Okay, this was a LOT of fun! Some of these are obscure!

	I received 85 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz cheap digital camera

Give it a try! Post your results!

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.
Sam Ewing

Okay, for you writers – and for anyone who likes a good read – this piece from Damon Lindelof on “Why We Write” is wonderful! (Thanks dianora2 for pointing it out!)

Finally! I’ve been waiting! A Taser combined with an MP3 player. Um, wait…what?

Taking a flight THROUGH the Aurorea Borealis – now THIS might be really cool!

…in an alternating pattern.

🙂 Rehearsals for Art are going well.

Weird weather in Michigan right now. A tornado watch – in January?! 😦

🙂 Good Board Meeting for the theatre tonight.

Yes – for everyone who asks – it CAN be difficult to make ends meet in the non-profit theatre industry. 😦

🙂 And yet…I’ve done it for 15 years, and will continue to do so…even if the economy is a little tough right now.

There is a big lack of shows that I like on TV right now. 😦

🙂 I did manage to fall in love with the Doctor Who spinoff show Torchwood – sweet! (Thanks Chris!)

🙂 Planning for next season at Williamston Theatre – having fun mixing and matching scripts, lineups, possible collaborations with other theatres…

🙂 New icon of the seats from Williamston Theatre – but is it me, or are they a little blurry?

Hey…look at that. More Good than Bad.

As long as we keep things balancing like that, we’ll be okay.

So much to do, so little time…
Started rehearsals for Art. I love working with good actors, a good production staff, and a good crew!
Holding auditions for Hate Mail this weekend. Looking forward to it.
Working on the script, with my 2 collaborators, for our spring production. (Which has the possibility of moving to another theatre, in a whole different part of the state…too early to get excited about it, but I am anyway!)
Our scene shop will soon undergo a big renovation, making it into a much more useful space.
Planning for next season: Trying to select scripts, and begin to lineup designers, directors, etc…
Plus…on the home side of things:
Need to get new glasses.
Need to get arm x-rayed for tendonitis.
Need to get a part for my snowthrower! (SOON!)

Lots more on the list…but no time to type about them!! 🙂

I had to work at the theatre for a few hours on Sunday, and when I got back home I found that the kids had set up a nice surprise! They created a nice Family Game Night in the living room, with decorations and snacks, and a couple of very fun games including Musical Chairs and Bobbing For Apples!

My wife Jeanne had been downstairs working out on the treadmill, and was as surprised as I was. The Game Night began with the ceremonial ribbon cutting ceremony (yes, they had strung a ribbon across the doorway) and my 7 year old son proclaiming “I officially declare Family Game Night OPEN!”. We all had a great time playing a couple games of Musical Chairs (particularly funny was the fact that Sneakers, the dog, jumped in line and was walking around the chairs with us, having a wonderful time!). After musical chairs – both games being won by the kids ( Jeanne and I blamed it on them being little and having littler butts to get onto the chair!) – we went Bobbing For Apples, which I don’t think I’ve done in about 15 years. Then we ate our apples and worked on a couple of craft projects they’d set out on the table.

There are days when you work hard, and think about getting home and flopping down in front of the television and not moving. There are days when you work hard, and think about getting home and doing any number of the thousand things that we all have sitting at home waiting for us to do.

And then there are days where you get home, and it doesn’t matter what your day was like, or what you had been thinking about doing, because your kids have done something so sweet, so wonderful, that everything else leaves your head and all you want to do is be with your family.

I like those days a lot.

Miscellaneous thoughts that I need to get out of my head…

Just saw the movie Juno. Loved it. I want to make plays that make people feel the way that movie made me feel.

Getting ready to start rehearsals on a play. Every time I’m about to direct, I go through some old notes and handbooks – just to remind myself of the basics. This one sticks out nicely:
Just tell the story as believably, as excitingly as possible…the audience has come to the theatre to believe, to respond to the magical words, “Once Upon a Time…”, not to admire a laser show. – Frank Hauser

When you run an organization, you make every attempt to gather people around you that fit together as a team, and you work to keep that team running smoothly. Some of those attempts succeed, and the team grows in strength. Some don’t and, although you may be disappointed, you move on. There’s no helping people who don’t want to help themselves, and you can’t fret and look back – what you can do is continue moving forward.

Having a couple of days to get together with family and friends, loved ones, is vital. Especially, this past week, I’ve loved hanging out and chatting about things OTHER than theatre! Don’t get me wrong, obviously I love what I do – but a nice palate cleansing can be a good thing. Sometimes, in the heat of everyday life, it gets easy to forget to stop and just be with the people you love.

Sometimes a good night’s sleep is the answer.

Even the longest ‘to-do’ list will get done if you tackle it one item at a time…and if you don’t fling yourself into traffic just to avoid the list.

I was talking with another theatre professional that I know who said of my upcoming project, Art, “Yeah, I’m not a fan of that play – too much talking, not enough action.”

It got me thinking. I don’t think that’s true of this play, but more importantly, I think it’s an interesting reminder of what makes plays work.

Plays are about what people do, not what they say.

If you take a play, any play, you can kill it by staging it with no stakes, no struggle, no characters fighting for what they want or need or believe. Plays are about the big moments in people’s lives, they’re the out-of-the-ordinary events that force people to make big choices! They’re not, when done well, just “people talking.”

A famous playwright said this far better than I can:

That’s what happens in plays, yes? The shit hits the fan.
-Edward Albee

Happy Holidays! Happy Kwanzaa! Happy Hanukkah! Joyous Festivus!

Last night was our annual Christmas Eve Feast with my side of the family. As I’ve journaled about before, we’ve had a tradition for years that involves one of the family members hosting everyone else at their house, and the host prepares Christmas Eve dinner – the content of the dinner is kept secret from everyone else until they arrive at the house. The dinner is a whole meal made of recipes from another country, or a specific ethnicity or region of the world: a culinary surprise for the whole family! (We’ve done too many to list here, but some examples of past menus are Morocco, Native American, German, Greek, Japanese, Hawaiian, etc…)

So this year, the dinner was at our house! We compiled recipes and made some wonderful food from the country of Senegal!

The kids put together little projects on posterboard that told all about this West-African country and it’s people (as well as all about the menu items we’d chosen).

I have to say – the food was SO GOOD! The whole dinner was a giant success, with many leftovers going home with folks! (We made SO MUCH food! We could’ve gotten away with fewer dishes, but we wanted to sample several things!)

The menu consisted of :

Appetizer

Avocat Aux Crevettes Senegalaises
(Avocado Stuffed with Shrimp)

Sow
(Pronounced “so”. In Senegal, this drink treat is made by letting fresh cow’s milk sit outside to sour, then mixing it with lots of sugar and ice. Our recipe is similar, but uses buttermilk, sour cream, vanilla and sugar!)

Main Dishes

Mafé
(Beef in tomato based peanut sauce, served over rice)

Yassa Au Poulet De La Casamance
(Barbecued Chickens with Lemon and Onions over Rice)

Tiébou Dienn
This dish, pronounced “cheb-oo jenn, ” is the national dish of Senegal. It can range from a simple bowl of rice and vegetables to more elaborate combinations of vegetables, spices and sauces.
(Our recipe called for a ton of veggies stewed with spices, then served on top of a bed of rice that was cooked in the juices of the vegetables. On top of that is placed a grilled whitefish that has been covered in a sauce/paste made of parsley, soy sauce, green and yellow onions, and some other spices. Man, was it good!)

Desserts

Peanut Ice Cream
(Senegal is the peanut capital of the world! This is homemade ice cream made with peanut butter and a bunch of other yummy stuff!)

Cinq Centimes
(“The 5-Cent Cookie”, this is a traditional cookie sold for five cents by street vendors in Dakar! – it’s basically sugar cookie dough baked, then peanut butter spread on top and chopped peanuts sprinkled on that!)

I love Christmas Eve! What a wonderful family time.

I’m about to collapse into bed from an incredibly busy weekend, but I had to get this event journaled!:

This weekend at Williamston Theatre, after the curtain call for the sold out performance of Every Christmas Story Ever Told!!, one of the actors proposed to his girlfriend from the stage, in front of the whole audience, and she said yes!

Aral Gribble is a very talented, hardworking actor in his mid-20’s. I directed him in our very successful production of Fully Committed last year, where he played 37 characters in a one-man show. Saturday night, he got engaged to an incredible, talented woman, Lynn Lammers, who directed our production of Flap this past summer! And they got engaged on our stage!

A wonderful thing, the audience cheered and people shed some tears, both of them had family in attendance, we’re so excited that it happened on our stage, and we couldn’t be happier for our friends!