Oklahoma City April 2010

I'm at the baseball stadium in Oklahoma City.

This is the memorial in Oklahoma City. It was very well done and very calm.

When we were downtown in Oklahoma there was no one there. All these high rises and no one. It felt like a ghost town. We kind of wondered if the streets were blocked off and we didn't know about it. Someone told me it's like they roll up the sidewalks. I loved this sculpture--probably because it was red :), but it was really cool. You can see me there at the bottom to give you perspective.

I went on business to Oklahoma City. I really did not have high expectations, but it actually turned out to be a blast! We worked during the day and then went and did stuff at night. The funniest story is about a bar. There is a bar there that has live bulls. Well I just had to see that. So I was telling some people in my class (I wasn’t taking a class, but was sitting on the prototype making changes to the course that students wanted.) that we were going to go there and they were welcome to come. I had invited like ten guys. (Almost everyone there is male—and old, but adorable.) Well this guy told me that they didn’t have live bulls that night, but they had ‘male review night.’ I had no idea what that meant, but didn’t want to sound stupid. Finally I told him I didn’t understand and he told me that it meant male strippers. Now I could totally just picture the scene. I go into this bar with these ten guys behind me and then the guys on the stage start taking off their clothes. It was just too hilarious! I hurriedly told all the men that we were not going that night. They encouraged me to go, but I did not. :)

We did go to a baseball game—minor league. I had never been to a baseball game like that before. It was really fun! We went with a big group—about thirteen of us. I was in a very giggly mood. At one point someone said something to me that I found particularly funny and I was totally laughing. The guy in front of me (from my group) turned around and said ‘you aren’t a happy person are you.’ It was really funny and really kind of made his day. He couldn’t get over that I was laughing so much.

The other thing that was kind of funny/wild was about me meeting this couple. The whole trip I would meet these people in random ways—like in the elevator or at the gym (yes I went every day I was there—yea me J) So it became the subject of conversation with my project manager and me every time we got in the car to see ‘what crazy I talked to that day.’

At the game I met this guy who happened to be the teams equipment manager. After talking to him for awhile I went back to my seat and told Mohammad that I had met another person. Well he turns to Deeke, (the guy I know who invited us to the game) and said ‘she’s just acquiring people.’ So Deeke says ‘ok, who do you want to meet.’ He kept asking so I finally turned around and said ‘these people.’ So he interrupts their conversation and says ‘Hi, this is Debbie she wants to meet you.’ It was really funny. I was super bubbly and started talking to them (they were very cool and went along with this.)

It ends up that they are from Cuba and I know someone who just moved from there and the guy actually taught my friends kids in school there. It was just so wild that we would actually have a connection.

Mohammad jokingly said, ‘why don’t you take a picture.’ I said that’s a great idea (even though I know he was totally teasing) and I took their picture. It was just so random. I showed the picture to my friend Laurie and she had me show it to her son who said it was actually his favorite teacher. What a small world!