And So it Ends....

I'm ending this year's project where I began.  At the building that used to be Ace Hardware on Main Street in Norman, Oklahoma. It was a Friday.  


August 19, 2011:  

August 20, 2010: 

I took my first picture pretty much on a whim--about five minutes after I decided I would take a picture every day for a year.  


Now that it's come to a close, I've been reflecting.  


Here are some numbers and some thoughts:


1) I recklessly threw out that I would  do a Hummer scavenger hunt this year.  That never happened. 
2) I did, however, label 23 pictures "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go" (see the cloud in the right column under the heading "My Blatherings" and click the label to view all the pictures)
3) "Brands" was the most popular label, with 86 pictures being labeled as such (for the record, most pictures had more than one label) 
4) The second most popular label was "Cheap Crap Made in China", with 65 photos carrying that label.  
5) I know for a fact that you can point to any picture I took this past year and I can tell you where I was when I snapped the shot. I cannot guarantee that fact will remain a year from now. I'm not getting any younger. 
6) I cannot tell a lie.  In 365 days, there were two where I forgot to take a picture and had to use one from a previous day.  This day was one of them.  I honestly can't remember when the other one was, but I know it was in February or March.  I think.  
7) Someone asked me about 2/3 of the way through what my favorite picture was so far.  At the time I said this one.  But I like this one too.  And this one.  And this one.  Oh, and this one.   The Boy likes this one. 
8) I maintain this was the worst picture I took all year.  
9)  October 8, 2010 gas was $2.58/G.  On January 22, 2011 gas was $2.92/G.  Today I paid $3.29/G. (All prices listed were in Norman, Oklahoma)
10) Yes. There actually was at least one shot that I meant to get and never did.  Ironically, it's walking distance from the house.  

I'm taking a break from taking pictures, but I'll be back soon!  As I've stated, I have a new project on tap, although due to recent equipment issues (which I'll explain later) I might have to put it off a bit.  Rest assured my ranting will not stop.  -> 

Dell

We have a Dell plant in Oklahoma City.  I've always wondered what they do there. Without checking The Googles, I'm going go to assume it's a call center.  I just drove by it today, in fact. Stand by while I check to see if I'm correct...


BINGO!  


Although Dell calls it a "Customer Contact Center".  Which makes the job all the more appealing, I'm sure.  -> 

Mansions

My project is quickly coming to a close.  I started it on Friday, August 20, 2010 and by my calculations, my year should conclude on August 19th, a mere 8 days away. 

Right?

And yet the numbers don't add up.  When I go to my Flickr stream, and here on the blog, I'm one picture short. 

It's driving me insane. 

I went through the pictures one. by. effing. one. the other day and it would appear that I haven't missed any days.  But that can't be right, can it?

You tell me, if you take pictures for 365 days, day #365 ends the day before you started the previous year, right? Right.  The easiest way to think about it is January 1 to December 31.  Which means I have to weed through 356 pictures.  Again. 

Joy. 

Say you: You can't just leave it or....

Say me: Don't even go there. 

On a different note, I have my new project worked out so stay tuned!  I'm willing to share this much with you: It will not be a picture every day but a picture every week. In the interim, I will continue to blog about life in the trenches.  

Lastly, my pic of the day.  I would submit it, except it would appear Friends of Irony no longer exists.  Too bad.  -> 

UPDATE: I found it!  May 30th was missing.  Now to just track down the discrepancy here on the blog....

INC

3104 NW 23rd

Do you have one of these places in your town? This right here is evidence of how our fast food nation business model has run amuck.

The Dental Depot. Complete with a cute little train engine in the parking lot and lots of cookie-cutter landscaping in an poor attempt to make the customer the patient feel as if he's walking into an actual medical office. As opposed to some kitschy franchise. Which is all they are. I know of three of these offices in the Oklahoma City metro area, and I've no doubt there are more.

What really baffles me is who on earth came up with the concept of coupling train depots with root canals? How does this marriage even work? Because I don't know about you, but when I think of getting my teeth cleaned in conjunction with the hygienist fussing at me for not flossing regularly, the first thing that comes to my mind is "laughing gas" not "steam engines."

Oh!!

Never mind. DUH! Laughing gas was impetus.

Makes total sense now. ->




-Posted using (enter requisite phrase which brags about your cool gadgets and applications for said gadget here)

regret

A Moment of Silence

This used to be a pancake house.  May it rest in peace. -> 

Open 10 AM

Surfside Beach, South Carolina, is not hurting for mini-golf courses (for the record, I effing hate mini-golf.  HATE.)  I'm going to guess that there are at least 250 of them.  


Ok, maybe not 250 of them.  


But  a lot.  -> 

Blue Thrown (away)

 

Your local Habitat For Humanity ReStore (AKA Commode Rest Home) is the place to go for mismatched and/or blue toilets.  Should you be so inclined to go for a blue toilet.  They also had pink one and mint green one if those colors better suit your tastes.  Or the lovely gold with crimson seat you see there to the right...  

For the record, I didn't get the blue one.  I got a white one.  At Locke.  Yes, it's new.  Discontinued floor model if you must know.  But I'm reusing the handle I currently have because the floor model didn't come with one.  So there.  -> 

Tile

The Bathroom Project, which started earlier this year, is now in full swing.  We dropped $500 on tile yesterday and we still have a long way to go.  So for the foreseeable future (read: until this baby is DONE) I will likely have construction related pictures posted.  Which is merely consumption on a larger scale.  I may or may not post finished pics of the room.  I will absolutely pat myself on the back for any and all attempts I make at reducing, reusing and recycling.  Naturally I will brag about  said attempts here. 

So far I have none.  

But I plan on it!  

Really!  

On a completely unrelated noted, I've had two people ask me in the past few days if I take several pictures at once and "can" them for later use.  

The answer is that with the exception of one picture, no.  For this project, I've taken a picture every single day (a "day" for me is 12:00 am to 11:59 pm) for the past nine months, although obviously I get them posted later.  The date posted in conjunction with the picture on the blog is the date I actually took the photo.  


Getting close now...I only have until August 19th (I think).  I can't believe I'm on the downward slope of this.  A year goes by fast.  ->

Mobile

 

Well.  Taking a picture of the parking lot seemed a good idea at the time.  ->

Since 1950

There's a new fast food sheriff in town. I think the last time I ate at a Whataburger I was still in high school. (To preserve my sanity and my delusions of youth, I refuse to type in how long ago that was.)  


This place is open 24 hours, but I think that's universal.  At any rate, I've driven by it numerous times at all hours and there's always a line wrapped around the place.  


Which I don't get.  Because, after all, it's just a fast food burger, right?  ->  

Equal

NO Credit Scoring.  

This huge banner is in front of one of the banks about a half mile from my house. 

Here's a better look:  

Huh. 

I'll admit I'm no economist, but correct me if I'm wrong: isn't not checking credit scores for housing loans what contributed to, you know, the almost collapse of the global economy?   ->

PS: This photo marks the HALF WAY point!  WHEEE!!  

We Buy

 

(Taken at 3 in the morning on the way to the hospital.  Yeah, I stopped in the middle of the road, left my car running, left the driver's side door open and took several shots of this.  What of it?)  

What's interesting about this sign is its location.  Generally advertisements such as this are in high traffic areas.  But this one is plucked down at weird 3-way intersection on a road in OKC that feels rural what with the horse farms that line both sides of the street and all. Only residents and hospital employees have reason to travel down that way.  I've never seen another one like this anywhere else. Which makes me wonder: Are they targeting a specific home owner? 

But hey!  If you want to sell your house you've got a number now.  No need to go through, you know, a realtor.  These guys seem reputable. -> 

P

 \
The family and I went out for catfish and then a Sunday drive today, which always lands us in downtown sections of rural Oklahoma towns.  


Today it was Pauls Valley. 


The pic above used to be a pawn shop:  

Yeah.  No loaded firearms, please.  We'll sell them to you, though.  For a really fair price!


I digress.  


I hope it's obvious from the two pictures above that what was once a business that provided people jobs and a service, such as it is with pawn shops, is now just a roofless (yes, the blue in those pictures is the sky), gutted out mess. 


Take a gander:  

Seeing places like this always makes me sad, because the downtown sections of rural towns are the historic areas.  So, a roofless, gutted out mess of a pawn shop on Main street in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma means a roofless, gutted out space in a building that was built over a century ago.  A time stamp today proves my point; this was on the threshold:  

I'm sure the city will opt to destroy it as opposed to refurbishing, given the economic climate and the fact that Pauls Valley hardly has a booming tax base.  Although it does have its annual noodling tournament.  So it's got that going for it.  Which is great.

On the up side, we took back roads home and specifically looked for a farm that we saw back in March when we were roaming the state.  And when I say "farm", what I really mean is an enclosed, grass-less area caging calves, cows, what appeared to be alpaca, five broken down buses, a non-functioning washing machine, a van, a couple of trucks, several lawn mowers, an RV-ish-looking thing, an old Plymouth, some chickens, at least one pot-bellied pig and approximately 48 goats.  


We found it again.  Score.  -> 

Unlead

Man.  Gas has gone up in my area.  

(Respond with flatulence jokes at will) ->

LookGood

An eye sore on Main Street that's been boarded up for at least three years now.  No takers, obviously, despite the highly professional advertising they've got going on the plywood. 

This was, once upon a time, a gas station/convenience store/smoke shop.  Meaning that along with your Marlboro Reds and a tank a gas, you could buy zig zags, if that sort of smoking does anything for you.  

I smoked one clove cigarette a night for years (I quit a while ago although will indulge at Christmas) and we would buy our packs here on occasion.  The Geek pointed out to me once to notice the register readout the next time I bought them.  When I asked why, he told me just to notice, that I would find it interesting.

So I did. Sure enough, the little Asian man behind the counter charged me the correct amount for the packs, but the readout on the register said "gas".  And then I noticed it happened every time.  It didn't take us long to assume that there must of been some sort of tax evasion going on; Oklahoma taxes were over a dollar a pack at the time (Lord knows what they are now).  Not reporting those dollars can sure add up over the long haul. 

Huh.  

Maybe this is the reason they're closed now?  -> 

Stripped mall

Sheetrock, insulation, and other various and sundry building materials at a strip mall near my folks' house. At this point only a liquor store lives there.  Which is fitting, really.  ->

Devon and Friends

The Devon Tower is in the midst of construction in downtown OKC and I've been telling myself I was going to go up there and take some pictures.  Which is really easy to do at 3:30 in the morning in an urban area that effectively shuts down at 5:30 pm.  


Here is what my experience taught me:  


1. It's a snap to get a parking place down there at that time of day. In fact, it's so easy, I just drove right up and parked by the fences of the construction area.  No one said a word to me.  Well, that's not true as you will see in point number four. 


2. Those dudes are on the same vampire schedule I keep, because not only was the place lit up like a Christmas tree, there were workers on the job and those really cool cranes, which simultaneously fascinate and terrify me, were in motion. 


3. It is quite nippy when the cold front moves in with accompanying hurricane winds.  Especially when you're in heels and no coat.  


4. Note to self: It's not out of the realm that a woman alone with a phone will be approached by one of the natives (read: construction workers), who might make an effort to hit on her. I would be flattered except I'm fairly certain the guy was drunk. 


5. It's much harder than I thought to get a good shot of buildings under construction.  I wasn't able to get that close and somehow I think being directly under the petrifying cranes would make for a more engaging photo.  However I weathered near blizzard conditions and an inebriated neophyte to get it. Not to mention the fight with Blogger, which took hours of HTML finagling as a result of my whims and toying with the hues and saturation in my photo editor to bring you the Andy Warhol inspired grouping below.  


7.  The building kinda looks like a headless robot, doesn't it? Arms all flailing....

Bubba's Gas

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the Home Style Cooking portion of this sign is non-functioning.  Bubba's Gas, however, is open and ready for your business.  Be forewarned if you're looking for an ATM machine, he doesn't have one.  That's another 3 miles down the road.  

This is just but one of the jewels lurking in SW Oklahoma.  Aren't you jealous?

For the record, I'm hard-pressed to come up with another state that has more bubbas than my own.  Just sayin'.  

Say you:  I don't know...a lot of states have them

Say me: How many states consistently elect the likes of Jim Inhofe to the US Senate? 

Say you: Ummm...

Say me: I rest my case.  ->