all that's past is prologue...

More nostalgia today as we attended a matinee of Pride and Prejudice at the Guthrie (thanks to a great program called PlayDates, parents can attend certain matinees at reduced prices while the kids are entertained upstairs — win/win!) I couldn't even count the number of years I worked, off and on, in the Guthrie Box Office. Long enough for it to be a seminal part of my life. Long enough ago that the Dram was still in existence, you could smoke indoors, and Dodie still reigned supreme. Long enough I still live in mild terror of printscreens and of Lendre catching a typo. If the phones were not ringing we assembled mailings for Sue McClean's concerts or, in the ultimate make-work, assembled scratch pads. The ticketing software was tetchy and it was ALWAYS better to go in and find your patron the best seats from what you knew, rather than choosing a "best available" option. Theatre-lovers from all over the world would place their own calls to reserve seats, and it was...

The last several nights, we've been awakened at 4:30am, every day. By different things, mind you — a cat with a UTI issue, a loud car stereo outside, Beatrix needing a glass of water, that kind of thing. But 4:30 every day can get pretty wearing. It's not the right time to get up and get things done; no amount of coffee in the world would make me fully functional at that time. But it's also ridiculously hard to get back to sleep; I lay there for often up to two hours, tossing and turning, before I fall back asleep for 30 minutes and have to get up for real and start my day. I have a hard time getting back to sleep when awakened anyway, but be able to sleep through the night the last couple of weeks has been blissful, and coming back to the wake-ups is making me especially zombie-esque. Kind of analogy for the rest of the day — when can you easily return to something, and when does it take you a long time to get back in the groove?

I first met Aldo Moroni about a million years ago when he made sculptures of the great theatres of the world for the Jeune Lune lobby. Ever since then, I have desperately wanted one of his sculptures. I love the alignment between art and architecture, I love his distinctive style, and I love spending time with him. So I was especially excited when I saw on his Facebook page that he is doing classes. He has put together classes where people can make their own towers; the ultimate goal is an installation next year where, after everyone has made them and brought them home, they bring them back one day next year for a big art installation. I was especially interested to see that he was offering all-ages and family classes. So, last Saturday Beatrix, Patrick, my dad and I headed over to Aldo's studio and made towers! It was really the most wonderful day I have had in quite some time. I am pretty intimidated by clay, but Also was generous and helpful in showing us how, and th...

We get out and do a lot of things together as a family. In fact, every day, Beatrix asks what we'll be doing that day after school (or "all day" if it's a weekend). As I have noted before, the Twin Cities have  a lot of free festivals and events, especially in the summer, so there is often something interesting to do. For Christmas, my dad got us a membership to the Minnesota Historical Society , and one of our favorite things to do together is go to historic sites. Beatrix especially loves Fort Snelling, but she has enjoyed every place we've been, even the windy Jeffers Petroglyphs on a particularly frigid Memorial Day weekend! Today, we had a chance to see the Purcell-Cutts house , thanks to a membership to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts that our friends Sommer and Hjalmer gave us (technically, the membership is expired, but since the home is only open a few weekends of the year, and since tomorrow is my birthday, they let us in). We've seen several F...

Tonight we took Beatrix to "Buckets and Tap Shoes" at the Fringe, which she thoroughly enjoyed. For me, the show was enjoyable, but even more so, it set off a stream-of-consciousness series of memories. Walking into the Music Box Theater (or whatever it's called now), and remembering when we first began to develop that space as the Cricket Theatre in the 1980s. At that time, the space was a moldy, run-down former meeting hall for the Jehovah's Witnesses I believe, or maybe Seventh Day Adventists. The balcony was almost falling in, and an interior room in the basement was painted in bright colors as a "Jesus Grotto." That project was a labor of love, and though the Cricket is long gone, I am pleased the theater still exists. Watching the show, and thinking of when I first saw Buckets and Tap Shoes, nine years ago with Annie Cady. We saw tons of Fringe shows that year, and B&TS was the "Best of the Fringe" so we saw their crowded, steamy extr...

Today, my friend Rebecca was kind enough to come over and teach me how to make jam. Here's the thing about Rebecca...she could have just sent me the recipe she uses, or given me some tips, or even pointed me to some blog posts, and called it done and I would have been grateful. But, being the kind of person she is, she simply said "Why don't I just come over, and we'll do it together, so you'll know how." So I picked up some strawberries and basil and the other items on her list: Cut them up, mashed them down, and mixed them with the pectin and the sugar and cooked until the jell had set: Heated up the jars, put in the strawberries and the basil, then heated the jars in a hot bath: And then, after carefully extracting them and after they had cooled enough to vacuum seal and create nine jars of strawberry-basil goodness:

This week, because Beatrix had 3 days plus a weekend off school, she learned the term "staycation." She doubted me at first that it was a real word, but I think she had enough fun so that she will acquiesce the point to me now. I always love Minnesota in the summertime, and am loathe to leave because there are so many greta things to do! I never seem to be able to go to all the festivals and events that I want to, but we did pretty well at it this weekend. Wednesday we went to Fort Snelling, which may well be her favorite historic site. Seeing the fort through her eyes is always wonderfully enjoyable. Despite my migraine, we went to the neighborhood patio night. Thursday she had a playdate with one of her BFFs, Alma. That night, we drove down to Hastings to see Black Dirt Theater's  production of "Annie." They are one of my clients, and the production was fantastic, and we all had a lot of fun. Friday was a pool party, and on Saturday we met our friends ...

I finished this project awhile back, but am just getting to posting it now! The woodwork in the front room has bothered me since I bought the house in 1993. So we finally got it scraped and sanded, and I painted the window with some fresh new oil paint. Made a huge difference! Now, on to the rest of the woodwork in the room...