Oklahoma State Football is Only One Facet of the Gem

The Cowboys have had a rough season. It started bright enough, playing a close game against powerhouse Florida State, and some victories early on. But even then the injuries and inexperience had begun taking their toll. 
As the competition grew tough, the question marks and uncertainties became concerns, and the Cowboys lost a game, and then another, and many fans, particularly those who had expected a near-flawless season with the youngest team in Division I Football, began to lose hope and started to lay blame wherever they could.
Enter the Boo Birds.
The Boo Birds for most teams show up after two losses (after one loss at OU), and they increase in numbers as a team loses. Too bad their energy couldn't be directed in more positive pursuits.

Maybe a tough season can be turned into learning opportunities and will result in a better season next year.

As a student I had a terrible semester once, but instead of feeling like a failure and/or blaming my professors for my lack of success, I figured out what went wrong, and followed up with back-to-back 3.75 GPA semesters.

I wouldn't write Mike Gundy off yet. I think the future is still shining bright for #LoyalAndTrue Cowboy Football fans.

And, as I've said before, Oklahoma State University is not a one-trick pony.

In athletics, we (and I can say "we" because I went there, graduated from there, and teach there) have high-caliber programs in wrestling, baseball, men's and women's basketball, equestrian, cross country, track, softball, soccer, and others. We're a dominant NCAA force in some of these, and contenders in the rest. 

We also have some of the best academic programs as well, and as one of America's Healthiest Campuses, a healthy body, mind and spirit are encouraged for all.

So go ahead and boo because you expect a perfect no-loss season to define your happiness.

But most of us don't think that way.

Even Though I'm Not Captain America, I Voted As If It Matters

A funny thing happened on the way back from voting. Perhaps this note to my students explains it best...
"Dear Class,

I'm without a car this morning. Normally, that's not a problem.

However, I walked up to where I vote when the rain had let up, and on the way back (and it started sprinkling again), I decided to take a shortcut.

Again, normally not a problem.

I jumped off a small wall and, thanks to all the rain the night before, right into grass-covered muddy spot (the grass was longer than it looked, probably because the tips were just peeking out of the silty puddle). My shoes are muddy, as are my once-clean pants, and I'm still laughing at the absurdity of the situation.

At least I voted, so there's that.

I'm going to get cleaned up (NOTE TO SELF: Just because most of the Avengers (except the Hulk - he's a mess) can jump off walls and buildings and not get muddy, it doesn't mean I can do the same thing), and then work from home.

The lab, of course, will be open for you to work on your projects. If your teams want to meet elsewhere today, I'm okay with that.

I also think that perhaps you, too, might be debating on whether to vote or to come to class. I'm not really a political animal, but I do think elections are important, even if my vote only counts as one among millions.

We will have class Thursday.

And I will not be muddy.

Thanks,

LD"

I hope you vote today, even if it's just to cancel out my vote. I'm okay with that.

Loyal and True

I've been an Oklahoma State University fan (all sports, not just football) since I was a little kid growing up in Oklahoma City. My dad was a high school coach (mostly football, but he assisted at various times with wrestling, basketball, and track), and I learned a lot about sports through him. I also learned about winning seasons, losing seasons, and in-between seasons (those lingering around .500 with many close games that could could have been victories but for a broken play or two).

I also had a little league baseball experience that verged, at times, on being a living example of "Charlie Brown All-Stars." This was before the age of "Everybody is a Winner." We learned to be gracious when we lost, and to be good sports when we won.

But this post isn't about me. It's about the Cowboys.

With such a young and inexperienced team, I'm pleasantly surprised that OSU is 5-2 at this point in the 2014 football season. Each week these kids (the starting lineup's average age is 19 or 20, maybe?) are gaining experience and getting their lumps. Most may have been recruited from schools where the wins and accolades came easy.
At the college level, things are much different - new faces, new looks, learning to work together with new teammates. It's not easy at times to make the adjustment.

Things will get better. There will still be losses - the toughest part of the schedule is here - but these players will survive. They might need to reach down inside ("...do some soul searching," as my dad, would say to his players) and find a way to play above their level. And believe me, it gets hard sometimes to reach down when you're criticized by armchair quarterbacks, who can sit back and watch a game with their drinks and snacks and pick apart things from afar.

When you're in the thick of the action, you don't always see the gaping hole opening to your left, or seeing the secondary target being more open when you're looking at your primary receiver. Your peripheral vision is hampered by your helmet. The roar of the crowd bounces all around and you may not hear a teammate calling to you. If the linemen are towering over you, you might not know whether they are clearing the way, or about to be overcome by an unexpected play. Likewise, if you are setting up a pass block, you might not know that the play is busted and you now have to clear a way for somebody running the ball.

So many things happen in the chaos, and the players have to adjust to changing situations. Experience makes it easier, but it never becomes easy. These guys aren't pros. They will get to play with some of the same teammates for up to four years. Then it's over. Maybe they'll be good enough to go to the pros, but most don't get that opportunity.

Yes, I am an Oklahoma State Cowboys (and Cowgirls, too) fan. These kids are students, are people like you and me, and they work hard to do things that most people cannot or will not do in order to succeed.

Win or lose, I ride with the Cowboys!

Umbrella? What Umbrella?

If you live Oklahoma, you get plenty of opportunities to experience the wind that comes sweeping down the plains. If, like me, you grew up in Oklahoma, you learn to deal with the wind and, during those rare extended periods of no wind (to me, that's a wind speed less than 10 mph) you actually start to miss it.

One of the ways I've dealt with wind is to not carry an umbrella. I'm not sure how many umbrellas were blown inside-out before I learned this coping skill, but at one time I reached a point where I stopped buying new umbrellas.

The down side is that I have to think ahead for dealing with rainy days. Usually, I try to park close enough that I can dart from building to tree (yeah, I know, bad idea if lightning is involved) to building to get to work.

Today, though, I couldn't use that strategy because my car went into the shop for repairs. Sure enough, a thunderstorm rumbled into town just as I was leaving for work.

No umbrella, of course.

I stuffed a couple of garbage bags into my backpack, knowing that I could use them as ponchos (for some reason, I forgot to buy emergency ponchos when I had the chance). But I knew that my head would still get wet. And besides, wearing the garbage bag poncho over my backpack would make me look like the Hunchback of the Garbage Heap.

In a flash of inspiration and a rumble of satisfaction (or maybe it was the lightning and thunder that did the flash and rumble thing?), I grabbed an unused storage tote lid and headed out to the bus stop.

Awesome! It kept my head dry and was big enough to keep my backpack dry as well. Not only that, but I knew that a gust of wind wouldn't turn the thing inside-out.

After I got off the bus (people looked but didn't say anything about my tote lid), I still had a few blocks to walk to get to my workplace.

The rain had more or less stopped, so I carried the lid next to me.

I discovered its next use when a car drove though a puddle in the street next to where I was on the sidewalk. With my "totebrella" at my side, the water didn't splash me. 

Yess!!

I made it to my office and from there to my class (it had started raining again by the time I'd ascended the stairs from the basement to emerge outside), using my rain shield.
.
.
.
I wonder if I could make any money marketing the Totebrella?

But Wait, There's More!

I have a Kindle Fire HD. I love it. I used to have a plain Kindle and read a lot on it. That was its main purpose - be an e-reader.

But it went wonky. The screen massed up. I'd had it long enough that my only option was to buy another one, because they couldn't fix it.

I ended up with my Kindle Fire HD. I'd been saving up for it, but got one as a gift. Score!
I started putting my books on it.

But then I tried out an app. And then another. And another.

Now I have dozens of apps (I weed them out occasionally, but I still have a lot on the tablet, and many more in the Cloud). Most of the apps are free and/or beta versions.
Ones I really like, I'll end up buying. Some, like Astrid (my all-time favorite productivity app), get bought by a bigger fish (Yahoo! bought Astrid) and then kill it off. This makes me leery about buying apps, although it hasn't stopped my completely.

However, the vast majority of my apps are free and supported by ads. Usually, I have no problem with that. Most ads are inconspicuous, or they pop up after I finish a game or a level. No big deal.

Early this morning things changed.

I was reading my Twitter feed on Tweetcaster, and as usual, the little inconspicuous ads were running down at the bottom. I occasionally glanced, but mostly ignored them.
Then one showed up with sound. Definitely conspicuous, because, like late-night TV commercials, the sound was louder than a normal app (I keep the volume down when everyone is asleep). 

Holy cats!

I clicked on the little 'X' that ads have so you can make them go away. The video part of it went away, but the guy kept talking at me as if he would annoy me enough to buy what he was promoting.

I hope this doesn't become the norm. If so, I may have to go back to reading books on my Kindle.

I don't think that's a bad thing when I think about it.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Losing My Mind

I just re-read my April 1 post and had to laugh.

If I'd waited another day, I would have had more to add to it, as the stress level grew.

It turns out that not only did I have to move from my apartment (they graciously gave us until mid-May), but I also had to move my office because that building, too, is slated for destruction.

Needless to say, I survived the moves, and Finals Week, and posting grades, and attending my kid's Spring Concert (the little goober didn't tell us he was getting an award for the Young Men's Ensemble's Superior rating).

We're in our new place, still unboxing things, and I'm contemplating renting a bigger storage unit because we keep downsizing where we live faster than we downsize the stuff we have.

But all is well for now.

And on the up side, I'm teaching two classes for OSU this summer, which means I won't have time to screen jerky for Ralph's Packing down in Perkins, OK.

By the way, I just uploaded my first YouTube video. It's a walkthrough of Hanner Hall, which is where my office was located for the past couple of years. I've embedded it below. I used a Canon PowerShot A2300 to film it, so it's probably not going to be noticed by next year's Oscar committee, LOL

April Fools' Day Used to be More Fun

My wife: Our world seemed to come to an end before and we survived. Things will turn out all right.

Me: Yeah, but how many times does our world have to end before things ever get better for us?

A cruel April 1st that isn't a joke: We have to find an affordable place, get all the deposits paid, and get moved by the end of the month.
 
Oh yeah, and I still have to work while making this all magically happen.

Do you know how hard it is sometimes to stand in front of a group of young people (college students, in my case) and act as if the world is not crashing down, and speak convincingly that once they are out in the "real world" that they will be in control of their own destinies?

Yes, I will survive. Again. Probably have even more gray hair when it's all said and done.

So if you see me around town in the next few weeks and I look stressed a bit, I probably am.

But I'm pretty good at hiding these things. I guess I have the soul of a clown.

Daycation 2014, Part One - Meersburgers

During Spring Break this year, we really couldn't afford a full-blown vacation.

However, I was able to take my youngest two on a daycation - a one-day excursion to a place where they'd never been, and which I hoped they would enjoy. Our destination: Meers, Oklahoma - population 6 or so (it was up to 12 when I was a kid, but it's dwindled).

Why the heck would I go to such a tiny place? It has only one building - a combo store/restaurant. In more populated (when there were 12 folks) times there was also a post office in the building. It does still have a seismograph, but I don't think that has worked for awhile.

We went there for the famous "Meersburger," a generous (about 7"in diameter) grass-fed Longhorn beef burger served in a metal pan that looks like an old-timey gold pan (not a coincidence, since Meers began it's life as a gold-mining town in the early years of the 20th century, before Oklahoma was a state). I believe the Food Network included the Meersburger in one of their shows on the best burgers in America. 

For me, though, Meers brings back memories of my childhood. Every now and then we'd go to Meers, located in the Wichita Mountains of southwestern Oklahoma and have a burger which was always a special treat - especially at times when the meat came from American Buffalo instead of Longhorn. I wanted my kids to experience the awesomeness (I hoped) that I remembered from so long ago.

It's about a 3-hour drive, including potty breaks, from Stillwater and I regaled my kids with stories from the family journeys I had as a kid. My grandparents lived in Lawton, which is a short drive south of the Wichitas.

When we got to Meers, there was already a line of hungry people waiting outside. It took about an hour to get to the door, and another half-hour wait once we were inside.

It was worth the wait, though. Jessica and I each got a Meersburger, Cowboy style (lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, cheese, and mustard) and Tyler ordered a Seismic burger - 16 ounces of meat with all the fixin's plus jalapeño slices. It was a delicious meal and we were too full for dessert (apparently their home-made ice cream is quite a delight, too). 

If you choose to go there, be sure to take cash. They don't take credit cards, and local checks might be accepted (I didn't ask how local was "local"). They have modernized since I was a kid and they do have an ATM inside if you forget your cash.

Despite the wait to be seated, we never felt rushed during our meal (you know how some restaurants can be - trying to get their customers finished so they can seat more?). And after we finished eating, we had more fun in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, which I'll write about soon.