A student asked Soen Nakagawa during a meditation retreat, “I am very discouraged. What should I do?”
Soen replied, “Encourage others.”
— Story from Essential Zen

Driving.
Maggie and Max in the backseat.

Maggie is explaining something to Max, and he says “Maggie, why do you do that? Why do you always try and teach me stuff?”

Maggie says “Because I’m older, I’ve been in school longer, and I’m more reciprocal. Wait…okay, I don’t actually know what that means.”

I almost had to pull over, I was laughing so hard. God, I love my kids!

These are awesome! One noun and one adjective. How funny!

As much as I love the first one and want it to be true, I think the second one is closer to reality! *laughing* Still, I’ll take “Master of Storytelling” any day of the week! In fact, maybe that’s what I’ll try and get my Masters Degree in…someday…maybe…

Tony —
[noun]:

A master of storytelling

‘How will you be defined in the dictionary?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

Tony —
[adjective]:

Like in nature to a train-riding hobo

‘How will you be defined in the dictionary?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

A few folks have done different versions of this post, from “Things That Don’t Suck” to “What I’m Thankful For”. Thanks to those of you who did them, they inspired this one!

The Tigers, just now, had an 8-run inning. Included in that was a Grand Slam from Curtis Granderson.

I just got a one day teaching gig for early Summer, yay $400!

The things on my “To-do” list for yesterday and today are getting done!

Although the weather has turned cold this week, sunny Spring is just around the corner. Now that the weather is turning, the evening sounds of frogs from the fields is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I could listen to that all day.

I’m seeing a production of Candida this week, and of Macbeth next week, both of which I’m really looking forward to!

I got some nice emails from people who read my journal after I posted about the funding cuts for Williamston Theatre – that was amazingly touching. Thanks, to all of you, for your kind wishes and offers of support.

Speaking of Williamston Theatre, we’ve got a new stage floor almost done, and a new box office almost done. I’ll post pictures when they’re complete! And we’ve got a great show in rehearsal!

Last night my daughter spent the night at her friends, and while I worked into the early evening, my wife and son had a “Mommy/Max Night”, and had dinner and saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which Max loved (and Jeanne tolerated!) Then, when they got home, Max wanted to show me how good he was getting at rollerblading, so at 9:30 we turned on the driveway lights and I hung out outside with my son for a while as he slowly stumbled around the driveway, smiling and waving proudly the whole time. Is he a good skater yet? Nope. But that wasn’t really the point. It was a great, great moment. Then we all went to sleep, with Max snuggled into our bed between Jeanne and I.

So…it’s been a heck of a couple of days…

Good: Baseball is back! Yes! I just love this sport.
Bad: The Tigers lost their home opener (although it was a good game.)
Bad: Tigers Pitcher Kenny Rogers had to have surgery to remove a blood clot, and will miss 3 months. 😦
(at least he’s okay – that’s an issue that could be life threatening – thank goodness they caught it.)
Good: The Tigers signed our awesome shortstop, Carlos Guillen, to a 4 year contract. Excellent!

Good: I saw a stumble thru of Music From A Sparkling Planet at Williamston Theatre, and it looks great. Suzi Regan is directing it, and she’s a wonderful person AND director.
Bad: The economy in Michigan is so bad that this week the Governor just froze all the arts funding. Yep, froze it. So far, out of the $10,500.00 grant that we got, we’ve gotten payments equaling about $3,000.00. We will get no more. AND rumor has it that there will be no arts funding at all in 2008. I can’t tell you how painful this is. Especially for a young company like ours, that is still building a donor and audience base – trust me when I tell you that the seven grand we aren’t getting is a huge blow. And it’s not just us, it’s all the arts in Michigan. Hundreds of people, if not thousands, will be put out of work by this.
Bad: Because we will not be getting the April grant payment that we were expecting, the money we had in the bank earmarked for our electrical upgrade is going to need to be spent on paying actors and crew.
Good: We had a small Poker Tournament Fund-Raiser this weekend, and made a bit of money! That’ll help with payroll!

Good: My wife and kids are on Spring Break this week, so we’re getting to spend a bunch of fun time together! Tonight we saw “Night at the Museum” at the dollar show (yay for dollar movie theatres!). Fun!!
Bad: Nothin’ bad about that! (Except that even though the tickets are only $1, you still spend 30 bucks on popcorn and drinks!)

So…a couple of days with some ups and downs. I suppose that’s life, eh? Still, we will make Williamston Theatre work. Right now the box office is almost done, we’re putting down a new stage floor, and we got a corporate grant earmarked for buying some stage lighting equipment. If we can keep growing our attendance, and turn all the good vibes we’re getting into ticket sales, we will be on our way. We’ll get there.

The 2007 Major League Baseball season begins today!

In honor of that, here’s a great article from MLB.COM: 10 Things That Changed Baseball

The Mets and Cardinals will kick off the season tonight at 8pm. Then, tomorrow, everybody else joins in for the 162 game marathon that is the baseball season! The Tigers open their season at home, 1pm on Monday, against the Toronto Bluejays. Last year was an amazing year – let’s hope the Tigers have another good one!

So, first things first. I will not be playing any April Fools Jokes.

I haven’t done any since, a few years ago, I pulled one and sent my little brother, Dominic, to the hospital.

We’d always had a tradition of doing them, but they really started to escalate when we got into our 30’s. In April of…I think 2000, maybe 2001, they started getting really mean. Stuff like storming into his workplace (the Ford car plant, at the time) and, in front of all his co-workers, pretending I was his lover and we were having a big spat about why he wouldn’t leave his wife. Then when I got home that day I found that he’d ordered 30 pizzas to my house – all of them Mushroom pizza. Everyone in my family is deathly allergic to mushrooms.

So the next year things got worse, and they kept getting worse. My little sister Gina tried to get in on the game, but hasn’t been seen since the “Let’s get an army of albino dwarves to tie her up and put her in the cabinet under the sink” April Fools Joke of ’03. Still, Dominic and I kept at it, and eventually we were doing things like setting fire to each others cars, and hiring people to burst in and kidnap each other in front of our kids.

Well, the last one was me hiring a landscape team to destroy his lawn.

I’d hired them under the premise that we were “Re-landscaping” with all rock, and we needed them to use their big bulldozer to strip away every bit of lawn from the yard. When the machinery arrived early that morning and started destroying their lawn, he went running out to stop them, but the driver of the bulldozer didn’t see him, and clipped him with the plow on the front of the machine. As he was diving away to not get completely crushed, he slipped and fell into the street, where he was almost hit by a huge ice-cream delivery truck. The delivery truck swerved to avoid him and flipped over, pouring out about 2 tons of ice cream -Mocha Fudge- directly on top of my brother.

The construction guys, still not realizing that Dominic was even in the yard, ran to the truck and started to help the driver, who was unharmed but hanging upside down in his truck. Dominic, buried under an avalance of Mocha Fudge in Family Size containers, could barely move, and realized that no one was hearing his screams. Knowing that he’d never be able to move the giant mound of ice cream on top of him, and that his oxygen was quickly being used up, he knew that he only had one chance.

He began to eat his way out as quickly as possible, devouring Mocha Fudge as fast as he could swallow it.

And that’s how my brother went to the hospital: with the biggest brain-freeze headache ever recorded. He spent 3 days in intensive care. Well, actually, he spent most of that time in the labor/delivery ward due to a weird clerical mixup. From there, because of his yelling about not wanting to be there, they admitted him to the psych ward for about a day and 1/2 until it was all straightened out. And then his insurance wouldn’t cover “pre-frontal-lobe hypothermia due to frozen dairy overload”, and so he took them to court. They’re still waiting for a court date.

Out of guilt, and shame, I’ve never done an April Fools Joke since.

Honestly.

A marvelous review of IRMA VEP!

Apparently, my direction was “Masterful”! Mostly, I think that means “He didn’t muck up the funny bits too badly…”, but I’ll take it!

The Detroit Tigers have put their Ace pitcher, Kenny Rogers, on the 15-day DL with a “Tired Arm”. He’ll miss his first one, maybe two starts of the season.

That can’t be a good sign for the upcoming year.

Drat.

In happier news: MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL STARTS SUNDAY! Whooohooo!

It’s a day of celebration!

13 years ago, on this very day, the most amazing woman in the world was silly enough to marry me!

Happy Anniversary Jeanne!