( Steph Lloyd )

Something weird happened over vacation. I was all excited about blogging about our adventures in Tulsa, even formulated posts in my head most days, but never ended up writing anything. Pure craziness. Matt, on the other hand, posted several times. Bazal hasn’t told me what this all means yet.

Vacation was great though. We didn’t leave Tulsa but we did get off the couch. We ate at Elote a lot. We took pictures. We watched movies. We took in some live music at Shades. It was actually quite refreshing to chill for a week straight.

Eloté is a newish restaurant downtown. Their food is so delicious and clean tasting. Clean to me equals no grease. Usually there is all this oil dripping out of my tacos when we eat out… but not there. They have some salmon tacos that Matt enjoyed and we devoured some of their lunch sandwiches on another stop. Everything is organic and locally grown. We love that place.

I took pictures of a friend downtown one afternoon. I was actually kind of nervous because I wanted to make sure the pictures would be good/usable and I’ve only ever taken pictures of Matt. She was hilarious and I had sooooo much fun doing it. I’ll have to get permission from her before I show you one.

We rented three movies over break: Vicky Christina Barcelona, Changeling and Milk. We didn’t plan to have a movie marathon but ended up watching them all in a row. I liked all of them for different reasons. Vicky Christina Barcelona is a Woody Allen film, so it was funky. I love Scarlett Johansson. I always wonder if the actors/actresses who have an extremely believable role are actually acting like themselves. Penelope Cruz=crazy lady?? Changeling was a great period movie. The clothes, hair and cars were great. It left me feeling sad though. Milk was good. Sean Penn is a stinkin’ good actor. I enjoyed the story and was surprised when the movie was over because I felt like I hadn’t been watching for long. It was sad too but left me feeling hopeful and not depressed.

Shades of Brown usually has live music on Tuesday nights. We’ve never planned to go and watch anyone but have ended up being there a few times. The other night we stopped in for a bit and heard there was going to be music. I wanted to hear the first guy, Chris McLeod, because he’s friend with lots of people I know and I wanted to see what he sounded like. He was great. While he was singing, I saw the next guys getting ready and decided I wanted to stay and watch them too. They were Something in the Wheel. I have to say that I really, really dug them. I’ve had their songs in my head ever since. We actually did a little soap/music swap. I think I’d like a barter system. It’s fun. Third up was Damion Suomi. He was just great too. Different but just as awesome. Lastly was Andy Zipf. A bunch of the gang have known him for a long time but I’d never heard of him. He was cool and I enjoyed listening, for sure, but I liked the second and third sets best.

Those are the highlights of our vacation. In between those things are bunches of reading, sitting outside, eating, sleeping, and more picture taking. The best thing of all was that all these things were done with my husband!