Happy Birthday to Family and Friends...

The last part of May, we hitched up Little Blue and headed for Oz.  It was time once again to see Gman's doctors and renew our Oz visas.

We headed to our friends, Orville and Marcine Gorman's house.  They conveniently have a barn with full RV hookups and graciously allowed us to park there for the planned week.

It was mighty hot and they had not had rain since January when we arrived and many ponds were dry. Orville and Marcine still had water, but I believe the fish were swimming sideways! While there, we brought them some rain. Unfortunately, we brought a tornado that eventually made it's way to Joplin, MO too!

  
That was the last rain that they had down there and the temps have been in the high 90's and 100's ever since! Rather reminiscent of the "dirty 30's"--or the "dust bowl" as some called it. People's wells have gone dry--wells that have NEVER gone dry in anyone's memory and ponds are barren, cracked, sunbaked earth. Look for beef and grain prices to be much higher as KS, OK and TX are selling off herds of cattle because they can't sustain them and crops are non existent.


August is an auspicious month around the camper.   It is the month of Gman's birth.  It is also the month of the births of our good friends Orville and Marcine Gorman.  I just get to go along for the ride as I am the oddball of the bunch.  Though it was early this year, being in May, we did not plan a trip back to Oz during the celebrated birthday month, so were celebrating early.

Several years ago as we got to know Orville and Marcine, we found out that the 3 of them all have birthdays within a week of each other and thus began a tradition of going out to eat.  The first time we went out, Orville chose Sal's, a Kobe style eatery on Kellogg in Wichita, KS.  It was delicious and of course the show they make of cooking the food is always worth the effort to get there.

The next year Gman chose the Kobe Steakhouse off Central in Wichita.  And it was great too, though the menu is more limited at the Kobe.

The next year was Marcine's turn and we went to Sumo off of 13th and K-96 in Wichita.  It was fairly new and a more modern concrete and steel version of a Kobe style steakhouse and was good and had a good show as well.  While dining there, the chef, sensing a fun spirit, zeroed in on Orville for fun.  Orville, who always wears his hat, played along --and the chef hit him with the fake sauce in a bottle that actually is a long cord that puffs out at you making you think he was spraying you.  Orville turned his hat around backwards acting all tough!  The chef started calling him "big daddy" and it stuck.  Sorry!  You have to look really closely in the picture.  This was when I found out that my phone didn't have a flash!  Rats! 

Later, as we were sitting around the kitchen table, Marcine became "big mamma" and Gman and I became little daddy and little mamma.  Little daddy had to put his hat on backwards and it was the two daddy's vs the two mammas at cards.  We still get a huge kick out of that, sending us into fits of laughter!

Did you happen to see the cow behind big mamma in the picture?  That is a calf picture that I took and put into a window frame at my house.  Big mamma liked it so much, I made one for her too.  We both collect cow "stuff".  It really does make you do a double take as you walk past, thinking that a calf is looking in through a window at the table!
  

We thought about branching out this year when we were in Wichita for the birthday celebration and trying something else, but we went back to Kobe style again and hit Sal's--reasonable price, good food, good cooks!  What the heck!

Seated at our table was a young couple and the gal was also celebrating her birthday!  Hey!  Birthday's all around.

As we ate and watched the show, we started talking to the young couple.  By the end of the show, we felt that we knew them.  It turned out that they dine at Sal's a lot and know Sal. 

When Sal came over to the table to speak with them, they graciously introduced us and when Sal found out about the birthday's all around, he decided to celebrate in his own way. 

I think he caught Orville off guard!  LOL

We headed back to the farm and played a few raucous rounds of cards before retiring.

We stayed longer than we originally intended in May because the doctors saw something in Gman's stress test that they wanted to check out, so we stayed the weekend and on Monday Gman had a heart cath and came out with a clean bill of health.  All was the same as last time.  That's good.

We hitched up Little Blue and headed up the scenic Flint Hills toward MO and the Mother Ship.












Good times...good friends!