Blogging In Downtown Tulsa

I am parked in downtown Tulsa, listening to Rush on the radio and enjoying free wireless internet access on my laptop. Earlier I drove over to Coney Island to get the perpetual special of three coneys with everything and a drink (any size). As I was manuevering through the many one way streets, I found it even more challenging because several streets are closed temporarily. The streets are closed because of an annual festival in downtown Tulsa, called MayFest. It is a festival of the arts, with live music and food vendors filling the closed off streets. I also saw that the Lion King musical is coming to the Tulsa Performing Arts Center on May 25. I think I would like to go to it. As we wind down our time once more here in the states and more specifically, Tulsa, I start entering a mood of bittersweetness. We have a good life in Italy. We have good friends, a warm home, job responsibilities that we enjoy and a routine that is very comfortable. However, to experience those things, it means we must once more say adieu to the life we once knew here in Tulsa. The life that we get a good glimpse of every couple of years. Our families are both from Tulsa along with many lifelong friends. To me it is natural to miss home, whether it is Tulsa or Ancona. There are aspects of each that mean so much to us. When we are in Tulsa, we miss Ancona. When we are in Ancona, we miss Tulsa. And when we are in either we long for Heaven. We go to Italy not because we necessarily want to, but because God has led us to go there. So that means it matters not whether we always like every apsect of it, but that we must be content in every situation God leads us in.


As a side note here is a great article on downtown Tulsa:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/31/AR2006033100598.html

The Drive-In

Last night, Angie and I went out on a date. Married guys should definitely take their wives out, it helps in marital harmony and Angie and I just like doing stuff together. We went and got some Taco Bueno (great fast food tex mex restaurant) and went to the Admiral Twin Drive-In. It was alot of fun. Before the movie started, (you have to wait until it's dark), they had an eighties pop radio station playing and in the distance you could see an American flag waving proudly. I got a little wistful thinking that we would be leaving to go back to Italy in less than two months. It's not that I don't like Italy....it's that I am very patriotic and I know who and what we will be missing when we go back.

Nowadays you turn your FM radio to a station to listen to the movie, instead the old boxes you hung on your window. As we finished our dinner some old (maybe from 50 years ago) cartoons came on about the movie getting ready to start and to head on over to their concession stand. Right before the previews, they started playing the National Anthem with a video of the flag waving. It was really nice. The two movies we watched were both good...Mission Impossible III and Failure to Launch. During the second movie I sauntered over to the snack bar and got an ice cream cone. It turned out to be a really great evening.

Mind Shifting

We are less than two months from returning to Italy and so my mind is starting to shift back into that way of thinking. While we are in the states, Angie and I minister in one way. Then when we get back we minister in another way. It takes a bit to shift gears in our heads and is inevitable that we must start making this transition before we actually make back onto the continent of Europe.

On the road again....

So after about 4 days in bed and lots of medicine in us we are on our way to Louisville. We had to postpone our trip by a few days so hopefully that won't mess up our schedule too much. We should get to Louisville today. We are both still pretty tired but that's ok at least we are on the road now.
We made it to Memphis last night and will finish the trip today. We always come through Memphis even though it adds an hour of driving because we love Corky’s BBQ. It is so good and worth the extra hour in the car! Matt has also wanted to see the famous air plane Memphis Belle. We have tried to see it twice before I think. Once the museum was closed the day we were here and the second time the plane was being moved and was in parts so you couldn’t see it. We thought this time it would work out….third times the charm right? Nope. Now it isn’t even in Memphis anymore. I guess Memphis wasn’t taking care of it like they were supposed to be some air plane museum in Ohio (or something like that) took it back!!!

Sweet Snowy 16

It's snowing!!!! It is so beautiful outside. I love the snow!!! I had hoped that we would get a good snow fall while we were in Tulsa. We don't get snow that sticks in Ancona because we are too close to the Sea. It is so fun to be stuck in the house all day because the weather is bad. I went to Wal-Mart last night and the place was packed. Everyone was stocking up like a blizzard was coming. Cracks me up!
Today is our niece, Brittany's, 16th birthday. It is hard to belive. She was this little toddling thing when I started dating Matt. I love it that I have been around long enough that the older kids on Matt's side of the family don't remember life before Aunt Angie. I can't believe that she is 16. I hear parents say this all the time but it is true how fast kids grow up.
It is a fun day around here with snow and a 16th birthday!

The End of the Road

We had a great time with the Satter's. We learned a lot about their ministry on the Apache Indian Reservation. They have a difficult job but are doing some great things that seem to be working well.
Then we headed out to Tombstone, Arizona where we spent two days. One of Matt's favorite movies is Tombstone. It was really neat walking the streets and imagining all the things that happened there. We got to see Boot Hill Cemetarty, a recreation of the OK Corral gun fight and several historical buildings. Pretty cool stuff!!!
After that we headed back to Tulsa. We got here last night, Valentine's Day. It is so good to be back! We had a great trip, lots of fun, good connections with supporters and prayer partners, raised some support and awareness for Italy but it was good to pull into Tulsa last night.
Two weeks of rest and then it is time to hit the road again.

Vegas

So we just spent about three days in Las Vegas. I was not impressed. I had always heard about how fun Vegas is, all the free stuff and really cool hotels. Ok, so the hotels were pretty cool but I did not find Vegas fun. I found it.....depressing. All these people around me living a life that is so unattractive to me. Talk about a mission field!!!! To top it off I was not impressed with the service at our hotel. We encountered a lot of rude employees. Let's just say I didn't like it.
The last night we did find a spot we liked better the people were nicer and there seemed to be more normal people around. They actually had cheaper food and smiles. Always a welcomed change!
Today we are at the Grand Canyon and then we are spending a few days with a friend from college, Tory Satter and his wife Kara.

Triple Expresso

Yesterday we went to Hope International and Matt taught a praticum class. Basically he shared about our ministry, what our roles are and gave the students some practical helps on how to get and use the computer progams he uses as well as some good resources. It was fun.
Last night John and Judy took us to the play called Triple Espresso. It was so funny! It was written by three Christian guys for their church but it has been so successful that is has a permanent theater and has been running for seven years! It runs in other cities also. It was clean and just plain old funny. My cheeks hurt when we left from smiling so much! :)

Santa Clarita, California

Ok, so we made it California. It took about three days of driving 7 hours a day. It really wasn't too bad. We had a good time. Matt bought some books about route 66 that we followed the whole way. It was fun reading about the little towns we passed thought and seeing things like the leaning tower of Texas. (that would be a huge leaning water tower) I had never been to New Mexico or Arizona. Arizona is beautiful! We even got to see a ghost town on the Texas/New Mexico border and an old mining town where Clark Gable honeymooned in Arizona. We had a good time!
Once here in Santa Clarita we went to the warner brothers studio with a man from Real Life Church. He works on the lot so we got a private tour!! The only actor we saw was Scott Grimes from ER. He is the red headed doctor who is a real pain and I think he is the head of the ER now or something but I can't think of his caracters name. We saw him in this coffee shop where we started out. Pretty cool begining!
We got to see the prop house and costume house. Crazy huge! The costume house had so many of everything it is hard to even describe. We got to see the ER ambulance bay, an ER set, a bunch of cars like the General Lee, Mystery Machine, Bat Mobile, etc. We also saw a museum with a bunch of costumes that different actors had worn over the years like Erkel, Friends Gilmore Girls and the West Wing. We also got to see Stars Hallow!!!! I was so excited. We took pictures of Luke's dinner, Miss. Patty's, Dossies basically anywhere on the city square. We didn't get to see Lorali's house or anything like that because they were taping. I kept my eyes peeled while we were there but I guess they were working because we never saw them.
After all that we went to see a live taping of Joey. Again, so much fun! They handed out pizza, water and candy to the audiance throughout. We were in the taping about 4-5 hours so they wanted to keep us happy. There were give-a-ways but all we won was a door hanger that says "Don't disturb watching Joey"....kinda funny. The actors were great and really so fun to watch. We didn't get to take any pictures of Joey. They took our camera's at the door. We did get Matt LaBlanc's autograph so that will be a fun scrapbook page!Thursday, January 26, 2006
Ok, so we made it California. It took about three days of driving 7 hours a day. It really wasn't too bad. We had a good time. Matt bought some books about route 66 that we followed the whole way. It was fun reading about the little towns we passed thought and seeing things like the leaning tower of Texas. (that would be a huge leaning water tower) I had never been to New Mexico or Arizona. Arizona is beautiful! We even got to see a ghost town on the Texas/New Mexico border and an old mining town where Clark Gable honeymooned in Arizona. We had a good time!
Monday night we spent the evening with Michael and Beth. They picked us up and drove to Pasadena. We walked around a little bit and Michael showed us where he goes to school. It really is a pretty cool campus. Then we happend on to this little toy shop that had all these old toys in it. We were walking around calling out "I had this when I was a kid"! Everything was in the old packaging...it was really cool. We happend onto some view masters and we found one with pics of Italy! So we bought it for our display table. We also picked up some pop rocks and walked around eating those when we left. We ended up at PF Changs. This wonderful chinese restaurant. We were all so hungry that we ordered lots of food and all shared. I couldn't even pick what was my favorite food that we ate it was all so good. Then we went back to Michael and Beth's apartament. They have a very nice apartament and we looked at pictures. Matt showed Michael some pics of Pratola where their grandfather is from. Then we were looking at pics of when Michael was in high school that Matt had. We laughed and laughed and just really had a good time all evening.
Tuesday we went to the Jay Leno show! They tape it in the afternoon and unlike the Joey show Jay Leno only took an hour. They tape it in real time. The sound stage was so cool. Way smaller than we expected but so cool! Jay came out before it all started and told jokes and answered questions. Then this guy came out to warm up the audiance, give some gifts and tell us what to do when. The show was so fun! We saw Dominic, one of the guys from lost, an actrice from the show bones and a really good Christian band but I already forgot their name......POD I think.
The next day Amy Stoms took me to get a much needed haircut. I hadn't gotten my hair cut since we were in Italy and it was starting to get a bit shaggy. So we got that taken care of and then we went shopping. We had decided to fix an authentic Italian meal for the Storms, their life group and the Defazios. So we headed to this Italian import store, Maria's. It was great! I got several ingredients that were just what I would buy in Ancona. We fixed dinner and everyone loved it. Good times.
Wednesday morning we headed out of town but Matt and I stopped at this historical spot on the way out of town. There was an old school house that was so cool! It only fit about four desks inside. There were also houses, a train station, a church, an outhouse and another school. Fun stuff! Then we drove to Universal City just outside of Universal studios and had lunch.
Today we are in Oceanside, California with John and Judy Webb. Today we are going to the college that John works at and Matt is teaching a class. Of course, John is letting us drive his convertable....how fun is that?????

Back To Work

So, today Matt and I officially start back to work. We have had the past almost two weeks off. Let me just say it has been so nice. We have really enjoyed just relaxing, shopping, being with family and friends. We have watched movies, played games, laughed and really do feel rested. Everyone else started back to school and work today so we figured we would too. We have our first presentation at a church in about two weeks. So we will need to work on getting prepared for that.
Yesterday, I was out with my mom and we just happened to pop into Hobby Lobby. We were scrapbook shopping and I found all this stuff that I wanted to make a simple scrapbook to take to churches and it was all 50% off!!! The scrapbook, paper and stickers were all 50% off. I got all that I needed for $20 pretty cool huh? I was excited.