"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.

the silent assassin

if you could be any animal in the world what would you choose?  and why? i don't mean which animal do you think represents you best, i mean you can be absolutely anything.  if i was given this choice, i would choose a black panther.  at first when i was thinking of animals i thought, well i would want to be something big like an elephant or a rhino so i could overpower whatever came my way.  but then i quickly decided that speed is more important than power to me, so i thought of the king of the jungle, the lion.  then i thought, too cliche.  yeah they are king of the jungle and everything but people also keep them as pets. i decided i wanted to be something that is pretty well known but still mysterious at the same time.  that's how i landed on a black panther.  i mean, what is more mysterious than a fast, black jungle cat.  you probably won't hear of too many cases of people keeping one as a pet.  i feel like black panthers are the quiet type that you always have to keep your eye on because you never quite know what they are going to do next.  something about a black panther just seems like they are always respected and command attention when they walk into a room, not that most animals wouldn't if they walked into a room full of people, but you know what i mean.  so that's me, the jungle's biggest badass.

inside the labyrinth

in one of my classes this semester we received an assignment to write a five page paper over the social psychology subject of our choice. we were told to write the paper in apa format, which before writing the paper i had no idea even existed.  we were also required to have at least 5 sources, only two of which could be from the internet. so i dragged myself to fondren library and basically didn't leave for two days straight.  i spent the entirety of the first day simply trying to figure out what apa format even meant, this definitely took me longer than actually writing the paper itself.  the next day i started searching the web for sources and once i got my two internet sources out of the way i realized that i would actually have to start looking for books to use to fulfill the requirement.  once i searched for the appropriate books on the library catalog i had no clue where to even begin to look for the books.  i can honestly say that i am a junior in college and i had never looked for a book to check out, let alone checked out a book from fondren.  so of course i went straight to help desk and was told that one of my books was located on the first floor, one on the second floor in fondren west, two on the third floor of fondren east, and the fifth on the third floor of fondren east.

*this picture was actually taken in fondren while i was lost

not confusing at all.  after finding my first two books, not very easily might i add, i promptly found myself lost among the stacks, not knowing if i was in east or west, or really positive what floor i was on for that matter, due to the tricky stairs.  i felt like i was in the movie labyrinth alongside jennifer connelly trying to find my way out of the goblin king jareth's labyrinth so i could finally start my paper.

everywhere i turned all i could see were books, books and more books and every aisle looked exactly the same.  i literally had to walk to the very end of one of the rows and just follow the outer wall all the way around until i could find a door that led out of the stacks.  a quick lesson to all you freshman out there: learn the dewey decimal system...and maybe go in pairs.

behind enemy lines

i've personally never had any interest in being in the army or any of the other armed forces, in fact, i've never even seen a real gun in person, let alone held one.  however, i've always had the utmost respect for the individuals that choose to do so.  i've always wondered what life would be like if you were a trained to be combat soldier.  while us civilians are waking up and brushing our teeth and getting ready for a day of school or work sitting at a desk, these soldiers are brushing their teeth and getting ready for a day of learning how to fight and kill the enemy out on the battlefield.  of course because i have no experience with anything even remotely related to the armed forces, the only thing to guide my thinking and imagination of what a day in the life of a soldier would be like are the countless war and fighting movies i've seen.  i'm sure like most other movies, the roles are somewhat exaggerated or altered in some way to add entertainment value, but i've always wondered just how much is changed or if it is at all.
sometimes i try to imagine the mindset of a soldier.  they basically wake up knowing that they might have to kill someone that very day.  i'm almost positive that with whatever career path i choose i will never wake up with that thought rattling through my brain, which can probably be said for the majority of other civilians.  but here they are, training, day after day, after day in case they have to do just that.  sometimes sleeping in a foreign country, virtually in the middle of nowhere, not always knowing where the enemy is.  talk about a job for the mentally tough.  i know i couldn't do it.  kudos to them.

welcome to the future

do you ever think about what you thought your life was going to be like when you were a little kid?  i remember being in third or fourth grade thinking about what i wanted to be when i grew up, something that most children do.  i wanted to be a nurse because i thought that men were doctors and women were nurses, both being equivalent.  then once i hit fifth or sixth grade, all anyone could talk about was high school, turning sixteen, and getting your dream car.  i remember thinking that i wanted a lime green volkswagen beetle, and i always pictured myself driving around and blaring "i'm real" by j. lo and ja rule over and over everywhere i went.  at this time, i was playing four sports and of course i saw myself playing each sport in college and then naturally making it to the respective professional leagues upon completion of college.  then, once i finally got to high school, i started thinking more realistically.  i picked out a 1995 bmw for my first car, but it turned out to be a death trap so we sold that and i got a volkswagen jetta, in the same family as my original dream car.  i also started thinking more seriously about my future career and took up and interest in chemistry and wanted to be a pharmacist, that is until i took ap chemistry my senior year and found out that chemistry become a tad bit tougher than i was used to in the introductory course i had taken my sophomore year.  right about the same time that i realized chemistry wasn't for me it was time to start filling out college applications.  then i really started thinking about my career and what i wanted to do with the rest of my life.  i got one thing right when i was dreaming about my future back in middle school; i'm playing volleyball in college, but i'm more realistic about my hopes of going to play professionally because it is not a very reliable career path.  instead i decided that business was the route for me, accounting in particular but i was still curious about other things that i could possibly take and that's how i came to my double major with advertising.  i just think it is really interesting how some of your childhood dreams stay with you throughout life, although they made be altered just a little bit, and some you quickly outgrow. it'll be even more interesting to see which dreams continue into the next phase of my life.

heebie jeebies

i think most of us are familiar with the tv show monk.  i caught a rerun the other day and i had somehow forgotten just how many things he was afraid of.  every episode he had to solve the cases while somehow dealing with his seemingly infinite amount of irrational fears and phobias.  phobias are an interesting subject to me.  obviously they are caused by situations that could possibly cause you harm, but i don't understand why some people are afraid of some things and others aren't.  thinking about my fears, i am afraid of heights, spiders, open water, falling down stairs, small spaces, being in my house or apartment by myself, most large animals, people in masks, rodents, getting stuck in an elevator...i could probably go on for days, so i'll just stop there.  but my roommate has no problem with heights, open water, stairs, small spaces, being alone in the apartment, people in masks; in fact, she probably doesn't even have half of the same fears i do, but she definitely has fears of her own, some of which i might not have.  also, unlike my sister, who is an ever bigger scaredy-cat than i am, i am not afraid of ants and lady bugs, trust me, i know she's ridiculous.  what i don't understand is when you are dealing with things that can cause you harm, why isn't everyone afraid of it? why aren't we all afraid of the same things when we all have the same chance of being harmed?

"my trampy little sister says myspace is the new booty call"

of course you are welcome to watch the whole trailer, but the section i want to point out in particular begins at 2:10.  drew barrymore's character says "i had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so i called him at home, and then he emailed me to my blackberry, and so i texted to his cell.  and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. it's exhausting!"  when i think about all of the technology out there in the world today i could not think of a better way to describe than what drew barrymore said in this movie.  many people say the world is becoming "flat" because everything is so interconnected through technology that you can almost instantaneously communicate with basically anywhere in the world at any moment.  i was talking to my sister one time and we were talking about all of the different ways that we had to get in touch with one another.  we had phone calls, text messages, the heytell walkie talkie application on the iphone, the kik messenger application on the iphone, facetime on the iphone, skype, ichat, google video, 2 different email address apiece, facebook wall post, message, or chat, myspace, xanga, aol instant messanger, and google instant messanger.  and i'm sure we could probably continue to add more to that list.  all those different channels for two people to communicate.  the world really is becoming "flat," so to speak.
this really got me thinking.  i realize for the convenience factor that all of this technology is a good thing, but what about for the other aspects of our lives. with all this technology to hide behind, we don't really ever have to interact with people face-to-face if we don't want to.  sure you can pretty much personalize the output on all of the aforementioned channels of communication but nothing can compare to level of interaction you receive in a face-to-face situation.  with all this technology we don't even have to be ourselves or let people get to know the real us.  i realize that sometimes it is easier to communicate through all of these different channels in the short run, but isn't it hurting our face-to-face social skills in the long run? pretty soon people aren't going to know how to hold a conversation with someone in the same room without text messaging them.

the backroads of my mind map

in my introduction to creativity class, we were assigned our first creative project near the beginning of the semester.  the assignment was to create a mind map around the topic of our choice.  we had to choose a main topic, my was secrets, and then create at least three main branches from the main topic, mine were secret fears, secret handshakes, and secret stashes.  then from each of the main branches we were supposed to create smaller branches and then even smaller branches until we ran out of room on the paper.  we were instructed to look for connections all across the mind map, regardless of which main branch the sub branch, or idea, was rooted on.  at the time in class we were learning about brainstorming and divergent thinking and this assignment promoted the use both ideas.
the process not only made realize how many connections i could make, which amazed me,  but it also revealed something deeper about the way i think.  i didn't really notice it until i came across the project again the other day and i was looking at the grading rubric and seeing where i lost points.  one of the major areas that i lost points was because i sectioned off each of the main branches and that would have been fine but i didn't make any connection from section to section after that.  my professor even thought that i sectioned it off as to not permit connections from section to section.  at first, i didn't really notice anything weird about the way i sectioned the mind map off or find it weird that there were no cross section connections.  then it hit. i had most likely done it subconsciously.  in almost every aspect of my life, i like a little bit of structure but then within that structure i find it necessary to have freedom.  hence my double major in rigid, rule-based accounting and free-flowing, divergent advertising.  i need a little bit of both to stay sane.  thus it only makes sense that i would continue this on my mind map.  each section of main branches were organized neatly but within those sections ideas flowed any and everywhere.  i never thought a class assignment would teach me so much about myself.

me jane. you jack. give jane ball.

have you ever stopped and thought about sports.  i mean like really think about them.  what was the first sport? who started it? who made up the rules? why do we even need sports? what purpose do they serve? why are they even fun? how do we find so much joy in playing sports? why are they fun to watch? if you really think about the answers to these questions sports in general begin to not really make sense.  i am and have been an athlete for the a large majority of my life but i still don't think i could answer half of these questions and make any sense.
someone once said to me that volleyball looked like "organized hot potato," and when you think about it, it really does.  individually, you can't touch the ball too long or you will be called for a lift and the other team will get the point, but at the same time you want to control the ball and pass it to your teammates so you can hit it to the other side of the net only so the other team can do the same thing right back.  football is yet another childhood game altered to make it acceptable for adults to play.  that game is keep away and a much more violent version of tag rolled into one, where the endzones are home base.  i'm sure i could go on and on and oversimplify every sport out there and relate it back to some childhood, but for time's sake i'll just leave it at those two.  with that in mind though, if you think about the sports that involve a ball, we are all basically barbarians chasing something that is usually bright with a funny shape.  we might as well be screaming "me want ball," just to tie it back to the days of neanderthals.  but yet some people's whole lives and careers are based around these seemingly pointless activities and there is still so much joy involved.  like i said, i am one of these ball-chasing, children-wannabes and i still can't explain why.

till infidelity or boredom do us part..

this day in age it seems like every time i turn on the tv or radio i hear about another celebrity couple that is breaking up or getting a divorce.  whether it's courtney cox-arquette and david arquette or eva longoria parker and tony parker.  couples that seemed like they were going to last suddenly split.  it's almost like the thing to do in hollywood is get married to someone you co-starred with, i won't even go into the psychological background supporting this trend, and then a few years, or months even, down the road file for a divorce.  i've noticed with celebrities and people in the spotlight infidelity and boredom, aka irreconcilable differences, tend to be the two biggest reasons for divorce.  i understand growing apart, i mean it could happen to anyone and it is really no one's fault, but this recent string of celebrities cheating on each other has me thrown for a loop.  sandra bullock and jesse james. the aforementioned eva longoria-parker and tony parker. jennifer anniston and brad pitt.  i think i can speak for most people when i say that i absolutely never saw it coming.



i realize that divorce happens in normal people's lives everyday, for the same reasons it happens to celebrities, since they are also people afterall.  my concern lies with the image of marriage and love that is being created by celebrities since basically every aspect of their lives are under the spotlight.  how can we be expected not to imitate these same tendencies and even pass them on to our children.  i think brad paisley said best in his song celebrity (video featured above) when he said "i can fall in and out of love/ have marriages that barely last a month/ when they go down the drain/ i'll blame it on the fame/ and the pressures that go with/ and say it's just so tough/ being a celebrity."  it's almost like celebrities really do use their fame as an excuse, as if it affects their ability to stay faithful or actually look for true love.  i just wonder if these celebrities ever stop and think for one second about the big picture and how they are affecting how society views marriage and love.