Worn out

I have several new entries in work, but I'm too beat to finish any of them. It was a fun weekend, but a long one. On Saturday morning, my oldest son was one of a number of Barthelmes Conservatory students to perform in a program for the OK Mozart festival in Bartlesville. While the students performed, I minded the youngest son, walking up and down the ramps and stairs at the Bartlesville Community Center, buying a snack at the gas station across the street, and talking a walk past First Baptist Church (where I went to church when I lived in Bartlesville 40 years ago), the Price Tower, and Robert Indiana's big 66 sculpture.

After a quick lunch at Arby's (where we learned that the manager, recently relocated from Kansas, was a music aficionado who hadn't yet learned about OK Mozart), we headed west, via Pawhuska, Hominy, and Cleveland to the Pawnee Bill Ranch for the big Pawnee Bill Wild West Show. The show happens the last three Saturday nights in June, a recreation of some of the acts that were included in the show that toured the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The show included trick riding and roping, dramatizations involving Cossacks and Mexicans and stagecoaches and cowboys, Indian dancing, and some slapstick comedy. Before the show, there are reenactments and music up on the hill, the museum and mansion are open, and there's a barbecue supper, as well as a variety of pushcarts. We all had a great time. The show itself starts at 7:30 and ends about 10. Pawnee is an hour west of Tulsa via the Cimarron Turnpike.

Sunday, we had lunch at Delta Cafe, then the big kids and I spent three hours cutting up fallen limbs and dragging them to the curb. Then we went over to my dad's house, and I helped him with the roof of a new storage shed while the kids and their cousins helped to paint the shed. We ate hamburgers and watched "The Best of Mike Myers" on TV.

I still had a column to finish, so I got up at about 3:30 a.m. and headed to IHOP. After a full day of work, I attended the initial meeting of the PLANiTULSA partners -- very interesting, more about that in my column next week -- then came home to the family.

So that's all i can give you tonight.