Through the years

My friend Tess found the most amazing site where you can Yearbook Yourself. It's almost like a time machine!

Here I am in 1952:



In 1958:



In 1964:



In 1966:



In 1972:



In 1984:



And in 2000:



I'm not sure why my head shrunk in 2000. Maybe it collapsed under the weight of those bangs.

Driving my life away

I drove up to L'ville this morning to take Annabelle's Mac to the Apple Store because apparently 3.5 hours at the Genius Bar Friday night just weren't enough. They wound up keeping it for the day, so she and I drove back up there this evening to pick it up and arrived home just a little while ago. That's why I have nothing interesting to blog today, and I am too tired to seek out an LOLcat for your amusement. I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Scenes from a birthday

Isn't technology grand? Fred was able to join us for the present opening, although he was not able to enjoy the brownies with us:



This was the present I was most excited about giving Annabelle:



In fact, I had a REALLY hard time not giving it to her yesterday so she could wear it to her bassoon lesson. Oh, well, next lesson then!

Thirteen is the toughest!

When Annabelle turned 3, no amount of discussion would convince her that she was not, in fact, turning 6 as Mike had done the month before. She adamantly insisted on a 6 candle for her cake and a plastic dinosaur as the decoration. This picture really sums up her immense satisfaction with the situation:



Happy thirteenth (not sixteenth) birthday, sweetie!

Touch THIS!

Look at me, blogging from Panera on my iPod Touch! Today is my day for Getting Stuff Done. So far I have dropped the car off for an oil change and learned how to get online using the Touch. More stuff to follow . . . This little keyboard is making me nuts.

Where did this week go?

I can't believe how fast time is flying. This week has just zoomed right by us. This time tomorrow, the kids will be one-third of the way through the first quarter. How freaky is that?!

I'm still recovering from how dorked up my sleep schedule got from staying up late to cheer for Michael Phelps. Last night I was asleep by 11, which was the earliest I've passed out in a while. I'm hoping for 10:30 tonight. After I post this, I'm going to turn off the computer and watch the last part of "Match Point" (NetFlix makes a fortune off of me because it takes me sooooo long to get through a movie) and then read myself to sleep.

See? Salt.

Remember ages ago when my mom joined the kids and me on what would come to be known as the hell-you-don't-know tour of Poland? We wound up taking a tour of a salt mine, and while I was there I bought some salt:



For the longest time, I didn't use it because this was, after all, special salt. Eventually though I decided that was stupid, so I started sprinkling it around. The whole time, I have been enjoying it and telling myself that when it runs out I will simply buy more on the Internet, because is there anything that's not for sale on the Internet?

As luck would have it, I recently ran out, and it turns out that there IS something that is not for sale on the Internet. Polish salt. Damn.

Edited to add: Oh, look what I just found in the Polish Yellow Pages! I've sent an email. Cross fingers!

Who invented online pizza ordering?

I want to hug that person. I hate calling strangers on the phone, and I especially hate dialing for pizza. They always ask if you can hold, but it never seems that saying no is an option.

Look, Audrey put my pizzas in the oven at 5:07:



Now I've got a new update alerting me that William is on his way here with the pizzas. Go, William, go!

I wish I could cook supper like this every night. Just tell the computer what I want and watch while unseen hands do all the work.

Is synchronized swimming an Olympic sport?

I'm too tired to create my own material, so here is an lolcat for you. Maybe Olympic, maybe not:

Going nowhere fast

We spent $500 monthly on gas in June and July of this year. Some pitiful fraction of that is attributable to Fred, but Fred is a pretty low-mileage guy, given that I can see his old office building from my window. Not what you would call a huge commute, you know? My poor minivan, on the other hand, racked up the miles this summer--driving to and from Alabama, back and forth to E'town for play rehearsal and performances, back and forth to Louisville for haircuts, bassoon lessons, and general shopping and eating.

Know how much I've spent this month on gas? Sixty bucks. And I've still got a quarter of a tank left! Admittedly I started the month of August with a full tank of gas bought the end of July, but still. That's a pretty hefty drop, don't you think? All I'm doing now is driving to and from the high school to get Mike after cross country practice, driving just off post once a week to take Annabelle to her musical theater class, zipping her over to her piano lesson once a week, and making the occasional trip to the commissary. The dance studio is probably 5 miles away, but everything else is well within 2 miles of the house.

I bought this current tank of gas on the 8th of August, and I hope I can make it last until this Friday. We go back up to Louisville that afternoon for another bassoon lesson, so I'll definitely need to fill up then. As if I needed more incentive to stay home!

Literary cat is obnoxious

With Fred gone, I use his half of the bed as a storage area of sorts. It's good for holding stacks of laundry, the TV remotes, perhaps an empty popcorn bowl, and of course a book. Last night when I was ready to go to sleep, I set my current read face-down on Fred's side of the bed and drifted off. Sometime in the middle of the night I was awakened by the sound of Eddie viciously attacking my book. I swatted him away and went back to sleep and thought nothing more of it until tonight, when I picked up the book to continue reading:



I'm glad that was my book and not my face. We didn't name him after Edward Scissorhands, but perhaps we should have.

Light at the end of the tunnel

I've been working on a pretty big indexing project for the past couple of weeks. The first week was fairly laid back, and I kept figuring to myself how much I needed to do to get it done by the deadline, which I thought was next Monday. Then somewhere around this past Tuesday, I happened to look at my calendar and realized that no, the deadline is Saturday, not Monday. I had a bit of a panic attack and then started working twice as hard as I had been.

I finished it up just a little while ago. This will actually turn out for the better because now I have my weekend free to get stuff done around the house, but it's been a tense few days getting to this point.

Cross country

There's a nice write-up in today's post newspaper about the start of the high school's cross country season. Of particular interest here: "The boys team features two returning runners—Robert Barrasa, who was in the top five runners in the region last season, and Mike Taylor, who earned the most improved runner award last year."

The article also includes this photo, which is regrettably tiny:



That's Mike, fourth from the left and wearing a light blue shirt (that was Fred's in the early 1980's--it's vintage!).

Not much to report

I've just been working a lot lately. I have a big project in and for some reason I thought it was due next Monday. Um, no. It's due Saturday. So the rest of this week will be pretty intense, but the weekend should be nice and relaxing once I get the project turned in.

Naked ladies

It'll be interesting to see what sort of pervy traffic Google sends my way for that post title. But I'm not talking about REAL naked ladies--I'm talking about flowers.

I have this little corner of my yard that is kind of the bulb graveyard. During the winter I love to buy forced bulbs such as tulips, daffodils, etc., and let them bloom in my windowsill. When they've done their thing, I stick them out on the back porch to finish fading away, and then eventually Fred digs a hole and sticks them in that flowerbed. It's always a mystery as to what will come back up!

Last spring I had a huge mess of foliage that I chalked up to be underperforming hyacinths--lots of greenery but no flowers:



This past week, I had some mysterious flowers that I don't remember ever seeing before come snaking up out of the ground. No leaves at all, just long stems and pod-like buds that turned out to be some sort of lily:



I found out the other day that these mysterious beauties are called "naked ladies" or "surprise lilies" (which is accurate but not as kinky sounding). According to the Louisville paper:

The surprise lily is the more common in our area, and it is fun to own and operate. Its green foliage boils up in spring, then disappears. Just when you've forgotten about them, up pop the rose-pink, amaryllislike blooms on leggy, 2-foot stems.

Yep, that's pretty much what happened here!

Trashed

I could cry.

Remember that huge trash bag of empty plastic bottles I schlepped home from the high-school dance Friday night? I set it next to my recycling containers and planned on opening it up next Thursday before the recycling truck came around so that the collectors could clearly see the recyclable nature of its contents. It never occurred to me that on Monday (today), some OTHER truck--possibly yard waste, possibly bulk trash--would come along and TAKE MY BAG OF BOTTLES!!!

Olympic evening

Mike and I are spending the evening hanging out in my room watching the Olympics. It's weird to think that it has already been 4 years since we watched part of the opening ceremonies of the last summer Olympics in a truck stop in the Czech Republic!

Saturday report

Well, the dance was a smashing success (I think they had around 150 kids there, which is almost half the school.) I stayed in the hallway handing out refreshments, but the kids seemed to have be having fun in the cafeteria.

My big success was rescuing nearly all the plastic water bottles from the trash. I was appalled last year at the homecoming dance to see so much plastic tossed in the trash, so last night I went prepared and wound up dragging home a huge yard bag of empty bottles. It's sad though to see how much water is wasted because kids take a bottle, set it down, lose track of it, get another, lather, rinse, repeat. So we've decided that we're going to be pouring water into paper cups at this year's homecoming dance.

Today I got to sleep in until after 9, which was really nice. Then Mike and I spent the afternoon in Louisville. We bought him new shoes for cross-country, went to lunch, and got his hair cut.

I think tomorrow Annabelle and I are going to go see the new Traveling Pants movie and finish off her school-supplies shopping.

In case I turn into a pumpkin . . .

I'm leaving in a bit to chaperone the back-to-school dance at the high school. I'm slipping in today's blog post here in case I really wind up having to stay until midnight. Nothing terribly exciting happened today--I scored 3 shirts at Marshalls, restored the roots of my hair to their rightful color, and treated myself to lunch at my favorite Indian restaurant (where they keep a rack of recent People magazines). Ever since I got home, I've been working on my current indexing project. Nice day, but not terribly exciting.

Poor sick little (big) dude

Mike has been fighting a bug for the past few days, and today it totally got the better of him. No voice, fever, aches--the works. We wound up at the doc's at 7:30 this morning where they tested him for strep and mono, both of which were negative. I was kind of hoping for strep, as once you get the drugs it's a pretty quick recovery. Looks like it's just a yucky generic virus. He's hoping to be well enough tomorrow to make it to school at least for his AP classes.

Home sweet apartment

Fred sent me some pictures of his apartment in Pennsylvania. The decor style is "early cast-off," but you can see that it is as neat and tidy as you would expect Fred's apartment to be:







It's a step up from his digs in Iraq:

Second day

The positive reports from the first day of school were echoed today, as both kids seem quite satisfied with their classes and teachers this year. This afternoon Annabelle and I attended her school's open house, and I got to meet everyone.

I am getting ready now to purchase Fred's plane ticket to come home over Labor Day weekend. Hard to believe he has been gone for 2 weeks already! This is so much nicer than a deployment.

First day of school . . . and a visitor

Well, today marks our FOURTH first day of school at Fort Knox. Mike is a junior, and Annabelle is in eighth grade:



Apparently the universe was worried I might be lonely today, so this little guy showed up on my back porch:





I watched him sit there for at least an hour. At one point an adult robin flew over and stuffed a worm in him, and he seemed happy enough. I knew he couldn't sit there all day--not without baking once the afternoon sun hit him, at any rate. So when my soon-to-be-former neighbor Tammy (wah!) arrived to clear her quarters, we went on one final bird rescue together. We herded him into a corner and Tammy grabbed him, and we walked him across the alley and deposited him in a nice shrubby patch. You should have heard the little stinker scream when Tammy nabbed him! That brought out the avian cavalry--at least a half-dozen robins flew in from all over and even a cardinal stopped by to see what was going on. I joked with Tammy that she was playing the Tippi Hedren role in our backyard production of The Birds.

Hot stuff

Our AC died last night. The compressor seems to be compressing, but the fan just says "nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn" and refuses to blow the air around. I've got a service call in, and the guy is going to come take a look at it this afternoon. He said though, "I sure hope this isn't one of those calls I've been dreading for a week. Some of the fans in those old houses take these big motors, and we're out of them." Uh oh. That doesn't sound good.

For now we have the windows open, and it's not too bad. I suppose as the day gets warmer, we will likely all take our laptops and head for the basement. It's always cool down there.

I made blueberry muffins for the kids this morning to mark the last day of summer vacation. No way was I going to turn on the oven in the kitchen though! Instead, I moved my convection oven out to the front porch and baked 3 trays of minimuffins, one after another after another. The convection oven is too small to hold a regular-sized muffin tin. It's kind of like the EZ Bake Oven I never got.

Midnight shopping trip

For the past few months, Annabelle has said that at midnight on August 2, she would be standing in line at the bookstore waiting to get her hands on Breaking Dawn, the latest volume in the Twilight series. We always assumed that the bookstore in question would be Barnes and Noble down in E'town. I happened to call early yesterday evening, however, to make certain that they would indeed be celebrating the midnight launch and found out that no, they wouldn't but their sister stores in Louisville would.

I cannot even begin to tell you how NOT thrilled I was at the idea of driving to Louisville (and home again) in the middle of the night. For one thing, I had just spent the whole day there with Annabelle, buying her back-to-school clothes. For another, I just don't see that well at night and 31W is scaaaaaaaaaaary.

Fortunately, The Bookstore right here Radcliff stayed open to provide the latest dose of teenage vampire love to eager readers. So yay for them, and yay for me for not having to make a midnight run out of town!

My big backyard

I like living on an Army post. I like seeing helicopters and parachutes appear at odd moments. I like hearing the distant rumble of artillery fire and the much closer blasts of the bugle calls. I like living someplace where the lowering of the flag each day is marked with cannon fire, even though I will plan my schedule so as to avoid driving near the parade field at 5 o'clock and having to stop and get out. I like being a part of such a wildly diverse community of people who have so many important things in common.

This morning I walked from my house to a change of command on Brooks Field, and as I listened to the Army band and watched the commanders review the troops from a WWII-era jeep, I thought about just how much I like living on post. I wish I had thought to take my camera so I could have some pictures to share with you (just like I wished for my camera the other evening when I saw that big ol' coyote ambling along the side of the road). Since I didn't, I will share a rather cool photo that I took at a friend's change of command at Fort Sam Houston back in 2002:

Literary cat is exhausted

Shopped, dropped

Don't go to Louisville to buy anything tomorrow. There's nothing left. Mike and I killed time before we met Annabelle's plane by getting him set for school (which starts NEXT MONDAY). He will be one stylish dude this year.

Annabelle arrived home safe and sound. Her first words upon getting off the plane were: "I am so over this unaccompanied minor crap." Apparently they kept her on quite a short leash, which was rather offensive, I suppose, to such a seasoned world traveler. It's good to have her back! The dog just about turned herself inside out with joy when Annabelle walked in the kitchen.

OTPO continues

That's Operation Total Photo Organization, you know. Yesterday I managed to finish uploading all my pics from 2007 to my Flickr account. You can see 2007 in all its glory here.

Today I've moved on to 2006 (2008 was already up to date). I have a tendency to take the same picture multiple times, so I'm trying to weed out some of the repetition before I move on to uploading and tagging them.

For Annabelle

What could be cuter than an anteater in a shirt?

Home cooking

This month's issue of Fine Cooking has an article devoted to gin and a recipe for a homemade Tom Collins. Tom was a very good friend of mine back in the day, so I was eager to try it out. I squeezed my own lemons and made my own simple syrup (sugar and water--see? simple!) and poured it all together, and it was quite tasty:



I felt like I had stepped right out of a scene from Mad Men as I sipped my cocktail. All I needed was a cigarette, some stern foundation garments, and a dude in a suit to treat me like crap, and the scene would have been complete. Anybody else watching this one? It's my new addiction; I've been catching up on season 1 and can't wait for season 2 to start tonight! Was 1960 really so smokey? And were men really such pigs?

I might have to make another TC to go along with tonight's show!

Distractable

I've had a very quiet day today, with Fred in PA, Annabelle in NY, and Mike at the pool. Just me and the dog. I was going to call this post "I'm all alone" after the song by the same name from the musical "Spamalot." I went searching on YouTube for a clip of the song, and I found this one, but I can't embed it. I looked a little more for one that I could embed and came up empty-handed on that account, but I found this, which I love:

Pestilence

Mike's show last night went really well. I hope to get some video clips uploaded this weekend, once I finish bringing my newly rebuilt computer back online. Slowly but surely I'm getting everything reinstalled.

We were well past midnight getting home last night, and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed. What I did NOT want to do was discover that at least 3 house centipedes were having a party in my kitchen. Ew! I am not going to post a photo of those disgusting little critters here, because then I would have to go shower every time I looked at my blog. If you are inclined to check them out, however, you may go here. You'll regret it though . . .

Our friendly Orkin man paid a visit this afternoon.

Like a thief in the night . . .

I am in the middle of installing a new hard drive on my desktop computer, so Internet access is fairly scarce at home today. I brought Mike and some friends up to Louisville though where they are playing a "gig" tonight, and I was able to get a wireless signal out here in the parking lot.

Wish me luck on my upgrades! I installed new RAM yesterday and had to make an unplanned trip back to Best Buy because I had bought the wrong kind. Today I had to use my feet to push the old hard drive out of the computer. Somehow I don't think that is the recommended method. It worked though.

Pennsylvania or bust

The big adventure begins today! Fred left for PA just a little while ago, just him and 1000 pounds of his most necessary stuff:

On her way to Camp Maya

Annabelle left this morning for a week in Syracuse with Maya. I don't think we need to worry about her getting snowbound this time!

While we waited in the airport, Annabelle amused herself by teaching Fred how to add numbers to his new phone:



Here's the plane she left on, but she has already arrived in Detroit and should be heading out on a different plane for the final leg of her journey any minute now:



Have fun, Annabelle!

Sweet sixteen

Our bouncing baby boy is 16 today!



Happy birthday, Mike!

Sew sad

I couldn't believe my eyes when I read it in the paper this morning: Baer Fabrics in Louisville closed yesterday. Apparently it was very sudden. Over a century in business and then wham! gone just like that.

I bought my fabric for my retro dress at Baer last fall:



I didn't go there often, but it was comforting to know that there was a REAL fabric store just an hour away.

Here, kitty kitty

Fred and I took Annabelle up to Louisville this morning to see "Cats" at the Iroquois Amphitheater. It was a great production, and Annabelle was happy to get to see it in English for a change. (The kids and I saw it in Düsseldorf while Fred was deployed.) I thought it was fitting that we should see "Cats" today, closing night for "Beauty and the Beast," since that was the show that sparked Annabelle's interest in musical theater in the first place (and the one that inspired her costume for Halloween 2005):

One day more

When she saw my video clip of the castle battle from "Beauty and the Beast," which starts with the tail end of "Kill the Beast," my friend Deana remarked that it had a real "One Day More" (from "Les Miz") look to it. I think she's right. Here's a picture that I copied from the YTHC website:



And here's a shot from "Les Miz" that I copied from heaven only knows where (thanks, Google Image Search!):



Consider the lyrics: "Here we come, we're 50 strong, and 50 Frenchmen can't be wrong . . . " Coincidence? I think not.

And now it really is one day more. Annabelle is at the next to last performance right now. I'm going to go tomorrow to watch the closing night performance. It's sad to see it come to an end, but Annabelle is already looking forward to next year's show. "That's the nice thing about having civilian friends," she remarked the other day. "They'll still be here a year from now."

I scream, you scream . . .

. . . we all scream for ice cream!

Yesterday my friend Miki sent me this photo that was taken of her son Michael in Iraq:



The caption at DefenseLINK says:

U.S. Army Capt. Michael Kolton buys ice cream from a street vendor during a combined patrol with Iraqi police officers in Baghdad, Iraq, on July 8, 2008. Kolton is platoon leader, 4th Platoon, Bravo Troop, 1st Squadron, 75th Cavalry, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division. DoD photo by Spc. Charles W. Gill, U.S. Army.

It just amazes me because even though we've seen Michael fairly regularly over the years since Miki and I met in our third year of law school, in my mind he will always be about the same age as the Iraqi kids in that photo. Not to get all "Sunrise, Sunset" or anything, but how is it possible that he is an army captain already? At any rate, we're all terribly proud of him and keep him in our thoughts every day, so I thought I would share the photo here.

Is this just a Kentucky thing?

We have found that the one thing we can count on here is that on any given weekend at least one charitable organization will be standing in the middle of a busy intersection looking for handouts. I'm assuming they have official permission to do this because they always have the traffic cones and the vests. Heck, sometimes it's the firefighters with a firetruck parked in the median, lights flashing, and men walking up and down holding out boots for drivers to toss their donations into.

I worry the whole thing is an accident waiting to happen. Not to be a grump, but I have a blanket policy that I will not give money under these conditions, not even to organizations that I would happily support otherwise. I don't want to encourage the continuation of this practice:

Calendar girl

Remember the birthday picture of me that I de-greened the other day? It was part of my top-secret project to create a calendar for Fred to take with him to the War College when he moves next week. (Yikes! Next week already?) I was so pleased with how it turned out that I wound up ordering one for us to have here at home as well.

Here's the cover image:



You can click here and see the whole thing.

Busy, busy!

No time to really blog right now. I've got a big indexing project due on Friday, and I keep coming up with distractions. I'm trying to get a big chunk knocked out tonight. Maybe tomorrow I'll be more interesting!

I crack myself up

We had some time to kill between dropping Annabelle off at the theater yesterday afternoon and returning to see the show, so we decided to run a few errands. While Fred went into Lowe's to buy some paint, I dashed into Feeder Supply with Mike and his friend Nick to buy some poo bags--rolls of plastic baggies that hang from the handle of Ginger's leash and enable us to do our part to keep the neighborhood tidy.

Anyway, we were standing in line with the poo bags when I noticed that the package proudly declared the bags to be biodegradable EXCEPT IN CALIFORNIA. "Amazing!" I said. "How on earth does the bag know it's in California?" I think the sales clerk thought I was serious. He solemnly assured me that the bags were indeed biodegrable in California. I thanked him and said I would keep that in mind should I ever take a bag of poop to California.

So, about that LOLcat

Here's one that represents me today:



Opening night was a complete success, and Annabelle had a blast at the post-performance lasagna party, which went until midnight. We were really late getting home, and then I had to get up at 7:00 to make it to my 9:00 hair appointment in Louisville.

Afterwards I took Annabelle's Macbook to the Apple store to see about getting a couple of minor glitches fixed. Stupid me--do you know what the Apple store looks like the day after the release of a new iPhone? There were lines just to get in the store. Anyway, when I brought it back home and she booted it up, the glitches had disappeared. So maybe all it needed was a trip to Louisville. Who knows?

We are going as a family (plus Mike's friend Nick who is visiting from Texas) to see tonight's show. Can't wait!

You almost got an LOLcat today

I spent most of yesterday working on the video clips that I posted from parents' night. Today I have got to devote some time to something other than my blog (like work and this filthy house), so I resolved last night to make today's post a quickie. LOLcats are usually good for that, but you got exceptionally lucky! I found this picture on the YTHC website:



Tonight I'm working the concession stand at the show (opening night!) during intermission and then staying to bring Annabelle home after their post-show party, which promises to run until midnight. Then I have to be in Louisville for a 9 a.m. hair appointment on Saturday. Tomorrow you might very well be getting an LOLcat.

The video clips

As I said in yesterday's post, last night was our one opportunity to take pictures and shoot video during a performance. I've been working on my video clips for most of today and am happy to be able to share them. A couple of notes first though:

First, we were not allowed to use monopods or tripods for filming, so the video is shakier than I would have liked.

Second, I tried to balance getting a good overview of the show with getting good shots of Annabelle. Accordingly, there are times when it looks like a performance of "The Rug and Beauty and the Beast," but I figure that's my maternal perogative.

In "Belle," Annabelle is the chimney sweep who walks in from the left (stage right):



"Me" is one of my favorite numbers from the show:



In "Gaston," Annabelle wears a pink dress and starts off on the far right side chatting with the baker. After Gaston spits, she wipes his spit off her forehead. Later on in the song, she is on the left chugging some beer:



"Be Our Guest" is just spectacular! Annabelle is the rug in this song. I think it's funny when the castle creatures are all sobbing and she blows her nose on her tassles:



In "Human Again," Annabelle's big moment comes at around the 2-minute mark when she rolls onto stage and is swept away:



"Maison des Lunes" is one of Annabelle's favorite songs, so she asked me to record it:



Here's the title song. I tended to focus on the dancer, because Annabelle wanted to show Maya (yay pointe shoes!):



In the "Castle Battle," our heroic rug engages in fierce battle against Le Fou and later chases him off stage:



And finally this is "Transformation," "Finale," and the curtain call. The transformation is so cool:



It has taken me most of the day to assemble this post. The cast is doing a special private performance right now for a VERY GENEROUS corporate donor (thank you, First Federal!). I can't wait to hear how it goes!

Running up to deadline

It's almost midnight, so I'm in a hurry to get this posted. Tonight was the show for family members, and it was just wonderful. It was the one night that we were allowed to take pictures, so I shot about 45 minutes of video, which is uploading right now. I'll work on getting it edited and posted tomorrow.

The only still shots I took were after the show. Annabelle with "Belle" and some of the other townfolk:



With "Lumiere" and "Gaston":



With the "Prince" (in a not so "Beastly" mood):



With her friend Joanna and "Le Fou":

Blown away

Tomorrow night is a special performance of "Beauty and the Beast" for family members, but I got a sneak preview tonight. Annabelle's friend Katherine has been visiting for the past week or so, and she has to leave tomorrow morning. So the director was kind enough to let us sit through dress rehearsal tonight, and it was WONDERFUL!

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: the blog for the show is fantastic, and you really should go check it out! I've collected a few pics from there that show Annabelle in her various costumes. Here she is working that rug costume:



And here is she is as a random chick in "Gaston":



And as the chimney sweep in "Belle":

You mean 1969 WASN'T electric green?!

I was working on a photo project the other day, and I needed a picture of me as a kid (this will all make sense in a few days). So I got this one out of the photo album my Grandma Jernigan made me and ran it through the scanner:



I promise you, that photo has been that weird green color for as long as I can remember. Just for laughs and grins though, I decided to see if I could fix it up a bit in Photoshop Elements. A little Autofix, a click of Remove Color Cast, application of the default Color Curves adjustment, and a hit or 2 with the healing brush, and voila:



It's not easy being green. But it was pretty easy to fix.

Watching for little red trucks

I generally set my videos at YouTube either not to allow comments at all or to require comments to be approved before they are posted. That is because lots of the people leaving comments at YouTube are mean-spirited twits. Somehow though, I neglected to set these controls for my clip of Annabelle's performance with Missoula Children's Theatre last fall, but somehow each comment that has shown up there has been so full of happy energy and enthusiasm that it renews my faith in humanity (or at least the segment of humanity that frequents YouTube) just a little bit.

I've gotten comments from kids who have been in other MCT performances in other parts of the country, and they are always reporting what positive experiences they have had. How can your heart not melt when you read: "I was Prince Perfect. I'm in oklahoma. 17 years old. I love missoula and want to do tours with them so bad." Or: " Squee! I've been searching everything all over the internet for other MCT things (other than what goes on in my town). I loved doing this play! I was Amelia! This week we're doing Rumplestiltskin(sp?) I'm the queen!!! ^^"

Today I got this comment:

It's great to see different casts doing the Missoula Children's Theatre shows. We filmed "The Little Mermaid" for the new film "The Little Red Truck" in two different cities, Hollywood and Harrisburg, PA. The film opens in 12 cities around the country this summer/fall. Hope MCT fans will help spread the word and come out to see it.

How cool is that?! Apparently "The Little Red Truck"--a documentary that details the what happens in a week with the Missoula Children's Theatre--has earned rave reviews and honors at a variety of film festivals, and it's going to be debuting in a number of US cities this fall. Unfortunately, none of the cities listed thus far are anywhere near me, so I certainly hope that the movie will be out on DVD eventually.

Annabelle had a really great experience with MCT, and their program is amazing. I sure hope they come back to Radcliff this fall!

Here's the trailer for what looks like a wonderful film:

Movie night

I promised Annabelle that I would watch "Nightmare Before Christmas" with her and Katherine at some point during Katherine's visit. Play rehearsal is going to be calling for really late nights from here on out though, so it looks like tonight is THE night. She assures me that I will love it.

For your viewing pleasure

[Edited to add: Egads, I just realized that some of my clips fade to black WAY too early. I'll try to get replacements up ASAP!]

I spent a fair bit of today editing snippets of the "Beauty and the Beast" mall show to share here on the blog. I just couldn't wait for everybody to see what a great show these kids are putting on.

Here's "Belle":



And "Me":



And "Is This Home?":



And "Gaston":



And "If I Can't Love Her":



And "Human Again" (Annabelle's fans will want to pay special attention to the middle of this clip where she somersaults and then rolls offstage, symbolizing dust being swept away):



And the title song, "Beauty and the Beast":



And "Finale":



These kids just blow me away!

Mall show

Tonight the cast of "Beauty and the Beast" took their show on the road and performed highlights from the play at the E'town mall. It was really good! I videotaped the whole thing, and I've got my footage downloading to the other computer right now. I hope to at least have a snippet or 2 up tomorrow. I also hope that lots of the people who enjoyed the show tonight come out to the theater next week to see the real thing. It's gonna be great!

Hatfields vs. McCoys, Fort Knox style

Once upon a time a Canadian soldier and his family lived across the street from a United States Marine and his family. The Marine family decorated the Canadian family's yard with pink flamingos. The Canadians sought their revenge by "gnoming" their neighbors, literally mining their yard with garden gnomes. Over time the flamingos begat more flamingos and the gnomes more gnomes until each house was quite a sight.

Who's to say who escalated the fight, but the feud took a nationalistic bent. And now the Canadians' house looks like this:





And the Marine family's house looks like this:





Can't we all just get along? Happy belated Canada Day, and a happy early Fourth of July!

Keeping busy in bullet points

Today I:

• Went to the commissary


• Went to a friend's retirement ceremony at 10:00


• Went to a 10:00 meeting at 11:00


• Went to the PX to buy a new can opener


• Went BACK to the commissary


• Took Annabelle to rehearsal


• Went to Panera and worked for 2.5 hours on my indexing project


• Picked Annabelle up


• Walked the dog


• Cooked spaghetti


• Cleaned up the kitchen with Fred


• Walked the dog AGAIN

Now I am going to:

• Eat some cake


• Read my book


• Go to bed