OKRoads.com -- The Rant

Search OKRoads:

A place to write about Oklahoma's roads, life, and anything else that crosses my mind

Welcome to The Rant! Here I will attempt to choose a road-related topic and then rant about it until I'm finished. It could be about an interstate, a U.S. or state highway, or just a street around Oklahoma City. However, I also use this column to talk about life events and website updates and maybe even a hint or two about a future roadtrip!

Good evening. This weekend I will be taking a short roadtrip to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I do plan on bringing my camera and snapping a lot of road sign pictures. Hopefully the weather will cooperate so the pictures will turn out good.

Besides this trip, and this cold I've been struggling with the past few days, life is going busy as usual. But I must say it's going pretty good, and it looks like it's getting better.

Good evening. My apologies for the long delay it's been since I last wrote. I'm OK, so don't worry about that. I've just been busy with life lately and that's taken time away from the website. Hopefully I'll get back to the update trail soon.

The only road-related development I have are some new signs that have popped up recently. On the exit gore point signage, there is now a small yellow sign attached to the bottom of the gore point sign. This yellow sign indicates the recommended exit speed. I'll have to take a picture of one to show y'all what I mean, but in the past week, quite a few non-road scholars have questioned me about the signs without me even mentioning it. So I guess people are noticing these signs!

Good evening. I did do one new page last week, and that was the new Kansas 96 guide. But, hey, that's one more new guide on OKRoads than I had done in the last 14 months. So that's some progress. I realize there is still a long way to go too, but little by little I hope to knock down some of the backlog of pictures and pages that I have accumulated.

I've been very busy with work lately, and now I'm getting more things to do, which means more things for me to study for work, and which could mean less time for work on the websites. We'll just have to see how it goes.

Good evening, how are y'all doing? I'm doing pretty good, still worn out from this past week and weekend. It was a very busy week at work. On Saturday, as planned, I went to Wichita. As it turned out, the family function I went to (my great aunt and great uncle's 50th wedding anniversary) was on a different side of town, so I did get a few new pictures of Interstate 135 North and K-96 East. Those will probably be part of the first non-POTW & rant update to the site in a long time, which may happen as soon as tonight. So check the updates page; I'm gonna do the best I can to get back to updating the site. I have a lot of new pictures I've taken but haven't put on any webpages, and it does no good to take all these pictures if I can't share them with y'all, the road scholars of this world.

As part of this week's planned updates (man it's been a long time since I said that), I plan on posting a page for my Michigan roadtrip, which is planned for the last week of August/first week of September. The current trip plan includes some new territory for OKRoads, including the entire route of Interstate 72. I know there isn't much along Interstate 72, but that short section in Missouri by Hannibal is the only part of interstate in Missouri that I have not driven.

Well if I'm gonna do some UPDATES!, I better close this rant. See y'all later, and drive safely.

Good evening. As of yesterday, I finally have high-speed Internet access! It is so awesome. So this should mean that updates will begin to happen a little more frequently to OKRoads & OKHighways. Yesterday, I uploaded pictures from the first and last days of the Memphis trip; those picture indexes can be seen here and here.

Gas prices have come down somewhat; it is now about $2.90/gallon. That's a good sign, considering I will be taking a day trip to the Wichita area on Saturday for a family function. I don't think there will be any new road pictures; since I've already covered that area several times.

I have begun to draw up plans for my next roadtrip, and it is a good one. The tentative plan is to take the last week of August leading into Labor Day weekend and take a trip to Michigan. I have not been to Michigan to see my relatives in 4 years, and I have never gone that long without going to Michigan. Maybe within the next few weeks I'll have a more formal trip plan to post on here.

Good evening. I apologize for not ranting last week. My life has been pretty busy since I last wrote. I took the Memphis Roadtrip from May 9-12 and took several pictures. Many pictures are from Interstate 40 in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee, but I also took pictures along Interstate 69 in Mississippi (including this week's picture of the week), Tennessee 385, U.S. 61 Mississippi, U.S. 49 Arkansas, and U.S. 70 Arkansas, among others. I have only uploaded one day's worth of pictures so far, and that was May 11, which is when I took a trip around the Memphis area (with new coverage of Tennessee 385 & Sam Cooper Boulevard), and then made my way to Mississippi, where I drove all of the new Interstate 69 and some of U.S. 61. From there, I made my way back into Arkansas via U.S. 49 and U.S. 70. For pictures from that day, see http://www.okroads.com/051107/. Pictures from the other two roadtrip days (May 9 & 12) will be uploaded soon, but 95% of those pictures are from Interstate 40, a highway that has been covered many times on this website through many different trips.

So you may ask how things went with my friend. Well, things went pretty well while we were together, or so I thought, but I have not heard from this person since the night I returned home and told this person I got home safely. That was 9 days ago. So I think something went wrong somewhere. LOL But that's OK, I was happy to meet this person anyway, despite what they apparently think, judging from the fact they haven't talked to me in 9 days! Life goes on.

With the recent surge in gas prices ($3.25/gallon in OKC!!!), plus the fact that there are currently no other workers on the church bus route besides me, I will not be going to Eureka Springs this weekend as planned. (Plus, the person who hasn't talked to me in 9 days was supposed to meet me there; no reason to go now if this person doesn't like me!)

I have plans to finally enter the 21st century soon and get high-speed Internet, so hopefully the updates will start coming again. As you may or may not know, my laptop's monitor died several months ago, and I had all of my OKRoads and OKHighways pictures and pages on that computer. I do have a lot of it backed up on CD, but it would still take some downloading from the websites to my personal computer to get all of the pictures and pages onto the PC. And with my dial-up Internet's speed as slow as it's been lately (I think a power surge screwed it up), that process would take months if not years. I think it's about time I upgraded to high-speed. So hopefully that will spur some new UPDATES!! and some new pages will be made again.

Anyway, I hope all of you out there are doing great. See y'all later, and drive safely.

Good morning. I am usually not awake at this hour, but am today because today is the day I go to Memphis! I do plan to take road sign pictures, of course, but the weather looks like it's gonna be cloudy and rainy for much, if not all, of the trip. On Friday morning, I hope to take a trip around the Memphis area and take pictures of some of the area interstates. Check back next week for pictures.

Good evening. This past week, I learned that I will be going to Memphis on May 9 for a work-related training class. So that means I get to take a roadtrip to Memphis! I realize I've covered Interstate 40 in both directions between Oklahoma City and Memphis, but I have not covered westbound Interstate 40 completely. And I also have a friend (the same one whom I mentioned last week) who lives on the way, so I will be spending time with this person sooner than planned! Things are going pretty good right now. I did have a flat tire yesterday, though, but I got that fixed so hopefully I won't have any problems with it on the trip to and from Memphis.

Another good thing that happened was that today was the best day on the bus that we've had in the 4 years we've been in the area the route has been in. We had 24 total riders and 12 first-time riders. The Lord has been really good to me, and am thankful for it. I don't deserve it, that's for sure.

So in the next month, I have plans to take roadtrips to Memphis and to Eureka Springs, both to see the same person. This ushers in a new era of the OKRoads roadtrip. Used to be, I took roadtrips to see as much of the country as possible. Now, I take roadtrips to spend time with friends. It's a new era for me, and I'm liking it.

Good evening. I hope your week was better than mine. I think if we just skipped this past week in the calendar from now on, everybody would be better off. To recap, my Sunday School teacher died on Sunday, there was the Virginia Tech shooting Monday, the 12th anniversary of the OKC bombing was Thursday, and the anniversary of the Columbine shooting was Friday. One good thing did happen this past week though...

I began the process of setting up a Memorial Day weekend roadtrip! This trip will take me to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where I will spend the weekend with a friend of mine. :) I believe we are going to have a wonderful time, and are already excited about making the trip! I just wish it was closer than 33 days away, but let the countdown begin! :)

Speaking of roadtrips, due to last week's events I didn't even write about the trip to Kansas City to see my cousin's wedding, so here's a quick recap:

Anyway, hope all is well with the rest of you in road scholar land. See y'all later, and drive safely.

Good evening and welcome to a rare Tuesday edition of the rant. After ranting last night, and after being distracted by work today, I must say I feel a lot better now that I got that off my chest. I remembered some things that my Sunday School teacher told me a long time ago and it inspired me to go on. So it's gonna be hard, but with God's help I am going to return to church tomorrow night as usual and try to move on. The thought of being in the same place that this happened still gives me chills but I've gotta move on.

Good evening. The good news is, my cousin got married, and the weather, although it was rainy on Friday and snowed a little Friday night, cooperated after that, and the drive home was in perfect weather. The bad news is, upon returning home yesterday afternoon, I learned my longtime Sunday School teacher was killed in a freak accident yesterday afternoon at the church auditorium. I won't go into details here but it's chilling. It's so chilling that I don't know if I can bring myself to go back to church ever again. It'll just be too hard not to think of how he died and where he died. Bro. Larry was not a normal Sunday School teacher. I looked up to him (and a couple of other men at the church) as a father figure after my own father passed away 11 years ago. I feel like I've lost my dad all over again.

And it sucks enough that he died the way he did, but you know what blows my mind even more? I have barely heard anything at all from my church family about this. It's been 30 hours since this happened and nobody has called to ask how I'm doing and how I'm handling this (except for the lady who also helps in the class, thank God for her). I told a few people I was gonna be gone all weekend, wouldn't you think that they'd get it straight in their minds that, oh yeah, Eric's gone, and, oh yeah, he may want to know that his Sunday School teacher's now dead. But nope, it hasn't happened. I found out about this whole ordeal from one of my best friends who hasn't even gone to that church in two years! Yeah, someone who doesn't even go to church there anymore found out before I did! Yeah it's the biggest bunch of bull I've ever heard. It's almost like my church family doesn't care about me. I've gotten more support from my co-workers and my Internet friends than my church family. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Just because I'm the only one in my family who goes to that church and just happened to be gone the one weekend this happened (and plus I'm not a Bible college student either!) does not mean that I should be treated as anybody different, but I'm afraid it has happened time and time again. I thought my church family was supposed to be there during tough times, and I know this has to be tough on them too. But still when my phone isn't ringing at all with anybody calling to see how I'm handling this it really makes me question my church membership. And the fact that this incident happened right in the church auditorium ain't giving me any reason to go back, that's for sure. The memorial service is Thursday morning, I'll be there with my mom by my side. But after that I can't see myself going back to that church again. If this is how it's gonna be then I'm not gonna take it.

Good evening. It has been very unseasonably cold here the past few days. Thankfully it hasn't snowed here, but it did snow in Wichita on Thursday, which is where I spent Friday night and the first half of Saturday. I did take a few pictures of road signs, mostly along Interstate 235, Kansas 254, and U.S. 81. This week's picture of the week is one of the pictures I took.

I'm going back to Kansas this Friday, this time it's for my cousin's wedding in the Kansas City area. There probably won't be very many pictures from that trip, since I went the exact same way back in December when this same cousin graduated college.

Good evening. First off, I apologize for not doing anything on this site for over a month. I have been busy at work and have not felt like updating the site. But now I do feel like updating so here we are. Life has been pretty good lately. I feel like some things are finally coming into place that will have a positive effect on the rest of my life, things that mean a lot more than taking pictures of road signs across the country. But, anyway, this weekend will be the first of two consecutive weekends I will be taking a roadtrip to Kansas. The trips are for different reasons but it will still get me out of Oklahoma for a couple days.

That's about all I have for tonight. Hopefully I'll get back to updating this site somewhat. See y'all later, and drive safely.

Good evening. Yet again I am a day late. Technically I'm two days late, since I used to do this update on Sunday nights. See what not going on a long roadtrip for a long time does to a road scholar like me?

There's not too much to report this week. I'm still alive and still breathing, so that's good.

Good evening. Again last week I forgot to change everything and didn't realize it until Thursday. Then I forgot to do this week's update until Tuesday night (tonight). I've been busy chatting with other people who celebrate tomorrow as Single Awareness Day (or S.A.D. for short) and haven't remembered to update the site. So here I am.

Anyway, life is going pretty good. I still have a job, I still have friends and am making more friends, and am still hoping and praying that my Mrs. will come along soon, and I think she will. Hopefully tomorrow will be the final S.A.D. of my life, then I can start celebrating V-Day. Until then, tomorrow is S.A.D.

Good evening. Hope y'all are doing great. As for me, I'm doing pretty good. Life is going on as usual, no major changes. The only noteworthy thing to mention is that at the elementary school that I attended way back in the day, they have a wonderful "sign goof" on their marquee. It says "maintenane men" instead of "maintenance men". Makes me feel good to know that the people at the place I went to elimentry skoul kant spel korectle. :) See how much going to that school helped me? :) Hopefully I'll remember to take my camera and get a pic of it before they change it.

Good evening. In case you're wondering, no I didn't fall off the face of planet Earth. My first two initials may be ET, but I have not spent any time in Mars. I realized last Thursday that I hadn't updated my pictures of the week, so I decided to just wait until Monday to change them. So the websites now have a new POTW on them.

Anyway, here at OKRoads headquarters, we got a lot of sleet during the weekend of the 13th and 14th. I stayed at home the whole weekend and didn't leave the house for anything. Then Saturday we were forecasted to get up to 10 inches of snow. Yeah right! We got maybe 10 snow flurries! It rained most of the day Saturday, and yesterday I had a normal Sunday. We ran the church bus, I went to both church services, and had a normal Sunday, well, except for a little slipping and sliding on the roads yesterday morning but thankfully I haven't hit any curbs, yet. Besides that, all I've done the past two weeks is go to work and try to work on meeting Mrs. OKRoads, which is actually seemingly making some progress for a change. The future looks very promising, hopefully mentioning it here won't ruin it. Knowing me, it will...

That's all I have to write for tonight. See y'all later, drive safely, and watch out for all the new potholes that have sprung up because of this weather. I saw a pothole yesterday on westbound S.W. 74th St. near Penn that literally took up the whole right lane! I think it could swallow a Ford Festiva! So watch where you're driving out there as much as possible.

Good evening. I am currently watching Ohio State get stomped by Florida in the BCS National Championship game. That means that Boise State will be the only undefeated team this season, after they beat the Oklahoma Sooners last Monday. That makes me a little angry, because Oklahoma should have beaten BSU. Oh well, it's just a game.

Anyway, the first week of 2007 was OK, I guess. Nothing too out of the ordinary happened. Therefore I have nothing to write about. So see y'all later, and drive safely.

Good evening! In 41 minutes, it will be 2007, and the door will close on 2006. This year was OK for me, it wasn't great but it wasn't terrible either. In the roadtrip world, this year was terrible compared to the previous several years. I only took one major trip, and that was the West Texas Roadtrip in April. I was in four states this year, which is a very low number for me. Oh well. I would say the biggest road-related development this year was the debut of the new state highway shields in Oklahoma. No more circle, we now have the state outline in our state highway shields.

Shortly, I will upload the pictures of the newly reconstructed section of Interstate 35 in north Moore. The pictures will be at http://www.okhighways.com/123006/ . OK 77 is still signed on all ground-level assurance shields. U.S. 77 is properly signed on the overhead signs, however. Also included on that page are pictures of the newly reconstructed section of U.S. 77 at N. 63rd St. This short section is now four lanes wide in each direction. Northbound U.S. 77 goes from two lanes to four lanes pretty quickly at the N. 63rd overpass. Southbound U.S. 77 goes from four lanes to two lanes within a one-mile section. The left lane ends just south of Wilshire, and the right lane ends at N. 63rd.

Well I'm still not completely over being sick, although I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel. The past two days I didn't eat very much, but today I ate normally and did fine.

I don't really have any different goals for 2007 than I did for 2006. I'm still looking for a Mrs., I do have a better job this year than I did last year at this time (no more overnights!), but still have the desire to move up, and I would like to live another year.

That's all I have to say for this year. See y'all later, and please, drive safely in the new year.

Good afternoon, and Merry Christmas! Unfortunately, I've been sick the past couple days, so my first Christmas off work in three years hasn't gone that great so far. Oh well, I get presents later today, so maybe that will make me feel better. I don't know, though, I didn't really ask for anything for Christmas. I try not to get caught up in all the hoopla about presents and Satan Claus, er, I mean, Santa Claus (hey, the same letters are used in Satan as Santa) and all that stuff. But I have sort of received a present; the construction on Interstate 35 in north Moore is almost complete! I drove it a couple times this weekend, it is nice. Two more sign goofs have sprung up:

1) Again, OK 77 is signed instead of U.S. 77, this time it's on the northbound frontage road at the on-ramp north of N. 12th St. That's now three times that OK 77 is signed along this one-mile section.

2) The advance signage for Exit 118 on southbound Interstate 35 (N. 12th) says 1/4 miles instead of 1/4 mile. Also, this exit is now located just south of 27th St. which eliminates the weaving problem that existed before.

Also, a new addition is new signage on the on-ramp to Interstate 35 North that says "no access to Shields Blvd." The off-ramp for Shields (which is still a left-hand exit), departs the interstate at almost exactly the same point where the on-ramp enters the freeway. Pictures will be coming soon. The only ramp left to open is the on-ramp from southbound Shields to Interstate 35 South, which by the way will be a one-lane ramp instead of two lanes like the old ramp was. Motorists are given a lengthy acceleration lane once they reach the interstate, the lane ends just past 12th St., which means the lane is about 1/2 mile long.

Good evening. Yesterday afternoon I returned from a 3-day trip to the Kansas City area to see my cousin graduate from college. Some of the roadgeek highlights include:

In other roadgeek news, traffic is now using the new northbound lanes on Interstate 35 in north Moore. There is still some work to be done, but the light is at the end of the tunnel of this construction project. The next construction project on Interstate 35 (does it ever end?!) will be the reconstruction of the Interstate 240 interchange (it's about @)$*^ time!) beginning sometime in 2008, which is about the time that ODOT is predicting that the new I-40 alignment near downtown will be done.

Well, the something positive that I predicted last week would happen in the near future did happen last week. Actually it happened one week ago tonight. I won't go into details though because I don't know what will happen with it, if anything at all. So I'll leave it at that, but those of you who know me really well can probably figure some of it out. :)

Good evening. The widening/reconstruction project along Interstate 35 in north Moore is nearing completion. Most signage has gone up in the past week, especially along northbound. Pictures of the construction progress can be seen at http://www.okhighways.com/120906. You'll have to pardon the dirty windshield; we're still recovering from the winter storm and I didn't clean off the windshield good enough. The picture of the week at OKHighways is of the northbound Interstate 35/U.S. 77 shield assembly. U.S. 77 is cosigned with the interstate throughout the construction area, which is surprising considering that it is rarely signed otherwise between Norman and downtown Oklahoma City. However, in both directions of the interstate, the ground-level assurance shields are for Interstate 35 and OK 77, complete with a new-style OK 77 shield. Oops! That's why I took pictures yesterday before the signmakers realize their mistake and change the OK 77 shields to U.S. 77 shields.

Speaking of yesterday, I did not take the trip to Stillwater that I had hoped to take. Oh well. This weekend I'll get to take a trip to Kansas for my cousin's college graduation, which will be my first time out of state since Memorial Day. It's been almost seven months since I've been out of state! What's wrong with me?! I'm the one who usually goes out-of-state all the time! Oh well that's what happens in the real world. I feel like singing the Alan Jackson song, "here in the real world, it's not easy at all..."

Well, that is all I have to say tonight. Even though the bus today had its first one-handed day in a long time (we had 5, not quite double-digits), I am still happy about where my life is at this point and am hoping that the near future includes something very positive that has not happened to me before. See y'all later, and drive safely.

Good evening. Last Wednesday and Thursday we got to go through a winter storm here in Oklahoma City. Of course Oklahomans sometimes don't quite know how to drive in the ice and snow, so there were a lot of accidents. I had to work both days during the storm; it was an experience driving to work. I got to drive home from work late Thursday afternoon in blizzard-like whiteout conditions. That was interesting. Plus, my check engine light came on during that whiteout trip home. Oh well, it ain't the first time that light's come on. I probably just didn't close the gas cap enough last time I filled up.

Anyway, enough about the winter storm, let's talk about roads. Sign bridges are beginning to go up along Interstate 35 northbound in the Shields construction zone. This is a good sign (literally) that construction is nearing completion. Part of me is wondering if the new signs will be in Clearview; I noticed the first Clearview signs in Oklahoma that I have seen; they are on Interstate 40 in Del City at the Sooner Road overpass. The Clearview signs are for the bridge's memorial name (I think it's the Don Reynolds Memorial Bridge), but the signs are definitely Clearview, no doubt about it. Kinda makes me want to cringe, but anyway, I guess it's the wave of the future. Speaking of the future, I may get to go on a roadtrip of sorts this Saturday afternoon up to the land of the Oklahoma State Cowboys, otherwise known as Stillwater. This trip, though, won't be just to take pictures of road signs, although I do plan on doing that. Nope, this trip is mainly because I hope to visit a new friend of mine and meet this person face-to-face for the first time. I won't go into any more details. ;-)

Last night I had the privilege of attending the Gaither Homecoming gospel concert at the Ford Center in downtown OKC. It was awesome! My friend and I had seats on the floor level, on the side of the stage, four rows back. That put me pretty close to some of gospel's most well-known names, including Bill & Gloria Gaither, Ernie Haase, and much more. I just wish I had remembered to take my camera; cameras were allowed in the concert. Oh well.

Yesterday was also a great day because the OU Sooners won the Big 12 championship. They will now go to the Fiesta Bowl to play BSU, otherwise known as Boise State. I'm also happy that Florida jumped over Michigan in the polls and will play Ohio State for the national championship, as much as I love Michigan, I don't think Ohio State-Michigan is a true national championship game, considering they played a couple weeks ago and are in the same conference. So now Florida will have a chance to win both the men's basketball and football championships in a one-year period. It's good times in Gainesville right now.

Well that's all I have for tonight. It was another long Saturday yesterday so I need to make up rest that I didn't get last night. See y'all later, and drive safely.

Good evening. This was a wonderful weekend in college football, at least, in my opinion it was. Texas lost, and Oklahoma won, giving Oklahoma the Big 12 South championship and a spot in the Big 12 championship game. It's been a few years since Texas lost two games in a row in college football; they picked a wonderful time to lose two in a row. ;-) BOOMER SOONER!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, enough about that state south of the Red River. Last week was an uneventful week. I didn't even work 30 hours all week. And when I was at work, I probably wasn't actually doing anything for most of that time, because there was little to do.

In three weeks I will finally get out of Oklahoma for a couple days. I will be traveling to northeast Kansas to see my cousin graduate from college. Of course, the camera will be going along, but since my laptop monitor still doesn't quite work right, there probably won't be any updates until I get back. I'll probably take the laptop along in case it decides it wants to work for a while, but it probably won't work. Oh well.

I have nothing else to say tonight and I am tired and would like to get some sleep. See y'all later, and drive safely.

Good evening. Last week was another fairly boring week at work, and this week doesn't look any more exciting. Oh well. I do get the day off Thursday for Thanksgiving, so that's good. Part of me wants to do a roadtrip on that day, since Thanksgiving will be a small mother-and-me gathering this year, but I don't know if I want to. Some of these small towns that normally have gas stations open may not on Thanksgiving, and that may not be good if I run out of gas in the middle of nowhere. Maybe I'll take a trip down to McClain County and take pictures of some new OK 24, OK 74, OK 76, OK 37, and OK 59 shields. I'll have to see how it goes. Maybe I'll actually do some website work on my day off. Maybe...

Anyway, this morning on the bus started out slow but we ended up with 11 this morning. That clinches our third straight month of double-digit average on the bus! It doesn't seem like that long ago that I was questioning how much longer the route would last, now it's like how much more can it grow? I like it. The Lord has been really good to Bus 1 lately; I know I don't deserve to see it grow like this and am thankful to have been able to see it happen.

Well I hope everybody out there who actually reads my rant has a wonderful Thanksgiving week. See y'all later, and please drive safely.

Good evening. I had a fairly good week. Got to enjoy a church Sunday School activity on Friday night, and even had the chance to bring a couple friends as visitors. We had a good time. Then I go to hang out with a couple other friends last night and had fun with them as well. I'm trying to have some kind of social life; I can't sit here at home forever. That's how you make friends anyway. :)

I hope to be off work sometime next week during the Thanksgiving weekend so I can take a mini-roadtrip and take some pictures of new state highway shields around the state. By now most of them should be up. I was in Shawnee last night and there are new OK 3E and OK 18 shields all over that city.

Good evening. No, I am not 55 years old, and won't be for another 32 years. But the church I attend celebrated its 55th birthday today. It was a wonderful day of celebration and thankfulness to God for the 55 years that He has given to the church. Speaking of church, it was yet another double-digit day! We had 13 today on the bus. It's going good, really good. I like it.

It was a really boring week at work last week. It seemed like I sat around and did nothing for most of the week. At least I got paid for it. :) Business is starting to slow down a bit now that the holidays are approaching.

I don't have anything else to say tonight, except that I am still very happy about where my life is at right now. See y'all later, and drive safely.

Good evening. Despite some setbacks this morning and several people that said no, we still had 11 ride the church bus in which I am the captain. So that means our average for the month is 14; we were not in the single digits one Sunday this month. It has been a long time since that has happened; for a while, if we had one Sunday in a month in the double digits, that would've been an awesome month. Not anymore.

Last week was fairly normal. It started with a special revival time at the church, which was a blessing. Then it ended with a hayride yesterday, another church function. So it was a fairly activity filled week, with most of the activity church related. That's good, it keeps me out of trouble, at least for a while.

Construction is nearing completion on Interstate 35 in north Moore between N. 12th and N. 27th. Concrete has been poured for the new northbound lanes, and things are starting to take shape. New fences are beginning to be put up that will separate the frontage roads from the interstate. It is scheduled to be finished around December or January; it looks like they will make that goal.

Good evening. Yesterday afternoon, with a coldfront blowing through and the wind howling, I took a short trip out west expecting to see OK 152's new alignment construction nearly completed. I was pleasantly surprised to see that OK 152 is now completed! Now the OK 152 freeway goes from Council Road east to Interstate 44. I will upload pictures of the new OK 152 shortly; you will find them at http://www.okhighways.com/102106 . The skies look really weird, especially in the westbound pictures, because I took them as I was literally driving through a coldfront that was moving from west to east. It was an interesting experience. I should've waited until today to take the pics; it was clear skies all day. It started out clear yesterday but became cloudy very quickly when the coldfront blew through. I may actually do an update this week and post pics of the construction progress on the OK 152 realignment page over at OKHighways; that page (along with many other pages, I know!!) need an update badly.

We had 17 on the bus today, which means that even if we don't run the bus at all next Sunday, our average for the month will still be 12. Of course, we're gonna run the bus, Lord willing, but it's nice to have a double-digit average clinched for the 2nd straight month. After not having an average over 5 for a few months, it's nice to be in double digits.

There is nothing else for me to say tonight, other than I feel pretty good right now about where my life is at. See y'all later, and drive safely.

Good evening. Last week was not nearly as busy as the previous two weeks had been. It was kind of nice. Hopefully this week will be the same.

The Detroit Tigers have now advanced to the World Series after sweeping the A's in four games. Hopefully the Tigers can bring a baseball championship to Detroit. I am considering switching allegiances for my favorite baseball team from the Atlanta Braves to the Tigers. At least the Tigers can make it to the World Series. And, no, I'm not jumping on the bandwagon; I've probably been a Tigers fan longer than a Braves fan, because my dad grew up in Detroit. It's just that the Tigers may become my favorite team if they keep this up.

Good evening. Last week was a very very busy week of work for me, especially the last couple days of the week. I ended up working about 50 hours last week. It has made me a bit tired! But at least I wasn't answering phones for all 50 of those hours.

Today was another great day on the bus, as we had 13 ride this morning. We had 17 last Sunday, so that means we just need to average 6 2/3 kids per week for the rest of this month and we will have an average in the double digits again for the month of October! For a route that barely averaged 2 or 3 all summer, and that had one (count it, one) double-digit day in the first 7 1/2 months of this year, we're doing all right. And all the glory for it goes to the Lord, because it ain't me, I definitely know that for sure!

I saw a post on the misc.transport.road newsgroup from one of the local guys who snapped a couple pics of a temporary sign goof in northwest OKC. I guess some new state highway shields were put up on some BGS's on OK 3 East/OK 74 South approaching OK 66. Only problem is, where the OK 66 shields should have been, OK 3 shields were in place instead! Oops! Apparently the shields have been replaced with the proper OK 66 shields. I'm rarely in that part of the city, so I'm glad that those pics were taken. I still wish I would've taken a picture of the error signs on both directions of Interstate 40 that had an OK 3 shield instead of a U.S. 270 shield on the pull-through panels at the Interstate 44/OK 3 interchange. That goof lasted for a couple weeks, but by the time I got my camera up there, the OK 3 shields were covered with U.S. 270 shields.

I have no comment on a particular sporting event involving Oklahomans that occurred yesterday at a place south of the Red River. However, I am rejoicing that the Yankees are out of the playoffs once again. Not only that, but they were knocked out by my dad's favorite team, the Detroit Tigers. I like it.

That's all I have to say tonight. I'm pretty tired, so hopefully I'll get some good sleep tonight. See y'all later, and drive safely.

Good evening. It has been a really action-packed weekend for me, but it has been good. I had to work for about 40 minutes yesterday morning to do a report for the end of the accounting period, then I went to bus visitation, visited the bus route, then ate lunch, then got on the church bus and picked up kids for the fall festival carnival we had (which by the way had 2,500 people there!! not all of them were on my bus though LOL), then took them back home after the carnival, then I dropped my friend off at his dorm room, then I finally went home. Then today I got on the church bus, picked up 17 people (that's right, we had 17 on the bus today!!! Another new record for the year), went to church, dropped them back off at their houses, ate lunch, went home, chatted with a friend online, took a short nap, got up, went back to church, then went to dinner, then back home again where I chatted with two friends online (I talked to one on the phone for a little bit too) and now I'm ranting. Good thing I don't have to be at work until 9 tomorrow morning.

Anyway I still haven't done anything about my laptop yet. I'm too busy chatting with friends these days. Maybe this week there will be an actual update. Hopefully by the end of the month the long-promised new OKHighways.com home page will be up and running. The preview is still up, though. In other OKHighways news, yesterday I saw construction progress on the OK 152 realignment/Airport Rd. extension. The lanes are paved, looks like about all that's needed is striping and signage. It is supposed to open this month. And I will be there with camera in tow to take pictures.

I had to get new brakes and a new serpentine belt put on my car this past Tuesday. The car sounded really really bad coming home from work Monday, so I decided to take it in. I took a cab to work Tuesday morning; cost me $16.70. The repairs to the car cost about $325. It's worth it, though, to not have weird noises coming from under the hood. The only weird noises coming out of my car are my attempts to sing tenor with and/or bass whatever Southern gospel quartet is playing on my CD player. :)

That's about all I have for tonight. I feel like I've been typing all night. Oh wait, I have been! See y'all later, and drive safely.