Recent Work Done


Furnace



Ductwork





Electrical work



Circuit Box

My niece and nephew are visiting us. Aren't they cute?



They go home tommorrow to their mom and dad. They sure are sweet kids.

The roof has shingles.

They did it this morning, I think.




Upon entering the house we found the following items that had not been there on our previous visit:

Front Door



The shower/tub in the upstairs guest bedroom



And the shower in the master bathroom




Also, it looks like they got the rough plumbing done.

Windows & Tarpaper Added. Stacks of shingles are on the roof, ready to be applied.

The Floor Plan


Floor 1:


Floor 2

The House

The week before last we took a picture of the 'house.'



Just a foundation with some pipes sticking out of it. The next step was the framing which was supposed to start tomorrow. We checked in to see if the lumber had been dropped and what we found instead was this:




We were supposed to get a phone call from the construction manager the night before framing started but did not. The reason for this was so we could take pictures of the various phases as the frame was going up(we also wanted to pictures of the foundation being poured but didn't get the agreed upon call then, either).

We did take some pictures after we got used to the thing already being there. Behold:





Garage



Kitchen



Living Room



Loft



Master Bedroom



The view from upstairs


So there it is; our new house. Next week the plumbing, a/c, & electrical should be done.


We're looking at early October as a move-in date.

ITF/Las Vegas

We went to Vegas May 30-Jun 6. The primary purpose was to go to the International Trombone Festival but we had decided beforehand to stay a few extra days and meet some friends there and have some fun.

The ITF was a nice experience. It was nice to see some acquaintences that I hadn't see in a while and then there were a couple that I don't think that were that happy to see me. My UNT trombone teacher was there and was extremely busy but we got to talk for a few minutes. It seems that one of his students won the second trombone position with the Vienna Philharmonic. I was blown away. I didn't even know that they allowed Americans to try out. And it was his very first professional audition. Also, the 'TF' trombone quartet(also coached by the same teacher as Jeremy Wilson) from UNT won the quartet competition.

I also saw someone that I knew from BYU there, along with his son(whome I can't believe is 15 now). He's the Trombone professor at BYU-Idaho now. Good for him. He is one heck of a player.

I am a little curious why my former BYU roommate, now the BYU trombone prof, didn't show. Its only 7 hours straight down I-15 to lv from Provo. Maybe I'll shoot him an email.

ITF itself had many fine performances and lectures. I'm not remembering them all very well right now so I won't talk about it. That's what I get for not making my blog entry right when I got home.

The highlight of Friday was that night when we ate at the buffet at the Wynne Hotel. It was incredible having shrimp, crab legs that were split lengthwise(making meat extraction easier), pastas, chinese food, bbq, just EVERYTHING. Two thumbs up from up from us. Drawback? It was $36 each.

The ITF ended on Saturday. Monday afternoon we saw the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. The ads look very cool, showing a huge great whit with its gaping maw against the glass but the actual exhibit was a bit of a letdown. The biggest the sharks got was what I would say 'medium-sized.' Eh.

Our friends, 'Bob' and 'Elaine' arrived on Monday. That evening all of us went and saw the Blue Man Group. What a fantastic experience! They had a giant pvc pipe with bends and sliding sections and they made all kinds of cool sounds with it. There were a lot of flashes of color, long streams of recycled paper rolling over the audience, and other audience participation. I would HIGHLY recommend it.






The next day we walked around a lot, checking out the casinos. We tried to ride rollercoasters at both New York, New York and Stratosphere but they both closed down because of high winds. We checked back on each but no luck. By afternoon I was really wishing that I had brought my newer tennis shoes because my feet were hurting, blisters and all. We stopped at a drugstore-like enclave and I played dr on my feet but I'm not sure that it helped all that much. We ate dinner at Mandalay Bay buffet which was not quite as good as Wynn's but not nearly as expensive($20), either. Bob suggested that we check out Mama Mia, the ABBA vehicle, that night so we ended up seeing that. I didn't think too much of it. The next day Bob and Elaine went back to LA and we came back to TX(a 1200 mile drive).

A good vacation but a loooong drive.

To all my fans out there(both of them): a lot has been going on for the last month and a half and I'm going to try to catch everyone up somewhat. I'll take it one event at a time.


20th Class Reunion

The 3rd week(end) in May the wife and I piled into out 1999 honda accord and went to my 20th anniversery in Magnolia, Arkansas(about an hour due east of Texarkana if that helps anyone). The reunion consisted of 3 events: a Friday Night mixer, a Saturday morning high school walk through for the purpose of seeing all the changes that have been made to the high school in the last 20 years, and a Saturday night dinner and dance at the local country club.


Friday Night Mixer

This was definitely the most surreal of the three. I knew in my brain that everybody would look older but my last memoryof these people was how they looked on graduation day; May 14th, 1987 when everybody was 18. As people started to come through the door it was like a time machine in my head went off, trying to reconcile how people looked when they were 18 with how they looked 20 years later. This happened over and over for each person that I recognized which was kind of trippy. There were quite a few people that I didn't remember, even after looking at their name tag. And many of these people seemed to remember me as their good friend. I was the tallest in school so maybe they remember me that way. I did see a couple of friends there that I used to hang out with quite a bit but not nearly as many as I had hoped. One of these friends only lives 15 miles away from where we live, which was great. We're planning on getting together for lunch soon as he's an attorney and comes to the county courthouse in Denton quite a bit.


Saturday Morning HS walking tour

Our guide was the current hs principle. I think when we graduated, he was the asst principal at the jr high. Most of my memories of him consist of him being a pe teacher when I was in fifth and sixth grade. Anyhow, we met in the library where he started off by telling us how technologicly advanced the school had gotten, how wired the placed had gotten and how lessons were now transmitted from the library to the classrooms. Most of the library books are now on cd(if I heard him right).

Next we walked over to the band hall. We first entered a large bandroom about the same size as the ensemble rehearsal rooms that I rehearsed in at BYU. Then mr principal man informed us that the was the small one. We all walked over to the other half of the building and saw the other bandroom. It was HUGE!!!! WOW!! Not just big but cutting edge, too. Attached to the ceiling was a white satellite opject that we were informed was a sound system(or part of anyone). Actualy it was part sound and part projection(projector) but it was extremely sleek and modern. I'm guessing that that part of it alone was between $50,000 and $100,000. Apparently Magnolia has money to spend. A lot of it.

Then we went over to the huge, new gymnasium. It is very large for a hs gym, has arena style seating, and is convertible for several differnt activities - like graduation. A very nice facility.


Saturday night at the country club

I had never been to the country club before. It was fairly nice but not overly so. The shindig was scheduled to start at 6:30 and that's when people started to stream in. I think dinner itself wasn't served until 7:30 or so. The dancing started after dinner, 8:30 or so. I got to talk with several people whom I hadn't seen yet. It was fun & interesting. Fun to see old acquaintenances and interesting to see what people had done with their lives. Some people did great things, started families, got good educations and good jobs and some pretty much stayed like how they were at graduation. There were a lot of both.
At 9 or so a couple of friends and our wives got bored with the whole deal and went to McDonalds of all places and sat and talked about our childhoods for a while. It was nice reminiscing, talking about movies, talking about how our lives were going. They are some good people. The kind of people who make me think that maybe the world has a chance.

My AIMS Audition

For those not in 'the know,' AIMS is an 5-week annual musical festival held annualy in Austria. And, every year, there is an annual audition 'tour' where auditions are held in different locations from January to March. Eastman, Julliard, Chicago, LA...most of the big cities are covered. On Sunday, Feb 11, I auditioned at the one held at SMU in Dallas. I had to drive around a while to find parking, but I still got in the music building with plenty of time to warm up.

I had expected that there would be an actual audition committe but when I entered the room, it was just the orchestra manager and a microphone. In retrospect, I guess that I should have expected it.

The required audition repertoire was a movement of a concerto and 5 specific excerpts.


Here's how it went, in order:

1. I chose the first movement of the Grohndal for my solo. It went ok..the tempo was fairly steady but I did miss a few notes and made an error at an entrance. The orchestra guy stopped me after the halfway point. The AIMS provided accompanist was sightreading everything and did a so-so job.

2. Mahler 3rd - Fairly well. A tad sloppy in the lower register but I felt like I kept the style fairly consistant and played the various 'tempo' markings well.

3. Tuba Mirum - Went well.

4. William Tell Overture - Went very well. The judge comments, though not that loudly, 'excellent' afterwards. Don't worry, I'm not reading too much into it. I'm glad that this one went well because I had really been busting my hump on it.

5. Schumann Symphony #3, 4th mvt., 1st 8 measures - I played through it and I wasn't that happy with it(The high Eb was a bit thin and I flubbed one or two other notes) but didn't say anything. After I finished, The orchestra manager said 'Let's try that again.' So I played it again and I'll be durned if I didn't play it WORSE the 2nd time. I flubbed the high Eb, barely getting it at all, and cracked 2 or 3 other notes. ARRRRGGGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was so frustrating because I had played it and played it well before. Here, I had two shots at it and screwed it up both times. I think that I just didn't concentrate enough on a big enough second breath. A week later, this still bothers me.

6. Lohengrin, Prelude to Third Act - This went well. The orchestra manager comments 'good' afterwards(again not reading too much into that).


So it was an ok audition. To be honest, I think that any chance that I had of making the orchestra died when I flubbed up the Schumann a 2nd time.

It would have been fun, though.

Buffalo, Here I Come!!

So, I'm all set for Buffalo. Got my plane ticket, rental car reserved, hotel room reserved. I'm excited for the trip. My actual audition is in Feb. 25th with the finals on the 27th. I'm flying in on the afternoon of the 24th and flying out the evening of the 27th. I could have just anticipated not making the finals and scheduled my flight back for the 26th but I figured I needed to be hopeful about things.

Even though its a 2nd trombone position and pays about $40k a year, I figure there should be around 100 trombonists there. The preliminaries take 2 days and they'll probably pick between 3 and 5 players for the finals(if they like that many). It'll be a good experience, at the very least.

I've been practicing quite a bit lately and I'm in the best shape that I've been for a while, at lease since I've been out of school. Its been a bear preparing for this thing because of the huge amount of material that's being asked; 16 excerpt and a portion of a Bach Cello Suite. Its stretched me thin to get it all ready in time.


Because of my flight schedule I have 1 day, the 26th, with absolutely nothing to do. So I figured that I would go over to Palmyra and look at some LDS church history sites(i.e. Book of Mormon publication site, Joseph Smith farm, Hill Cumorah visitors center) since its only about 90 minutes away. Should be a fun day.

Wish me luck!

My Trombone Life so Far

So I've been back in music & trombone full time since August now. I can't honestly say that things are going well in that department, at least from a financial perspective. I don't have any students although I hope that will change soon with the start of the current semester. I haven't played much 'professionaly' although I did have the one Christmas gig. Didn't pay that well, though. And I've done one piece on Finale. I'm advertising in the International Musician, though, so I'm hoping to get more work there.

The good news? My playing has been getting better. I've been steadily playing every day, doing my warmups and working etudes and then excerpts. The excerpts still need some work but they are getting better. I need to get it all cleaned up before I go to the Buffalo audition in late Feb.

Oh, and concerning that - I'm looking for a couple of excerpts that I'm having a hard time finding:

2nd Trombone - Bartok Concerto for Orchestra
2nd Trombone - Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphosis

I know that they are available in excerpt books but I would rather have the original part, for accuracy's sake. No seems to sell them or rent the individual parts. If anyone knows how I can get these I would appreciate the info.

Time for a Change

I have been wanting to play more and more over the past few months. I practice daily now, trying to get my chops up and pull my level of playing up to at least a respectable level. I play sometimes after work and sometimes before I go to work. I go up to the school(UNT) and use their practice rooms on my days off. This has helped somewhat but what I really need is performance opportunities. There are several that I could perhaps take advantage of except for my work schedule.

Some have asked, 'Can't you change to days?' 1. The last guy who asked for dayshift waited for a year before the change was made. 2. The schedule would then be 7am-7pm which would still make it difficult to do any performing(I live in Denton & work is 35 miles away in Plano) 3. I would also not be able to go to church 6 months out of the year. 4. I am no longer interested in working in the command center(reasons are named in an earlier post).


So I've made a decision. On August 1st, 2006 I will quit and pursue a career in music.

This is a bit scary as I don't have another job waiting for me but I am more scared of seeing the life & joy drain out of me in what should be the best years of my life.

Financialy it will be tough. A 50% cut in income means that we'll have to tighten our belts so to speak and I will have to come up with ways to meet the gap between bills & income each month. I have come up with the following ways to make money with out compromising my ability to play.

1. Music Copying - I worked my way through grad school mostly by preparing composers handwritten manuscripts on the computer for publication. I am in the process of setting the computer up to do the same thing again.

2. Teaching private students - I'll need to get cleared by the local school districts to do this.

3. The occasional odd gig - might provide a few bucks but nothing to count on.

4. A part-time job - as the situation dictates


As far as playing goes, my foremost priority is to find a position with one of the local community orchestras. I really want to get orchestral experience. Also, there's a local trombone group around here called 'Slide Area' run by a local freelancer. That looks like it could be some fun. I also wouldn't mind being in a brass quartet or quintet. Lastly, I'll keep an eye out for any local musicals that need trombones in the pit.

My ultimate goal is to either 1. Get a full time gig with an orchestra or 2. Teach college full time. For #2 I'll have to back to school for a DMA but I'm not doing that just yet.

I had a lesson with Jan Kagarice on Tuesday(wife of my former UNT teacher). She is such a wonderful teacher. We mainly worked on breathing & relaxation. I've incorporated the exercises that she had me do into my daily playing routine.

I visited with Dr. Vern Kagarice a couple of weeks ago and he was very gracious and gave me some solid ideas for playing opportunities in the area.

Tony Baker(the other UNT full-time trombone professor) also had some good ideas. He was very kind in replying my email and also agreed to give me lessons. Tony and I actualy have a tiny bit of history together. We went to the same bandcamp one summer(Henderson State University). We were placed in the top band together. I was first chair, David Herring was second, and Tony was third. Now David Herring is the Principal Trombone of the Minnesota Orchestra, Tony Baker is a full-time professor and free lancer, and I'm...uh...well...I'm trying to get back into it.



That's it for now. I'll update this more as things progress.

Prodigy is first woman tuba player for top orchestra

Carol Janistch, 21, was just awarded the principal tuba position with the Philidelphia Orchestra. She just graduated from University of Michigan and now she has a $102k/year-10-week-paid-vacation job playing her tuba. She beat out 195 others auditioning for the position.

This girl just impresses the heck out of me.

I am worth $2,052,060 on HumanForSale.com

Here are the pictures that I promised.

Lets start with the Alamo. We went there when we were trying to kill time before out Temple session started.





Then we did our session at the San Antonio Temple. What a nice temple! A smaller one but well designed and very nice to look at both inside and out. Much nicer than the Oklahoma City Temple.

Here's a running total of the temples that I've been in(session, sealing, or some other ordinance:

Dallas
Houston
Jordan River
Laie Hawai'i
Los Angeles
Manti
Mount Timpanogas
Nauvoo
Oklahoma City
Provo
Salt Lake
San Antonio

I just need Lubbock and that'll complete the 4 in Texas! Its 5.5 hours way out in the barren west part of the state so that's not exactly a high priority right now. We don't travel these places just to go to the temple there, but if we are already somewhere with a temple that we haven't been in(visiting friends or vacation or whatever) we make a point of going.

We were getting bored of Denton, and the missus had just completed another school year so we decided to go out of town for a while. After some discussion we decided to go to Blanco State Park.

Blanco SP seemed to consist mainly a camping area and of two a sections of the Blanco River that was dammed off on both ends. Not much to it really.

So we get there Monday afternoon and set up the tent. We were a little rusty on this one as the last time we set it up was during our Grand Canyon trip two summers ago. We got pretty good at it too, but like I said, it had been a while. We swam some in the afternoon and cooked some steaks on the grill for dinner and just chilled.

The next morning we got up & took showers(the showers/br facilities were actually decent) and ate breakfast. Omlets & bacon. Yummm...the missus is good at that. Then we went to the park office and checked out a couple of inner tubes. Only $5 each and they were nice - handles and everything. So we took them to the upriver portion of the river(right by the 1st dam) and got in. Strange thing; we actualy started floating TOWARDS the dam that the water had just flowed off of. Not much of a current but it was there and we had to paddle against it. After about a hundred yards or so we decided that it wasn't working so we bagged it and got out. On a hunch, we got tried again down stream at the second dam after lunch and guess what? We floated up-stream quite nicely. Go figure. We had hamburgers & hotdogs for dinner.

The next morning we left dodge. I thought that the whole camp thing was rather boring as you probably can tell.

We then went to San Antonio and saw The Alamo. We will always remember it;-) This is the second time that we've been to it and it never ceases to amaze me how small it is. Not much to it really. A medium-sized room with some small ones, a couple of which are arranged as shrines. A good-sized gift shop though. We got a few pics while we were there that I'll post later.

After spending an hours at the Alamo we did a session at the LDS San Antonio Temple. It is a very nice & beautiful temple. A very well designed & constructed 'smaller' temple that the Church builds in addition to the larger ones.

Then we went and visited the missus' sister(K) at Heart O' the Hills Summer Camp for Girls where she is a counselor. K seemed deleriously happy to be there for which we were glad. K is head of the art program there.

Then we made the looooong drive home, courtesy of yours truely. Lots and lots of diet mountain dew. Lots of stops for urination purposes. We stopped once for dinner. Anhyhow, we finaly pulled into Denton around 3am Thursday morning. Its over. Yay.

Life Explained

Nash's MVP Trophy

A follow up on my last post

1. Its a data drive, windows xp is on another drive
2. In 'My Computer' it show up as a drive but when I click on it a box comes up that says; 'This Drive is not formated. Do you wish to format it now?' I called a local shop and the guy said that that meant that it was a bad hard drive.

My hard drive went bad this week. 10 years worth of photos(vacations, family reunions, holidays, etc) as well as my huge iTunes library - gone. All gone. I know I should have been backing up regularly(which I preach to others) but I really got caught with my pants down on this one.


I'm not very happy right now.

My wife got me a remote car starter for my birthday. It is super cool. I can start the car before I exit the apartment, before I can even see the car. Ditto for the horn & locks. Oh yeah, that's good stuff.

I got my wife an iPod Nano for her birthday(our birthdays are 4 days apart). She seems to like it. 100% flash memory - no skipping. The perfect mp3 player for working out.

My maternal grandmother's birthday is today. I sent her a card and talked to her on the phone tonight. She seems to be doing really well. She is such a wonderful person.

Woman ditches wheelchair, flees police

This story amuses me.



http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/11/wheelchair.runner.reut/index.html

I get too wound up sometimes when posting on message boards, mainly Cougarboard. Maybe I'm just wound too tightly anyways. Whatever.

The wife is looking for a position at another school. She's an Elem PE teacher but she wants a change of scenery. Also, I work close to Dallas and commute 35-50 minutes a day and we want to buy a house closer to the city. Her current school is a pretty poor one and many of the students have no or very little parental support. Not much in the way of a budget, either. She can put up with these things but she's just ready for something different. She seems to like being a PE teacher. I think that it would drive me stark raving mad, though.

My job situation remains unchanged although I had an interview 9 days ago. I haven't heard anything yet and I take that to be a bad sign.

Shawn Bradley & I(I'm 6'7", BTW).

Taken in the Spring of 1991 at the BYU Deseret Towers basketball courts. It was Shawn's Freshman(& only) year at BYU.

Keeping Emergency Rooms in Business

Oklahoma City
Day 2

The primary task that we wanted to get done on Tuesday morning is to attend a session at the OKC LDS Temple. We got there at 9:30 or 10 and had to wait for the 10:45 session.









We did get to do the session ok but it was rather tedious. I was waiting for 45 minutes or so and there was no chapel so I resorted to pacing up and down the hallway. There were a few other things too but I won't discuss them here.


After we finished at the temple, at 1:30 or so, we went to the National Cowboy Museum. There was SO much stuff there, some of it even interesting. There was an 'Hollywood' section, a 'rodeo' section, a 'calvary' section, and several more that I can't think of right now. Pretty interesting. Also, there was and extensive Native American bead art exhibit that was moderately interesting.

I took this photo out in the foyer. I had the wife stand in front of it to make it clear how humongous this statue is:




Then we had some bbq for lunch and it was on to the 45th Infantry Division Museum.

This was really interesting to go through although we only had 20 or 30 minutes until closing time. The interior(no pictures) had a large firearms collection, a nazi memorabilia room, US infantry vehicles, canons...all sorts of stuff. I wish that we had had more time to look through it all.
Outside was just as interesting though; there were all kinds of US armed forces vehicles & aircraft on display.







It was really cool to see all those vehicles.

After that we picked up some dinner and headed back to Texas. It was a nice getaway.

We're Back from Oklahoma City!

So we got back from OKC Tuesday night after 2 days of a rip-roaring good time. Not riproaring, really, but it was still an ok trip.

We arrived Sunday night after a 3 hour drive from Denton. I hadn't slept in more than 24 hours but we seemed to make it ok thanks mostly to copious amounts of diet Mt. Dew. It worked. We got to the hotel(Holiday Inn Express) and were too exausted to do anything else so we just watched tv.

Day 1
Monday we set off to get on the water taxi but got lost on the way there. We found the Alfred P. Murrah building museum & memorial, though, and spent a couple of hours going through that. It was quite a sobering experience hearing the stories of the survivors & the ones who perished.

The memorial:



On each end of the body of water(very shallow - at the most an inch deep) there were stone walls. One bore the inscription of 9:01 and the other, 9:03. 9:02 is when the bombing occured.


Another part of the memorial are the metal(bronze?) chairs that represent those who lost their life in the tragedy:



The upper left hand part of the picture where the chairs are is where the bomb went off. As you go left to right the chairs represent those who died in each floor.


Except for these chairs which represent the five who died in nearby buildings:






This tree was planted in gratitude for all those who came from far wide to help with the disaster recovery effort:



About 4 that afternoon we mosied over to downtown okc and the canal that ran for a mile or 2 though a section called 'bricktown.' From there we took the water taxi and the mini tour that came along with it.



As far as I could tell, Bricktown consisted mostly of restaurants. Those were the shops that were open, anyways. The canal ended at a Bass Pro Shop. Bricktown(and the canal for that matter) seemed like a lame attempt to artifically make downtown okc somewhat interesting.

The Pro Shop was pretty cool though. They had just about everything there related to fishing or camping. The coolest thing to me was the giant aquarium that was there.



I'll bet that it really helped with business.
They had several different kinds of 'fishfinder' radar equipment. Essentialy(from what I could tell) it could scan the bottom and tell you exactly where the fish is. Doesn't seem very sporting to me.

So we went out of the Pro Shop to meet the water taxi right on time, at 5:10 just like the driver told us. So we waited. And waited. Finaly at 5:30 we guessed that the taxi had already come and gone so we started walking. The canal really wan't that long anyways. So we walked over to the Sonic world hq building and went in and wandered around a little bit.

There was nothing to see, really, because everybody had already gone home and they didn't give tours anyways. We did go to the adjacent 'sit-down' Sonic restaurant and had some ice cream. They had booths and tables and we ordered by using this phone that was at our booth and they brought the sweet yummy goodness out to us.

Then we walked up the canal a little ways and were getting bored with ourselves. Then we spotted a movie theater(Harkin's) and decided that that would be a fun thing to do. We saw, 'The World's Fastest Indian' which was a fun movie. I was really impressed with the theater. Retractable armrest, big comfy chairs, and the chairs also reclined some. Primo movie watching conditions.

After the movie(which was a 6:40 showing) we went to Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill. We like the name so much that we just had to go.

Toby Keith has a hit song called, 'I Love This Bar',BTW). It was nicely themed restaurant with a projection of Toby Keith videos playing overhead.

Later, they switched it to a live tv feed divided into 4 secions on the screen(4 diff channels). I liked the videos better. The food was ok but not great.

After we were done there we found the car and went back to the hotel.

I understand that the city is proud of the canal and bricktown but I just didn't think too much of it. An otherwise enjoyable day.

Oklahoma City Bound!

My wife is a teacher and since next week is her spring break we thought that it would be a good idea to get out of town for a couple of days. We kicked around some ideas about where to go until I mentioned that I had wanted to see the federal building memorial in Oklahoma City as well as go through a session in the temple there. It was only intended to be a passing idea but she really liked it. So OKC bound we are.

We are leaving Sunday sometime. I already have the hotel reservations(Holiday Inn Express - ff miles!) made. It could be a fun trip although I understand the okc is not the first thing that pops into people's minds when they are considering vacation destinations. We'll get back Tuesday evening.

A some interesting-sounding things from the okc convention & visitors bureau website that piqued my interest:

National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum
Oklahoma City National Memorial and Memorial Museum(Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building memorial)
Water Taxi of Oklahoma
45th Infantry Division Museum

It'll be nice to get away for a while and it sounds like there are plenty of interesting things to do & see there.

Yeehaw!