a busy time, or a deliberately mobile one at least.

But each phase kind of led (fell, tripped, blundered) into another it seems, and here I find myself in the least populated state of the Union, living amongst a gathering of 6,000 other high-plains kinsmen, most of which have never met a stranger in their life. Or so it seems.

So here I am. Writing for a newspaper, living in the Equality State, and in a new way am more attentive to, and more trusting of the Placid Providence that carries real concern and compassion for every fiber of my being. (remarkably)

So it's good to be here, with the grab-bag of emotions it brings. Mostly positive. Some scary (lots of jeans out here!). But new and exciting and refreshing by definition.

And though I couldn't have penciled the plan on paper a year ago — or even two months ago — I have to think this is where I am meant to come, for a while at least. And it's what I needed at the time, certainly. I'm thankful for that.

So, all this to say clamp on your stirrups, friends. Grease your saddles and pat your palominos. Cinch your sixer and squint the horizon. The sun may not rise here, but it sets here. So I'll be here too, come what may. And that's pretty exciting, or worth a good blog post if nothing else.

And I always wanted to go sky diving. It seems I've finally gotten my chance.

Zane Grey, eat your heart out...

The Stuarts get together every other summer for a mass fellowship/yak-fest extravaganza. It's an enjoyable time when I can see all my sundry aunts and uncles, cousins and randoms who are scattered here and there across these expansive States we Americanos call the Motherland. It's usually a time of asking WHO are you? as much as HOW are you?, as there are usually about 60 adults and increasing legions of chillens every reunion (I'm kind of behind the curve in this department).

And some families have grandiose activities and complex gamery at their reunions. In the end, we generally do two things: 1) TALK, and 2) EAT.

Certainly respectable things in their own right. So, in analysis, you could say we Stuarts are largely quality time people. And I'm pretty stoked for next time as the following reunion is scheduled to unfold in lovely Colorado instead of N.E. Oklahoma. This is generally held among the familial masses as a genius decision, as August in the Sooner State is not a time for outside merriment as much as spontaneous combustion.

Some shots from the weekend.


The whole fam stemming from my G-pa and G-ma Stuart. A good looking bunch I think.


There is ALWAYS Mexican Dominoes. I actually won for once. Represent.


Beware, the domino-inest Grandma around. G-ma Stu is tricky on the ivories.


We rented a party barge. Not long after this nearly all our lives were threatened when the boat nearly capsized due to "aggressive" driving on Uncle Alan's part. In the end we lost a few shirts and caps and perhaps a few tempers. We were all just glad to make it out of there unscathed though. Jiminy Christmas. Moral of the story: party barge, though largely unsinkable, should not be piloted like Navy Seal skiff.


Navy Seal Skipper. Takes some skill to nearly drown a party barge. Mad props. Pun intended.


Tubing observers.


Nephew Carson on hole eight of frisbee golf. Papa Stu is clearly mesmerized.


Lo, The Fatman, keeper of cold ones.


Swim time. Bro-in-law Sam was popular...


Very popular.


Josh's surfer do'.


Cousin Echo was not so happy with swim time ending. "But we haven't had ANY fun yet!"

When my last year of high school rolled around all I could think of was getting the crap out of there. So tired was I of the "high life" — the veritable champagne of educations. But in my haste to skip forward into more interesting life chapters, it seems I forgot to pick something up along the way. That is until recently.

A swift phone call in June to my secondary school alma-mater procured me with the info I hoped for. And several weeks later saw me strolling down the hospital-like corridors of Norman's finest teenage education ward, reminiscing blunders of adolescence as the main office came into view. A booty of personal mementos lie in wait.

The anticipation weighed on me like so many cafeteria lunches and somewhere deep within my being a petrified, indigestible fish stick rolled over in its acidic grave. I dry heaved, but managed to contain the guttural tides. Decades of ingrained vomit-related embarrassment held my guts true to the programmed Social Code: VOMIT AT SCHOOL AND BE FOREVER REMEMBERED AS THE 'PUKE KID' (vis-à-vis: HOLD IT IN AT ALL. FREAKING. COST.)

But the office door hissed open and soon I held the anticipated package in hand. A smile sprouted on my lips and the weight of the moment came upon me. I was officially a high school graduate. The crisp diploma in my palm acting proof of the sterling accomplishment.

So it was that my official high school graduation came and went in that moment. Three blinks. Two heart beats. One ring of the office phone. The emotional summation of my years as a confused, nerdy, clueless, emotionally immature secondary education student flashed before me in a shrill technicolor. Wonk!

I heard harrowing screams, then felt tingly-warm all over before getting visions of B-flat scales being squelched out in the boxish Norman North band hall. I cried and laughed at the same time, and somewhere deep, deep down the fish stick breathed its last and returned to a reverent dormancy. I'd paid my penance. The Public School Lunch Gods (PSLGs) found their requite. The unicorns went about grazing on Rainbow Hill, and all was right in the world again.

So my spirits soared, finally winning closure to that perplexing, brilliant era.

And then I saw the envelope with my name on it. And I remembered that it contained a letter I'd written to myself in the eighth grade. An assignment we all did, with the purpose of saving it until graduation. Only my eighth-grade missive reached me a few years later than planned.

And so, as a recent high school graduate, I'll leave you with a few words of wisdom from my 14-year-old self, written on an inconsequential day in May 1999. May the fish sticks be with you.

________________

Hey, I think after high school I want to go to UCO or something. I'd like to have a music degree and major in trombone and drums. Or maybe I'd like to be a civil engineer or if all else fails then I'll be a grease monkey.

I received the outstanding band student award last night at our band concert. It was great. I don't want to get married too early in life. I figure after I graduate from college and get a job and a horse and a fast car, then I'll worry about getting married. I really don't have anything else to say so I'll see ya in the future.

-john

________________

and then an excerpt from another portion of the letter. seems i was somewhat anti-girlfriend in those days. ah, the intuitions of a teenage male mind. truly a hallmark of wisdom. sorry girls. I guess i was just going through a jerky, insensitive, cheap-as-all-get-out phase. haha. but such is life in grade No. 8.

...I don't like anyone right now. I'm going to try to stay away from a "girl friend" as long as possible due to me enjoying my freedom, time and money. I do enjoy having girls as friends but don't want a "girl friend." In my opinion I think girls are childish and extremely stupid. I really don't have anything else to say other than in the future don't get a girl friend, John.

p.s. Get more guns (hand guns)



THE END.

Well, big-sis No. 2 rolled over on year 27 of her life this Sunday. Woohoo. And Laura's always been a special gal. It seems she started out this way from the beginning. She was born INSIDE the placenta, just hanging out, soaking up the nutrients first-hand like a carefree, vagabond looter. The delivery doctor had never seen this before and was really nerdily excited about it (so i'm told — i was non-living at this juncture).

But in honesty I'll say I am rather pleased with an older sis of her caliber. We've seen a lot of things together as the bottom two familial rungs. And I hope we see a lot more (though perhaps in fewer younger-sib lackey/subordinate roles). Give the Fatman and Chubby Dinah a run for their lordish birth order empire! But that's another story.

Love you lots, Sis.

Happy Birthday!


WHOOOAAAA!


Wish to build a dream on.


I BELIEVE.


Good times garb. Cooking use optional. (reminds me of the Muppets' chef — "noo-nee-noo-nee-noo")