Back in the Sooner State

Issue #38

Hello there faithful readers!

Well, we made it back to Oklahoma. We have been back almost a week now and if you are wondering, no, we have not finished unpacking. In fact, we are nowhere near to being done. The drive down itself was mostly uneventful although a pain in the arse. While the wife and drove down in her car with the kid and the cats, I drove down in a 26 foot trailer that had a car trailer attached to the back that towed my car. Not terribly fun. Especially not in Missouri where there were a lot of hills. Plus the truck was a diesel so it had no speed to it. The only saving grace is that I did not do it all by myself. We flew a friend of ours up to help me drive the truck back down so we took turns. We thought about driving straight through but only made it as far as a little town in Missouri called St. Clair (I think it was St. Clair) where we stopped for the night.

In any case, we are now in Norman, Oklahoma. It is quite a bit different from Edmond, Oklahoma where we were living before we moved to Michigan. I like it so far. The house is nice. It will of course be a lot better once we get everything unpacked.

Anyway, I’m glad to be back in Oklahoma. It is weird how you can think a certain way about a place, negatively in this case and once you leave it, you realize how much you actually took it for granted. Oklahoma has its flaws but overall, I like it better than where we were in Michigan. I mean, there are a few things that I will miss from up there but, like I said, overall, it is better here. At least for us.

Here is a picture of the boys looked out the window in our sun room:

And here is a picture of the girls, looking out the window of the outside door of my office:

M3GAN - I watched this one with my oldest and her husband and my youngest. This movie was kind of weird but in a good way. Kind of creepy. Although it is something I probably wouldn’t go pay and see again, I would recommend it. Kind of a modern take on the Child’s Play franchise.

A Man Called Otto - I saw this one by myself. It was the last movie I saw before I left Michigan. I remember seeing the trailer for this one during one of the many movies I had watched throughout 2022 and thinking it looked interesting. It was enjoyable. Funny at times and sad at others. Another one I would not pay to go see again but I’d probably watch it again if it came to one of my streaming services.

John Wick - Nearly 10 years after the release of the first of the series, I finally got around to watching the John Wick movies. There really was no reason that I can come up with as to why I never watched these movies. I just never got around to it and I guess they didn’t seem important enough for me to really bother. I did really enjoy these movies though and I’m glad I finally watched them. Now I’m ready for the 4th one to come out later this year.

Plane - I saw this one yesterday (Thursday night) at a theater here in Norman. The movie was fine. Nothing to write home about. At the very least it got me into the theater that I will most likely frequent here since it is the closest one. There was an actor in the movie that, throughout the entire movie, I kept thinking I knew him from somewhere and couldn’t figure it out. Once the credits rolled and his name popped up, I realized that it was the actor that played Luke Cage.

The day after I got back to Oklahoma, I also watched Violent Night for the third time. To be fair, I only watched it because I was hanging out with my son (who stayed in Oklahoma when we moved to Michigan) and he had never seen it. I still enjoyed it and so did he.

If you are wondering why I haven’t been writing much on this section of the newsletter, it is because both Rogue One Radio and Radio Unfriendly have been on hiatus while I dealt with moving stuff. Rogue One Radio will be back on Tuesday, February 7th for it’s 2nd annual Star Wars Podcast Day episode. Radio Unfriendly will also eventually be back although with some slight changes.

I will however, post a link from my friend Dave’s One Band 5 Songs podcast. Last week, he did an episode about Nashville, Tennessee’s Benchmarks. Good band. Good episode. You can listen to it on Spotify here:

He also did an episode this week about Smashing Pumpkins but I decided to post the one about Benchmarks because I enjoyed that episode more. If you go to that Spotify link, you should be able to figure out how to get to the Pumpkins episodes if you are interested.

On Wednesday, I went to a brick and mortar comic book shop called Speeding Bullet to see the new stuff that came out that day. I picked up a copy of One Bad Day: Bane #1 and a few more issues of the new Dan Slott Spider-Man series that I mentioned in the last issue.

One of the great things about living in Norman is that the library system here is really great. A thousand times better, in my humble opinion, than the system up in the area of Michigan we were in. So with a better library system, of course, comes trips to the library and picking up a crap ton of graphic novels. Right now, I’m working my way through the Spider-Man Clone Conspiracy collection.

Instead of a track of the week, I’m going to post my most listened to artists from this week (according to Last.fm). It is an interesting mix I think. You can think Dave of One Band Five Songs for the Smashing Pumpkins entry. Also, this list only includes what I’ve listened to on Spotify. I don’t think Last.fm will let me add in my Apple Music listening habits.

Well, that is it for this week. Have a great weekend and remember to BE MORE KIND!