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Showing posts from April, 2019

Sturgeon Bay Speed Racer

I was in Sturgeon Bay over the weekend and went to see the Third Ave Playhouse's matinee of Shooting Star with Doug Mancheski and Amy Ensign. It was a great play about old lovers that meet up by chance years later while they are snowed in at an airport. The house was packed-sold out-which was great to see. This is such a wonderful theater and the plays I've seen there are intimate and outstanding!  I'd never seen Amy act before and she was amazing! And of course, Doug was his usual magnificent self! He has such a range of skills. If you've only seen him in his comedic plays, you owe it to yourself to try and catch one of his shows at TAP and see his more serious side. The average age of the crowd at this play was 75+.  It's weird to be one of the 'youngsters' in the crowd at 54! Reminds me of the time I went to Irish Fest on a  Burkhaulter tour bus out of Madison in my 30s. The average age on that bus was 812 and all they adopted me as the naughty grandchi...

One Starfish At A Time

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When I was younger, I went to Lincolnville Beach, Maine with my family. We were wading in the shallows and I  found a group of starfish on the rocks. I held my left arm outstretched, palm up and lined several of them on the underside of my arm. I showed my folks, and examined them all closely before slowly tipping my arm thinking that they would all drop gently back into the sea-bloop, bloop, bloop. Imagine my surprise, and abject terror as it turns out, when they remained firmly  affixed to my arm. To put it mildly, I panicked and lost my sh!t briefly! I just knew that they were dissolving the flesh of my arm with some kind of slimy, sucker acid. I marveled that I felt absolutely no pain even though I was obviously the first person in all of time to be killed and eaten by a marauding gang of starfish! Someone has to be first...just my luck. I flailed around until I finally got it under control and realized that it was easy to pick them up and gently lower them back down to...

Providence in October Ain't Hard On the Eyes-Tales of a Zentangle(R) Teacher

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In late October I was blessed to travel to Providence, Rhode Island to obtain my  Zentangle Teacher certification. Southern New England is absolutely gorgeous in the late autumn. The fact that the seminar was held on the top floor the glorious art-deco Providence Biltmore Hotel, and my room was on the 12th floor, was pretty amazing too. The views were spectacular! I always wanted to go to the seminar for the experience, but NOT to learn to teach. I  told anyone that said, 'you should do classes' that was the last thing on earth I wanted to do. I would hate speaking in a roomful of strangers. And I had been to so many classes where there was always that one annoying person that kept derailing the class... and how would I ever handle that without Valium...or a mallet? Nope. Not cut out for teaching. Not for me. Never. BUT...then I got the unexpected opportunity to go-my company generously offered to send me if I would come back and lead sessions as part of our Corporate We...