I arrived back from my weekend trip last night, and now that I’m settled back in and caught up on some stuff, I figured I’d make a random musings type post with some tidbits from the past four days and 1100 miles…..

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Yeehaw!

On my annual pilgrimmage to Oklahoma, I usually make a stop at the McDonalds on the first leg of the I-44 tollway.  Located in Vinita, it claims to be the World’s Largest McDonalds.  It’s essentially an overpass turned into a restaurant.  Just like if you come to my home state, you will see Abraham Lincoln everywhere (even though he was born and raised in two different states), if you set foot in Oklahoma, you are going to see plenty of old time comedian Will Rogers.  The airport in Oklahoma City is named after him.  The tollway between Joplin and Tulsa is named after him.  This Mickey Dee’s has a shrine to him.  Looks like Will has booted out the usual suspects…

At least Will Rogers will not eat your children…

Now, you’ve all heard of the movie “Snakes on a Plane”.  But how about the lesser known B-flick “Birds in a McDonalds”?

Who ordered the McGuano?

The place was infested with birds!  The usually bustling highway restaurant was also nearly empty, and I’m not sure that was a coincidence.  I watched a few birds swoop down, scavenge, go from table to table, then back up into the rafters.  It made my meal all the more enjoyable…

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Way back in the early days of this blog, I did a post on the Camaro Sisters, who were very key to the formation of Evil Squirrel as we know him.  I was on their turf, and it’s always a pleasure to get to see two of my favorite girls.  Here are the two living members of the trio at their feistiest…

Girls will be girls…

That’s Lizbit on the left and BeBe on the right.  Lizzie is quite the attention slut, which if you didn’t know before you set foot in their house, you definitely would within five minutes.  And once she has claimed you as her personal scritch servant, she will not let her sister BeBe get anywhere in the vicinity.  This usually leaves poor, quiet BeBe to sit by her lonesome on her camouflage rug…

I’ll just sit here and be a good ninjagirl…

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The more he drinks, the better you look!

Gratuitous shot I took of the poster for the play “Falstaff” at the Oklahoma University campus.  Falstaff always reminds me of one of our local brews from back in the day when I’d help my Dad pick up aluminum cans along the side of the road for money, and the jolly quaffer on this poster just cracked me up…

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Speaking of theater, the timing of my annual trip to Oklahoma isn’t coincidental.  The get-together of several of us from my message board is centered around a stage production called The Gridiron Show.  Oklahoma City’s Gridiron Club (of which my friend down there is a member), made up of a variety of local individuals in the journalism field, stages an annual production in late February every year to help raise money for scholarships for students seeking a career in the field.  The format of the Gridiron Show pulls from many theatrical staples, and features comic sketches which usually contain a song parody all centered around a different theme each year (this year it was a classroom, mainly riffing off Ferris Bueller’s Day Off… last year it was Hee Haw… the year before it was Alice in Wonderland, you get the picture).  The participants in the show roast politicians, pop icons, and newsworthy events from the national (Act I) and local (Act II) scene… and they never fail to entertain their audience!  Gridiron clubs used to be quite popular in the US, but are now few and far between.  I can’t imagine any other group does their thing as well as the the folks from OKC though….

Buster and Skanki would just be asking for it at the next show….

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OK then, I’ll just go on the sign…

A friendly note to anyone out there who owns a gas station along the interstate highway system.  There are many wonderful advantages to being located along a major highway that can turn your business into a gold mine.  There are also a handful of disadvantages that come along with the deal…. one of which is you’re going to get a lot of people stopping in just to use the restroom.

I mention this because there seems to be a growing trend among roadside businesses to discourage drive by leakers (I suspect a station I stopped at on the way back home of this, I’m pretty sure the “Restrooms Closed” signs were just BS).  On the way to Detroit last year, I stopped out of necessity at a station just before I hit Indiana on I-70 that was the only business at its exit, and boy they weren’t even coy about it.  There must have been a dozen signs warning about non-paying customers not being able to use the restrooms.  “This is not a truck stop, blah blah blah”  Sorry, Ebeneezer, but you’re a gas station/restaurant along a major US highway… that makes you a truck stop by default, and I can use your public restroom if I damn well please….

I still bought a soda anyway….

You’re lucky, PUNK!