"i do believe in fairies, i do, i do"

"Once upon a time there was a boy named Peter Pan, who decided not to grow up..." i wish i had this option.  i would love to have the imagination i had as a child forever.  children have the greatest imagination.  i remember getting in boxes in the garage, back when i was young and small enough to fit in them, and pretending they were any and everything.  ships, cars, airplanes, hot air balloons.  you name it. i could imagine a plain, brown cardboard was anything.  there was no limit.  my sister and i could play with these boxes for hours and never grow bored. if you put a cardboard box in front of me know i would probably just see what i could pack up in it to clear up some space in my room.  i would have an extremely hard time seeing anything but a box.  i would love to know where our childhood imagination goes.  do we hit a certain age and it just disappears? or is it something that just matures with the rest of us and is always within us?  all i know is, i would love to have my many modes of transportation back.

nomm nommz

salmon with asparagus

if there is one thing i have learned this semester it is that creativity can strike anywhere.  before taking introduction to creativity i didn't realize just how often in my everyday life i was being creative.  getting dressed in the morning, the route i take to class, even a subject as structured as accounting calls for some creativity.  overtime i've realized that one of my favorite aspects of my life in which i consider myself to be creative is when i am cooking.  i love to cook, and although i still have a lot to learn i have become such a better cook since i have been in college and had to start cooking for myself.

bunless burger topped with avocado and provolone with a side of sweet potato fries

cooking is an area where you can really be creative.  it all starts with simply deciding what you are going to eat that day.  as i assume most people don't either, i don't like to eat the same things over and over again so i come up with different ingredients that alter my favorite dishes, even if it is the tiniest alteration.  whether it is deciding what side item to pair with the dish or cooking the dish a different way, i love to change things up.

bunless barbecue turkey burger topped with red onions and mozzarella cheese with a side of zucchini and yellow squash

another area that i love to be creative with my cooking is in the plating.  i love thinking about the colors of my food and then choosing an appropriate plate color so the food and plate combination do no clash.  i even arrange the food on the plate so it is more aesthetically pleasing.  i watch a lot of food network, if you couldn't tell; so i know that plating, or presentation, is huge when it comes time to judge the chef's creation.  and of course, being the proud cook that i am i take pictures of my dishes and send them to my parents to show them how well i am doing. lame, i know, but it's just one more way i can be creative with my food.
p.s. i included a few of my pictures, and i'm starving now...

life after club fed

like most people, i tend to avoid participating in activities that will land me in jail or prison.  that is something that i would rather not experience first hand.  regardless, i can help but wonder how someone would adjust to a normal life again once they have been in prison for an extended period of time, for example ten years.  can you imagine being locked up for ten years and then being realized into a world that has most likely changed significantly in the time you were in prison.  i can't imagine all of the things you would have to adjust to just based on the advancements in technology alone.  most technology is completely updated and sometimes unrecognizable in the time span of 10 years.  think about how much cell phones have changed just in the last five or six years.  there have been four different versions of the iphone in about the same amount of time.  of course there won't only be technological changes, but things such as fashion trends, cultural trends, societal trends, etc are all capable of changing in this amount of time.  if i were going to prison tomorrow and i wasn't going to get out for another ten years, i wouldn't even know what to expect to see when i got out with how fast the world changes.

all grown up

it is about to be christmas break and i will be home for a month.  i didn't get to go home for thanksgiving break because we were still in season for volleyball so the last time i was home was the 7th of august.  it is always so nice to be home but every time i do go home it seems like something has changed.  i already know of one major change that has occurred since i was home last, and that is the fact that my older sister no longer lives at home.  she and two of her friends from high school moved into a house about four or five miles away.  it's weird because i am a junior in college and i still don't feel like an adult.  every semester i feel a little bit older, but i definitely do not  feel like i am twenty years old, or even close to that.  i never really saw my sister as an adult either but i'm guessing once i get home and realize that i am the only kid in the house it will be a completely different story.

christmas morning 1997

i just think it is interesting the steps you have to go through to consider someone, or even yourself, an adult.  i know that as long as i am living under my parent's roof i will never feel like an adult, no matter how old i am (hopefully i won't be too old and still living with them, yuck). i just remember when i was a teenager and i thought that the second i turned eighteen i would feel like an adult and have all sorts of freedom and independence.  i soon came to realize that age is just a number and that the higher that my personal number got i still didn't feel like an adult.  i still don't feel any closer to adulthood to this day.  i wonder when that moment will finally hit me.  for now, i guess i am still the baby of the family.  my parent's will probably always see me as that little guitar chick up above anyway.

there is more to do in tulsa than a slut (tulsa spelled backwards)

5 things you must do when visiting tulsa, oklahoma
1. attend dfest. dfest stands for diversafest and it is a large music festival and conference that takes place at the end of july.  it is an annual festival, although due to funding it did not take place this past year, 2010, but it is scheduled to return in 2011.  there are big name headliners such as paramore, all-american rejects, metro station, and citizen cope, to name a few from the past.  aside from the major headliners, there are also many local artists since the festival is mainly about promoting local talent and artists.

*picture from dfest 2009

 2. go to the center of the universe.  there is a spot at the north end of downtown right by the train track known as the "center of the universe." although it is not the actual center of the universe, some would argue it is just as cool.  if you stand in just the right spot, it is appropriately marked so it is easy to spot, you can talk, yell, whisper, or do just about anything and hear your voice echo.  the interesting thing is that you are the only one that can hear it.  surrounding friends and visitors not standing in the spot will only hear your normal speech.
3. go out on the restless ribbon.  if you say restless ribbon while visiting, many people might not actually know what you are talking about.  however, if you ask where "brookside" is every tulsan will be able to point you in the right direction.  brookside stretches about two miles through midtown tulsa.  whether you are looking for unique retail boutiques, a good place to grab lunch or dinner, nightlife, or a good "home-cooked" feeling at breakfast after a long night out, brookside is the place to be.  go out at night during any of the major breaks from school and you'll see everyone that ever graduated from high school in tulsa.
4. walk around downtown.  although downtown used to be almost dead, in the past few years it has been revived through countless renovations whose main purpose were to maintain the historic feel of downtown but help update things that were just a little to out of date.  just walking around downtown you'll notice a very diffferent atmosphere than the rest of the city.  you can almost breath in the history of the city, although it is not a literal smell, and become one with the beautiful cityscape.

5. finally, if you're going to do one super touristy, yet still pretty cool thing, while in tulsa, go take a picture with the golden driller.  tourist stops don't get much cooler than a 76-foot oil worker just hanging out around midtown tulsa...

do you come here often?

i was watching tv the other day and i came across this commercial.  it really made me think about the line, "would you have a drink with yourself?"  i started thinking about who i am as a person and if i really liked who i am today.  i came to the conclusion that i would, in fact, have a drink with myself. i thought about the scenario of seeing myself in a bar and realized that i might be a little reluctant to walk up to myself in a bar at first.  this is because i thought about how many people have told me i almost look angry and stand-offish when i'm am just standing there, when in actuality it is just my resting face.  so i decided that seeing this would make me hesitant to approach myself.  however, i would kind of keep an eye on myself throughout the night because i would realize that i wouldn't be out if i wasn't ready to meet people and have fun so i wouldn't dismiss myself just yet.  throughout the night i would realize that my "angry face" really is just a resting face because i would see myself joking with my friends and laughing for a good portion of the night.  this would hint that i had a good sense of humor so i would probably have a good personality to go along with it.  i would go over and try to strike up conversation and realize that i definitely have a sense of humor and i don't take anything too seriously.  to top it all off i would realize i am sarcastic as hell, sometimes to the point where i wouldn't even be able to tell if i was joking or not.  although i would definitely be shy at first, i would end up having a great conversation and learn quite a bit about myself.

memorization schmemorization

one thing that really bothers me about school is when teachers expect you to remember formulas and other schematics for solving problems.  don't they know that right after a test, test takers usually forget about 70% of the information they learned for the test? and if that formula isn't part of that 70% of information that we forget, why do we need to memorize it in the first place? when are we ever going to be in a situation where we need the formula or whatever it may be and not be able to look it up? i realize that this doesn't apply to concepts in the least bit. i'm not saying that we should never have to learn material and retain it in our memory because that would be a completely outrageous idea to say or believe.  conceptual material is a completely different case because, not only do you need to know it, but you need to be able to understand it on a deep level and then apply it to situations which can only be accomplished through some level of understanding.  formulas, like the formula used to calculate the volume of a trapezoid, volume = ½(A+B)*Y*Z, are always going to be accesible, rather quickly might i add with the help of the internet.  we shouldn't have to waste our time trying to cram our brains chalk full of the equations when they are so readily accessible.  i really wish more teachers and professors would catch on to this and realize it is completely unnecessary.  i know i praise the teachers that already believe in this.