I recently moved from Connecticut to Oklahoma. At the beginning of this year I had intended to move to Brazil, with the tentative plan to start up a Republican ISP. i This plan involved also moving a close friend and his family along with me; ii in preparation, this required a stop in Arkansas to straighten out a birth certificate for the purpose of obtaining a passport. Little Rock isn’t far from A True Church, and I made arrangements to at least pay a visit. Primarily, I wanted to get baptized by a true believer before leaving the country. We ended up spending a week with the Fishes, iii and I became convinced that it was the better place. I would rather be surrounded by brothers and sisters in Christ, even if it means remaining in the country that might one day come for my life.
Matthew 10:27 “Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. 28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. 30 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
I did get baptized, my first night here. It took place in a bathtub, administered by Darwin Fish, and with a few witnesses.
Oklahoma sucks. I love the fellowship, but the land is harsh. We live on a dirt road that gets washed out in heavy rain, which happens very often. The weather is completely bi-polar: one day it’s hot and humid; the next it is literally snowing. I’ve been told that spring will bring tornados and lyme-disease-carrying ticks. Granted, I used to live a few towns over from Lyme. Oh also, nobody here has any wired internet. I’ve been getting by using cell phones as hot-spots! Eventually I’m going to have to rent something a half-hour away “in town” just for the cable.
On the other hand, Oklahoma is pretty cool. You can build whatever you want on your own property without so much as mentioning it to a bureaucrat. You can buy whatever gun you like with no background check, iv and getting a permit to carry it is no problem. Food, v rent, booze, vi cigs, vii all cost less. And I figure this state is far from any target that might get nuked or overrun by orcs.
- I had been in communication with BingoBoingo who encouraged the move, despite him having already started a similar thing in Uraguay. He said it wouldn’t hurt to have ISPs in multiple locations. ^
- His wife is from Brazil, and has family there. The idea was, she could help me with the transition: help with translation, show the places to go, etc. ^
- Fish is the name of the family with which I am staying. ^
- That is, if you go to a gun show. ^
- The restaurants all suck. ^
- They have this weird thing where non-liquor stores can’t sell anything over 3.2% ABV, and that other thing where liquor stores can’t be open on Sunday. I thought that was just a New England thing. ^
- The brand I like is almost half the price compared to Connecticut. For the curious, it’s American Spirit Gold. Almost 12 USD in CT, a little over 6 USD in OK. ^
I had a saecular job once that had me flying to OKC every week and remember looking out the plane window each time on descent and being awestruck by the utter FLATNESS of everything. You could see the straight, parallel-running highways converge to a perfect point in the horizon.
I had the pleasure of a few "near-tornado experiences" as well, though they always seemed to touch down in and rape Moore/Norman (cities directly south of OKC). Still, they were close enough where the sky would grow this ominous yellow, followed by dark green before finally opening up to [drop] golf-ball-sized hail. I recall going down to the hotel lobby once and it was spilling in from outside (though, this was mainly due to dinguses that were standing in the automatic door trying to record video on their phones).
And sure, while tornadoes are expected, what really threw me was how cold the winters were with respect to the latitude of the place. THE WIND CHILL, as you probably can imagine by now, was the real catalyst for the bitter conditions. But you, being from the northern climes as I am, will probably lulz your ass off at the local derpitude when it snows. Though, I'm curious to see if the rural folks are better equipped out of sheer necessity than the city dwellers.
Anyways, I just realized I wrote two paragraphs discussing weather. Cheers, and congrats on blog revival!
It’s not that flat where I’m at.
Huh, weird. My comment above shows as "Anonymous" though I put "lobbes" in Name field.
This'll be a good second test.
Probably for the best. Turns out after meeting a lot of Brasileros... Speaking Portugues tends to make men sound effeminate, so it is probably for the better you aren't doing that. On the other hand Northern South America sounds like a lot of fun.
lobbes, maybe you need to put an email for it to count as not anonymous.
bingo?, I do still have a visa that’s good for 10 years. Maybe I’ll visit.
Ok my bad. There was a discrepancy in the php code that validates comments between the file that prints the form and the file that recieves the post data. It should be fixed now.
Well, the best place to get a taste of the Brasileros is Uruguay. Wide variety of accents (And brasil has many) and you meet the cream good enough to get airplane tickets.
Well obviously I’d be going to meet you; I don’t have any strong preference for Brazil in particular.
[...] the rest are mostly pictures of my cat Queenie who I adopted from the streets of Bridgeport Connecticut. She traveled with me to Oklahoma. [...]