lateral transfer: Edmond to Blanchard

Had a great time with Uncle Jeff and Aunt Ashley. I got in around six, set up my laptop, and Jeff and Karsten came back around 8. We had a late but delicious dinner- they grilled up some mean steaks and baked potatoes, and they had some sauteed mushrooms to top it off.

The next day, everyone was gone by the time I rolled out of bed. Even though I’m kind of an early riser, I’m a professional family with a high school kind of early. Going to bed early for me means 11, and getting up early means 7. Anyway, Ashley had laid out the bagels, taught me the advanced technique for operating the Keruig, so I was able to breakfast and coffee.

I’d did spend a little time on my computer messing around with Rhino, seeing what I remembered about the program. After awhile, though I got bored and decided to go rock climbing downtown. First, I took the stack of CDs from Saori’s and my reject pile and took it to a used music store that looked like it was someone’s garage. Random piles of stuff everywhere, with an emphasis on the vinyl over the CDs. I was able to trade in a few more CDs and get some Matisyahu and Sargent Garcia. It was very loose- they guy gave me ten dollars in trade, and then I brought up 2 CDs with a face value of about $20 but he let them go for $10 together. The whole thing felt like a garage sale of a serious music collector.

The climbing gym was a little disappointing. Cheap, dirt cheap- $9 for a bouldering pass, but the bouldering was limited to basically one room, and one 60 degree room. The bouldering routes were really, really tough. I wasn’t even able to complete one of them. And the crash pad was pretty hard too- it seems like the bouldering rooms were really for people who were climbing at a v3-7 level. It was frustrating, so I left before an hour was up.

The building is really cool though, and I’d definitely top rope there if I had a belay partner. You almost never see adaptive reuse in grain silos because they’re such damned awkward buildings to do anything with, but there’s a post-industrial beauty to them. (However, I didn’t like the giant Oklahoma mural painted on the side of this one).

Karsten and Ashley were back by the time I got back to the house, and I volunteered to take Karsten to a soccer game his friend’s were playing in. We stayed for about half an hour. It was pretty cold, so I was happy when Karsten found me to take him to Starbucks to meet his tutor.

We went to dinner at the Garage, a good burgers and beer place, and I got an “egg-o-nator.” There’s something about eggs on top of burgers which once you have it, there’s no going back. Tried a local beer too from a brewer in Mustang. That night, I was restless, and spent way too long building a lego penguin. After I got up the next morning, I filmed a little stop motion animation with the penguin.

I saw off Ashley and Karsten on their way to the various places they go. Karsten has been having some shoulder pains which is keeping him out of his baseball practices. Jeff worked from home and I caught glimpses of him from time to time. It was great staying with them, they were wonderful hosts. I took off around three to avoid the rush hour traffic and made it to Grandmas in less than an hour.

Grandma pulled out some steaks and we threw those on the grill, and she also made me hominy and garlic bread and baked potatoes, so we were pretty well stuffed. I gave her the IU hoodie she’d requested. Now, we’re just visiting a bit while we play on our respective portable devices.