Rosalind Cook’s Studio is amazing

After a long week of event planning I’m sitting on my couch drinking a cup of coffee and thinking about the things I did. Yesterday I got to do something pretty incredible that I didn’t even know existed in Tulsa. I visited Rosalind Cook’s studio. Rosalind is a sculptor who has sculptures all over Tulsa and other parts of the world. If you visit Utica Square ever you will see one of her works of art in the courtyard outside of Starbucks at the West end. She also has them in front of St. Francis, Kirk of the Hills, and several other places, including the Little Light House. Every year she donates a sculpture to the Garden Party so we can auction it off, and this year I got to go with my boss and a lady on the committee to pick one out.

Her studio is behind her house in a separate building, and her house is amazing. When you walk up to her front door you see sculptures surrounding a little stream that actually goes under her house and through her back yard. These bronze sculptures are various sizes and are all of kids, Jesus and other religious figures, Grandparents with their children, kids holding frogs, etc. They are really amazing. Her house is one of those amazing houses that you drive by near midtown and wonder if you’ll ever be cool enough to afford. She greeted us at the front door with her Golden-Doodle, probably the friendliest and least scary dog I’ve ever seen in my life. She is so nice, and I was immediately comfortable as she welcomed us and took us through the house and into the back yard. Her yard is perfectly landscaped with several more bronze sculptures throughout the flowers and trees. We walked over a small bridge and into the back building which is her studio, and when I walked in I had to focus very carefully to not let my jaw stay hanging open very long. There were probably 100 sculptures sitting around. Some were life size and even larger, some were as small as a glass or water, and some were works in progress sitting on pedestals with different small sculpting tools surrounding them. She explained how she will make a small sculpture and send it away when someone wants one that is life size, and they scan it and then make something out of foam and then send it back so she can resculpt it bigger. I didn’t really understand the whole process but it was great listening to her talking about it anyway. The really crazy part was when she started telling us our options of sculptures to pick from to take to our auction. We were given several choices, and I thought it was crazy that we were given this incredible gift by being able to take one with us. We looked at a few of children, some of Noah, some of Jesus, etc. They were all amazing and I knew if I was the only person who had to make the decision I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. Eventually we all agreed on one of Jesus holding a Lamb. As I said recently in a post, I am usually not a fan of Christian inspirational decor, but this sculpture was absolutely amazing. If it wasn’t worth over $2,000 I would consider buying it myself.

I desperately wanted to take pictures to post them on here, but my camera was dead when I got there and checked. Julia Ann, our committee chairperson, took some and when she gets them to me I will post them. If you’re at all into art you’ll be blown away. Check out her website on the link above to see some of her sculptures and where they are located around Tulsa.

Spicy Shrimp Alfredo Fun

Lately I’ve been cooking a lot, and it has been mainly the same things over and over. This Thursday I was sitting at work trying to decide what to make for dinner, and I decided that I wanted to try something different and look for a recipe online. I had shrimp at home, and I wanted to make some type of pasta. I personally really like alfredo sauce, even though it’s really not that great for you, so I went to the Food Network website and I did a search for shrimp alfredo. One of Emril’s recipes came up, and it looked spicy and good so I decided to give it a try. You can find the recipe RIGHT HERE!

I didn’t have andoille sausage, so I knew I needed to get some. I figured that Whole Foods would have it for sure, but I thought it might be something that the regular grocery store would have, so I went to Food Pyramid first, because I also needed a few other things that would be cheaper there and I didn’t really need to get all of it at Whole Foods. So, I went to the section where the sausage is and I didn’t see it. Now, I was fairly sure what I was looking for, because I have seen pasta and gumbo recipes with this type of sausage in it, but I wasn’t exactly sure if that was what type of sausage it was. I didn’t see it anywhere (a severe flaw of both Food Pyramid and WalMart, they never have ingredients I need), so I decided to ask the person at the meat counter, because they should know… right? This was a big mistake.

I walked up to the counter and asked the woman if she knew if they had any andoille sausage. She looked at me with blank stare, then looked down to the sausage at her counter. I knew that the sausage was not in the counter, because all they had was Italian sausage next to the refrigerator or shrimp. There was a very, very small selection. But, I didn’t expect to find it in that counter at all, I just thought she might point me in the right direction. She pointed to the Italian Sausage through the glass and said, “Here it is!” and proceeded to grab some gloves to dish some out for me. I said, “No, I’m pretty sure that’s not it,” and then I showed her the word “andoille” on my sheet of paper that had my shopping list on it. She looked at the word, then back down through the glass, and said “Yeah, right, that’s it.” At this point I knew she didn’t know what I was talking about, and I decided it was probably best to go to Whole Foods for this ingredient, so I politely said, “No, I’ll just look around,” and started to walk away. She followed me out and walked over to the section where you find pre-packaged sausage, and she pointed to a huge roll of Summer Sausage and said, “Oh, here it is!” with lots of excitement in her voice. I sighed… then walked over and said, “No, I think that’s Summer Sausage, I’m looking for andoille sausage, and I’m pretty sure it’s different.” She proceeded to keep looking through the packages for the key word, while I stood beside her knowing it wouldn’t be there since I had already checked, but deciding to let her try and help if she wanted to. After a few minutes of her finding different types of sausage and trying to convince me that each one was what I was looking for, I thanked her and said, “I guess you guys don’t have it,” and just walked away.

Whole Foods had it. I asked a guy in the meat department and he walked me right to it. They had several different choices.

So, I went home and proceeded to make the pasta. Brian decided he wanted to help, so we did it together and it was lots of fun. I cut up the ingredients and Brian put them in little bowls:

I didn’t take pictures of the cooking process, but I just followed the directions exactly and never ran into any problems. Here is the finished product. It was extremely flavorful, and If I made it again I would use less sausage. The sausage basically made the whole thing taste spicy and.. well.. like the sausage. It was still very good though and I would make it again with the modifications. I also didn’t use as much shrimp as the recipe called for, and it may have been better with a little more shrimp. So less sausage, more shrimp.

Voila!

Daily Coffee Inspiration

One thing I like about working at a Christian organization is opening the cabinet where the mugs are kept and looking at all of the inspirational ways I can drink my coffee each morning. I don’t really like the coffee that we make here, so I bring my own in a to-go cup, but then when I get here I like to pour it into a regular mug. It’s just much more enjoyable to drink coffee in a regular mug as opposed to a sealed thermos through a lid with a tiny hole. It just tastes better when I get more than two drops in my mouth at a time.

I typically am not a fan of inspirational scripture decor, but these mugs really do make me smile. The mug I’m using today is colorfully painted with flowers, leaves, and bees flying along the rim, and it says “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. Psalm 90:17″ going around it in curly writing. It makes my coffee experience and my morning fruit medley more enjoyable. Lately I’ve also enjoyed using one that has the words to a song on it about friends. I don’t know what the song is called, but the mug says something like “Because friends are friends forever if the Lord’s the Lord of them”…etc. The line goes on but I can’t remember it right now.

I hope you enjoy the slightly blurry iphone picture.

Boys, Basketball, and the Bachelor

Lately basketball has been taking over my television. Being an OU Alumni, if it were up to me I would have stopped watching when OU lost on Thursday night to OSU, because I don’t really care about basketball much beyond my own team. I don’t hate it by any means, but I just don’t care about watching teams that I have absolutely no emotional connection to. I think it’s interesting how guys are different. Brian will watch any basketball game that’s on just to keep up with what’s going on with the tournament. He cares, and cares enough to sit through the games and watch them rather than just looking at the results at the end of the day to keep up with who is winning. Guys are just different I guess. I wonder what it is that makes them want to sit through game after game. Maybe I’ll never understand.

Maybe it’s the same thing that makes me want to watch every episode of the Bachelor. I will watch the game play out, watch the dates and the girls try to capture the Bachelor’s heart, and then I want to see who “wins” at the end of each episode and who “loses” and is sent home without a rose. I wouldn’t be satisfied just looking to see who wins at the end of each episode, even if I know he’s going to kick off a girl that I don’t care about. I still want to see the relationships change with every player. Maybe that’s what it’s like watching a team you don’t care about. You still want to catch a glimpse of their personality just in case they win at the end. In case they are the one who takes home the final rose, so that you can say “yeah I think they deserved that,” or “Man, that was crazy! They should not have won.” Ok, I think I understand.

Confessions with afternoon tea

One of the things that I love to do is to make plans. My heart is content when I have something to look forward to and plan for. When I was younger I planned for college and thought about my major, who my roommate would be, the color of my dorm decor, etc. When I made it to college I planned my class schedules, what I wanted to do once I graduated, where I would live, and dream about the guy I would end up with. When I graduated and got job I made plans for a life with Brian, planned our wedding, and planned out how our little apartment would fit all of our things together. Now I look at everything and the thing I am most happy with by far is Brian. He’s wonderful and I’m so glad that I married him. He’s the big happy piece to the puzzle that I can start with.

The other things I planned didn’t happen exactly how I wanted them to. I planned on going to nursing school, then I decided to go to OT school, then it was hard and I didn’t get my degree in that, and then I graduated and started working at a nonprofit whose mission I love, but the job I have is not at all what I’d planned. All along the way I’ve thought that God must have a plan and there is probably a reason I’m in fundraising and not some medical field… but I can’t see why that is yet. I am fully convinced that this is not where I’ll end up and that (hopefully sooner than later) I’ll go back to something awesome like nursing or something. For now though, I’m sitting on a college degree in Psychology and Rehab Science and working with donors and events. You’d think I’d like planning events a lot since I like to plan things, and sometimes it’s fun but it’s easy to forget what I’m raising money and planning for when I don’t see the kids every day. I can feel my heart being yanked in another direction. It was always being tugged, but lately it’s been pulled harder and harder so that I can barely function with any heart left where I am.

So, I look in the direction my heart is being pulled and I see science. I see sick or hurt people and their families wanting them to get better. I see kids whose parents are scared and need someone to tell them what’s going on without freaking them out even more than they already are.

So where is that going to lead and how did I end up here, in what feels extremely far away from that reality? I guess I’ll find out sometime. For now I can focus on my family and all of the love I get from them.

Time to go cook talapia.

Circus and Norman Weekend

On Saturday Brian and I drove to see Timmy in Norman. He needed help looking for a place to live, and we wanted to take a trip back to our college town and visit. It was a great trip all except for the bitterly cold wind. We arrived around 12:30, picked up sandwiches at Jimmy Johns, and ate them with Timmy at the bottom of his dorm building. After that we his dorm room and then drove him around to various apartment complexes.

Here is Timmy:

And here is how Timmy lives at OU, complete with soy milk and cookies in hand:

He said his messy desk is more an expression than a lazy habit. He would not let me help him clean it, and said it was that way “because it is allowed to be”. I guess given his 4.0 despite his ridiculous schedule he can get away with a few things like this. If I were still in college and I had his schedule, I would probably cry every night, but he describes this semester as “an easy semester.” I asked him what classes he is taking and I can’t remember them all, but I know some type of engineering physics and Calculus 2 were among the other really hard sounding things. He’s not taking any general education classes right now. I think he has some Organic Chemistry of some kind too. He’s a nut.

On Sunday we went to the circus with Brian’s family, and although I didn’t get very many good pictures I did get this one of Brian that I think is pretty cute. We saw trapeze artists, pink poodles, a bear, elephants, guys riding dirt bikes in a sphere, hoola-hoopers, and much more. It was awfully exciting.

The week that followed all of this excitement was extremely busy and mentally exhausting. I’m so glad it’s Friday and that I don’t have to think about sponsorships or invitations for about 54 more hours. Yea!

Wine and Chocolate Festival

Last Thursday I got a call from Erin asking if I was doing anything over the weekend. She said that her mom was planning on going to a wine and chocolate festival in Missouri with some friends and two of them backed out. When Erin asked Matt if he would be interested in going he said, “Absolutely not.” He said it would be like him asking her to play some crazy war video game tournament with him. Luckily for me, Matt isn’t all that into wine, so Erin asked me to go. When she first asked me I felt like I should check with Brian and make sure he would be able to survive without me, even though I knew he would be fine. This trip would be the first time we spent apart since we have been married, and I felt a little bad that I would be the one doing the leaving. When I brought it up and told him that Erin had asked me, he immediately said, “You should go!” He said it’s not that often that opportunities like that come around. After being ever-so-slightly sad that he was so alright with me leaving, I got excited and told Erin that I would be happy to go. The next afternoon we were on 6 hour drive to Hermann, Missouri.

Valentine Flowers

Here are the beautiful flowers I got for Valentine’s Day from Brian. He sent them to me early at work so I could enjoy them all week.

Technology today

I’m watching You’ve Got Mail right now. It brings me back to a time back in middle school when dial-up dominated and instant messages were intimate and new. Now we’ve evolved from emails and IM’s to texts and Twitters. I kind of miss good old IM’s. There are only a few people that I only communicate with over IM anymore, and those relationships are cherished and few and far between. The Twitters and texts are almost exhausting, but I guess they are a means to communication that I must succumb to. I am one of those people who still only have a plan for 200 texts a month. Last month I survived and only used about 170 texts. Being married and living with Brian has helped. We rarely text anymore. Now the only reason I would text him is because he won’t answer his phone and is working late or I disparately need him to pick up an jalepeno or some garlic for dinner when he won’t answer his phone.

I used to sit online for hours chatting with friends. That was back before cell phones were cheap enough for teenagers to own. Many great conversations came from IM’s. Someone once broke up with me through IM. That wasn’t so great, but it was an important conversation. Lately I heard a story of a guy proposing to his now wife through video chat, which I guess is better than IM but is the now equivalent of IM. I guess I’m glad technology had at least evolved enough so that she could see his face while he did it, but it’s still sad that had to happen at all. I guess I should add that he lived in a different country than her at the time of the proposal… but I still don’t know if that really makes it better.

So, You’ve Got Mail brings me back. I remember waiting for the dial-up, hearing the EEE-ahhh sound of the modem, wondering if my friends would be online. It was so dramatic. Now all I have to do is open my laptop and it automatically connects in about 3 seconds and opens my iChat box so I can see who is online. I rarely ever even talk to anyone online. It’s easier to open Twitter to see what they are up to. They aren’t really talking directly to me, but they are talking to anyone who is reading. They know I’m reading I guess… so that’s one step closer to personal.

I heard someone once say that technology is a way for the devil to bring people farther apart. I disagree. I believe that technology allows a different kind of communication that people wouldn’t have had 10 years ago. It’s a step towards communicating that people didn’t have before. It may not be as intimate as it would be if you called up a friend and asked them for coffee, but if you’re too busy to meet someone for coffee at least you know what’s up in their life.

That’s all I have to say about any of that. I hope it was slightly entertaining. I suppose that this blog is some form of communication that anyone who reads it feels brings them closer to me. I’m totally fine with that. That’s actually why I started blogging in the first place. I wanted a way for people who I didn’t see all the time to know what was going on in my life. I’m glad that blogs exist, and that i have been blogging for the past 4 years. If you feel like you know me better because of this blog (or any past blogs I’ve had), then I’m glad you feel that way. That was the point.

I do want to say though, if you ever want to go out for coffee, I’m always up for that.

My husband, the super-hero

Brian is a genius. This morning when I was staying home because of the ice on the roads (that shut our school down at 2:00 yesterday afternoon), Brian told me to look at my old website. I won’t put a link on here for fear that the owners will somehow find out who he is and kidnap him or something, but if you know what my old website was, go ahead and give it a look real quick. Most of you know what happened to my website a while back. Well, now my articles are safely nestled in the archives of this blog! The only things I’m missing are the pictures and the comments, which is only slightly heartbreaking. Some posts were completely centered around comments, such as the games and quizzes, so those don’t really make much sense now. There are however many good articles about my life from the past few years, and I am so glad that he saved them from the clutches of the enemy.

This act is among the many reasons I LOVE having a husband. I highly recommend marriage to anyone who is considering it, as long as you are in love and all that.