Tag Archives: family

Pic Post Wednesday

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Random things from the day of a Dad/Artistic Director/Coffee Drinker

Today my daughter got her braces removed! I don’t remember being old enough to have a teenager having braces removed… but there she is.

Here’s what it can look like when a Director and a Set Designer have their first meeting about a set! We chatted about the play over the phone first, to discuss “approach” and the play as a whole. Then, a few days later, we had a 40 minute sit-down discussion, and left with a starting point! Fun, and exciting. Now to sit down and re-read the play with the starting point in mind…

Ah, another one of those kids I don’t feel old enough to have. This evening we sneaked out to do some shopping for Jeanne’s birthday. (Don’t tell her, it’s a secret!) (Well, the shopping part is… she already knows about her birthday.)

This last one is fun…. it’s from USA TODAY (By Kirill Kudryavtsev, AFP/Getty Images), and the caption read:
A woman sips a cup of cappuccino with the portrait of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, created with cinnamon and cocoa powder, floating on top at a coffee shop in Moscow.

I think the next time I’m in Starbucks, I’m going to ask for a nice President Obama made out of cinnamon and cocoa on my Pumpkin Spice Latte…

Pic Post Wednesday… plus some bonus material!

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Pic Post Wednesday!
Dead Man’s Shoes, by Joseph Zettelmaier – starting Previews at Williamston Theatre tomorrow! (click the pic to blowuptuate it into full size awesomeness!)

A lot of the MLB Players have taken to wearing these Phiten necklaces with their team logo during games – it’s part fashion, part placebo “energy booster”, and they’re neat looking. And my awesome wife got me one for my birthday, so now I look JUST LIKE A MAJOR LEAGUE BALLPLAYER! (minus, you know, 20 years, a foot of higher altitude and the paycheck.) 🙂

I mentioned that my son and I were building a trebuchet in this post. Here’s a shot of this miniature medeival seige machine “in progress”:

BONUS MATERIAL!
In other news, I have to introduce some cool blogs: My sister Gina has recently started a blog called “They Call Me Pretty Pretty Princess” which is really funny, and you should check it out. And a friend of hers, Tanya, has a very funny blog called “News From The Handbasket”. Thanks to these two, I’ve been bestowed the honor of a Liebster Award. What does that mean, you ask? (I asked, so it’s okay if you do!) Well, let me explain! Better yet, let me cut and paste:

Liebster is a German word that means ‘dearest’ or ‘beloved’, but can also mean ‘favorite’. The idea of the award is to bring attention to blogs with less than 200 followers. The Award comes with a few rules. You’re supposed to:

-Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them
-Reveal your top 5 picks for the award and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog
-Post the award on your blog
-Bask in the love from the most supportive people in the blogosphere – other bloggers
-Hope your recipients pass the award to their 5 favorite blogs to keep the love flowing

How neat is that? So, without further ado, I’d like to present this to:

In My Little Town – this is a blog from my friend Laura, who is a wonderful writer. Her pieces are always thoughtful, entertaining, eclectic and enjoyable. Check her out, and tell her I said hi.

She Was The Young American – I just discovered this blog, and it’s delightful. She’s a young American who just moved to London to get an advanced degree in theatre. It’s a treat to read along as she explores her new home AND explores the theatre.

Alida’s Art Journal – Alida Saxon is a wonderful artist, who posts all sorts of cool “work in progress” pics as she creates things. Check her out!

Howard Sherman – Howard Sherman is an arts administrator, producer, theatre pundit, and was Executive Director of the American Theatre Wing for a long time. His blog and Twitter accounts are very active with always interesting theatre discussions.

Two Good Eggs: A breakfast blog. Listen, I like breakfast. And these two women love breakfast, love talking about it, and are fun!

Charitable Atheism. Chuck O’Connor writes and thinks about things that I think I should probably think about, but that make my head hurt. I read his blog, and think “Thank God there are smart people debating these things – I hope it all works out.” Then I think “Heh – I’m thanking God for a blog about atheism.”

(At this point, I’m going to admit that I don’t know if those folks all ACTUALLY have under 200 followers. I’m betting some of them may have more. But I’m leaving them here anyway, because I’m a rule-breaking risk-taker, and you can’t stop me. Next up: Running With Scissors.)

One More Time Around the Sun!

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It’s my birthday!

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
-William Shakespeare, “Merchant of Venice”

As I write this, it’s just after midnight, so officially it’s the 24th, and I’m now officially 43! And I couldn’t be happier. 42 was great, 43 should be, as they all have been, the best one yet! 🙂

Today was a great “Birthday Eve”, as my son kept calling it – some work at the theatre, some quality family time, A NAP!!, and just wrapped up recording a podcast with a good friend. (More on that in a day or two!)

So – here’s to 43! Let’s do this!

The right way to spend a Wednesday!

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Sometimes, ya gotta get away and just spend some quality family time playing and relaxing!

Tonight we spent a great family night with Jeanne, the kids, and my parents. The games cabinet was opened, and much time was spent at the table with some fun board games. We played Huggermugger, which is a wonderful word-based game – teams take turns trying to uncover letters in the “Mystery Word” by moving around the board and solving a variety of word based challenges like word-scrambles, spelling or definition challenges, word/language trivia, etc… It’s a ton of fun (especially if you like word games lime we do), and it’s educational too!

Next we played Big Boggle, another word game, it’s also a ton of fun.

In addition, my mom made up a batch of cappelletti. Oh, man. For those who don’t know, cappelletti are little Italian pasta pieces filled with meats and cheeses. (I say little, but you can only really fit one on a spoon at a time.) They’re shaped like little hats, which is what the word means in Italian, and filled with a mixture of beef, veal, cheese, spices, etc… It sounds a little like a ravioli, and they’re similar, but these are served in a broth like a soup (usually a rich chicken/vegetable broth). They’re simply fantastic. When I was younger, my Grandma Caselli would make them on special occasions, and we haven’t had them in years.

They were always one of my favorites, and I’ve been pestering my mom to make some, and she did! They were just perfect, as you can see in this picture:

And, as they always do, they made me think if my grandma and her sisters, sitting around her table in Allen Park, making hundreds of them at a time. Now I need to get my mom to pass on the cappelletti secrets and teach Jeanne and the kids and I to make them. It’s a tradition and a recipe I don’t want to lose!

And… Between you and me… As I sit here typing this at nearly 1am, I can hear them down in the fridge… they REALLY want me to have another bowl… Right now.

Must. Stay. Strong.

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A moment of pride… and then of being smacked down to reality! :)

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Was running errands this evening with my kids, and we were talking about how school is going, how things are different in their grade this year, etc… and they started discussing how different it must be to be an adult.

(Since I barely consider myself one, I wasn’t sure I was a good judge, but I played along.)

As we continued talking, conversation turned to what THEY might be doing when THEY turn 40.

My son says “I want to have a bunch of money, so I can open a hospital where it only costs a dollar to get healthy. There are too many sick old people and sick kids and they should be taken care of and it sholdn’t cost them money.”

I think that’s a pretty cool thing for a 9 year-old to say, and I tell him I’m proud of him, that’s a very thoughtful, helpful thing for the world. He then says…

“Of course, I’ll need a lot of money. So I’d better do something COMPLETELY different from what YOU did, huh?”

*laughing*

It was hilarious. True, of course, but hilarious nonetheless, because he was so honest and thoughtful about it. Ahh, kids.

Sleeping on the trampoline?

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So the kids are really, really wanting me to spend the night with them on the trampoline sometime soon.

Did I mention we got a trampoline for the backyard? It was a great deal, we got it from one of Jeanne’s friends. It came with a brand-new unused screen that wraps around it.

It’s a fun thing to have – the kids jump on it a lot more than me, but I should be using it more, to supplement my diet with better exercise. Especially since tonight I cheated on my diet. (But what’s a Dad to do?! My daughter made her special homemade-from-scratch chocolate chip vanilla pecan cookies!! If I DON’T eat a couple I’m the worst Dad ever!)

When my son is jumping on it, it looks like this:

(Click to embiggen the pic!)
So, anyway, the kids want me to spend the night on it with them before the weather gets too chilly.

We just bought new sleeping bags for them (they’d finally outgrown their “little kid” Disney sleeping bags!), so we’ve got the right equipment.

So, looks like we’ll be spending the night in the backyard sometime before long…

I just hope we get some sleep!

I mean, every time one of us rolls over, won’t the other ones bounce up into the air?

My daughter made my heart burst tonight

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My 11-year old had a little bit of a rough day today. Without getting into detail, she was sad and a little heartbroken at one of those things that, I think, make a lot of people a little sad and heartbroken as they start their steps into adolescence.

Well, tonight after tucking her in, I lay snuggling her and chatting about life. We talked for a while, and the last bit of our conversation was this…

“Sometimes”, I said, “It’s hard to know what to do in life.”

“Yeah”, she said, “That’s what I have you for.”

I started to answer, but couldn’t seem to find my voice, so I just hugged her tight for a second after that.

After a minute, I said “But y’know, sometimes it’s not easy for me to know what to do in life either.”

She thought for a beat, and replied “That’s what you have Grandpa for.”

I smiled. “Yeah, yeah it is.”

“That’s neat”, she said.

As she drifted off to sleep, her head in the crook of my arm, I thought “Yeah, yeah it is.”