The other night before rehearsal really got started (before it was supposed to begin), I got a chance to become further acquainted with some of the people involved in the up-coming production of Meet Me in St. Louis.  While the theatre and people involved may be different, one thing remains the same: the drama involved in operating a community theatre.  The director for the musical described how she became the board’s president after the previous head stepped down.  She then made it known that she is the thorn in many a side.  If I had not known better, I would say WCCT had changed faces and buildings.  Then, “Lon” passed around invitations to an up-coming membership drive (“No thank you, one is enough for now… thanks” 🙂 ).

We also discussed more on things that would be needed for Grandpa; particularly, the necessity of having multiple versions of the same item.  A different one for each scene he is in (which is quite a few).  How’s that for cryptic?  But for being the first week of rehearsals, I think it is going well… of course, we have yet to add an orchestra.  I suggested that we do as a few Broadway shows have done recently, have the actors on stage play.  I believe that recent productions of Company and Sweeney Todd have each had principal players playing instruments.  I can see Grandpa Prophater blowing away on a tuba on stage when not singing.

The local community theatre has added a new weekend series of entertainment to its offerings.  The first month of shows has showcased “Broadway Through the Years” and has highlighted talented singers from the area… some familiar faces from past shows and some newbies.  This weekend was the first show I have been able to attend and was actually quite impressed.  A dear friend sang “Tell Me It’s Not True” from Blood Brothers. I really love the music from this show and the story; hopefully, one day I will be able to be part of a production.

I must say that a new young lady who has apparently conveyed an interest in auditioning for future productions showed an immense display of talent.  Performing DIFFICULT selections from Ragtime, Songs for a New World, and Parade, I began to wonder where this young lady has been hiding.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the talent of the young women who have organized the series of concerts.  The two were highlighted in pieces of their own.  My favorite was a duet from Assassins.  “Unworthy of Your Love” is a beautiful ballad sung by John Hinckley and Squeaky Fromme in the musical.  They are both singing to the objects of their affection; Hinckley to Jodie Foster and Fromme to Charles Manson.  Yet another musical I know about, see clips of via youtube, love everything about it… but will it ever be staged by this area.   Most likely not no matter the number of people who suggest it.

Finally, rounding out the evening was the delightfully entertaining emcee for the evening. Very quiick with a quip and able to improvise while performers were searching for music.  A good way to “get butts in the seats” for the upcoming production of Over the Tavern.

Sa- a deer, a female deer
Re- a drop of golden sun
Ga- a name I call myself
Ma- a long, long way to run
Pa- a needle pulling thread
Dha- a note to follow pa
Ni- a drink with jam and bread

Hmm.  Something doesn’t seem quite right there.  On Friday, I, along with the 6th grade body of the school I was at, got a little lesson in playing the sitar.  A college student who used to attend that middle school came in to give a demonstration.  The teacher I subbed for had “concert” written on the schedule, but it really wasn’t a concert though he did play a couple of short tunes.  I hestitate to use the word “song” here, because apparently classical Indian songs are over 15 minutes long, but what he played for us were tunes about half a minute in length.  The reason?  He is just a sitar student himself, but that was good enough to bring him in for a demonstration for students who are in the middle of learning different world cultures in social studies.  As far as being a student, in fact, he told us that it takes about 20 years before one can be considered a good enough sitar player to play professionally in India, and another ten before one can teach.  Wow.

He started off with a little lesson on musical notation.  Remember the song above?  Well, the form of musical notation he has learned for Indian music involves a musical scale similar to that referenced to in the Solfège technique, from which we get the syllables do, re, mi, fa, so, la, and ti.  For Indian music, the syllables used are sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, and ni.  The music also doesn’t use the staff Western musicians are familiar with.  Instead, they use |, ^, and -.  These symbols tell them how to pluck the playing string (the one of 17 strings used most of the time) and a letter above the symbol tells them which note- the first letter of the aforementioned syllables.  A dot above or below the letter. if present, tells the octave.   The sitar is capable of playing three octaves.

Along with the lesson, he played a little bit of a CD which included a type of percussion instrument that typically accompanies the sitar and is capable of 30 different sounds on two drums.  I forget what he said the name of this instrument is.  Again, he also played a little bit himself.  During one of the class periods, a teacher, my former junior high band teacher in fact, came in halfway through with his “Beatles” class (seems the one school with its African drumming course- see post archives from about a couple months ago- isn’t the only one to have such specialized music classes 😮 ) and asked Bob (the sitar player- what do you mean you thought he was Indian? 😛 ) to play some bits from the few Beatles songs featuring George Harrison on the sitar (Youtube link).  He wasn’t very proficient on this though as his studies were primarily Indian music.

All in all it was a very interesting lesson I thought, even though I learned it five times. 😛  This turned out to be a far better day than the day before.  I was definitely pleased that I did not get that second day in that ELL class.

A while ago, I decided to write a series within my blog about animals, my favorite things.  I just can’t find enough time to learn about animals, and I love sharing knowledge about their incredible attributes.  Here is chapter two in my Interesting Animals series.  To read chapter one about a scaly mammal called the pangolin, click here.

For chapter two, I chose to focus on the duck-billed platypus; an animal who is so strange looking that people thought it to be a hoax when it was first discovered in 1798.

The platypus is one of 3-5 species (depending on the source – animal knowledge is very differential) of  monotremes or egg-laying mammals.  I know, at one point we were all taught that one of the characteristics of mammals is that they give birth to live young, but that is not the case.  Monotremes lay eggs, and the platypus join echidnas (spiny anteaters) in this animal order.  The platypus is found in Australia – seems like they have all the cool animals, doesn’t it?  I just wish they weren’t so stingy with their animals.  I know they stopped loaning out the Tasmanian Devil years ago, and now that the last one died (it resided in Fort Wayne Indiana until its death – I could kick myself for not making the less than hour trip over there to see it while it was alive), the only place to see them is in Australia.  The same goes for the platypus.  I’ve visited many zoos, and I’ve never seen a live platypus.  A quick check on the internet reveals that they are only found in Australian zoos.

But anyway, aside from being an aquatic (with water-repellent fur), egg-laying mammal, another cool thing about the platypus is that the males are actually poisonous.  Both genders have a spur on their left foot, but the males’ spur produces enough venom to really hurt a human being.  Here is a picture of the duck-billed platypus – note the soft, leathery duck-bill which is actually used by the animal to sense the electric fields caused by its moving prey (feeds on shrimp, fish eggs, small fish, and aquatic invertebrates found in streams and lakes).

Easy to see how this duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed, egg-laying mammal was once thought to be an elaborate man-made fraud, huh?

I now have permission to write this blog. The news has been spreading and most of the people that needed to know, know. So with this post we will all be more knowledgeable.

Last weekend, my oldest left a message on my cell phone for me to call her. Her news was that she had three bars. Being bit dense, I thought 5 bars was good for cell phones. She was talking about different bars. Apparently my oldest is expecting her first child. So I have a grandchild coming into the world. Great news for this grandfather. I’m rather looking forward to being able to spoil a grandchild within easy visiting distance.

Those who know me, know that my two oldest daughters both have step-children. As far as I’m concerned these are my grandkids too. Unfortunately, I do not get to visit with them as often as I would like. Two of these children are many miles away, and I don’t have the time or cash to be able to take off at the drop of a hat to visit. I surely wish I was able to, but right now I can’t. My other granddaughter doesn’t get to visit very often, situation is complex, as often happens. So now I will have a grandchild only 1 hour away. Great for the child, but I’m not sure how the parents will react. Hee! Hee!

Now for the fun part. My future grand child already has a nickname. When darling daughter was calling people to let them know about the future happenings, she called her grandparents. They were involved in this or that, and wondered if my daughter could call back. My daughter, with her usual humor, responded: “Sure, I’ve got 9 months.” Her grandmother heard: “Sure, I’ve got the mumps.” It apparently took a bit of explaining to get across the wording of “9 Months”. Grandma kept hearing mumps. I really would have liked to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. Anyway, my future grandchild’s current nickname is Mumps.

It should be a fun time in NW Ohio for the next few months, or even years.

I am too tired and lazy right now to write up anything, but upcoming are two posts.  The first is about an interesting day I had on Friday with a musician who came in and talked to the students.  What sort of musician?  You will have to wait for the post for an answer to that.  😮

The second post will be about the winter retreat we just had, essentially a 24-hour lock-in at my church, also known as the reason I am too tired to post right now.  Note the lack of an accompanying picture to complement this post which just serves to give proof to my tiredness. 8)

Why bother making this post at all?  Why to add to my diminishingly-increasing post count of course. 😉

Until tomorrow. 🙂

Recalled peanut butter and peanut butter products are in the news. Another outbreak of salmonella. Salmonella in spinach, lettuce, carrots and other salad fixings, but now in peanut butter.

What got me on this is that I heard about the recall right after finishing off a box of nutty bars. No, I didn’t eat they box all at once, I just ate the last one right before I heard about the recalls. Quick check of the recall list, and I found out these were not on the list. But what kinds of foods that I eat are on there? Peanut Butter Cups? Cookies, Ice cream, candy?

So far, the things I normally buy are not on the list. Unlike the recall of the baby spinach last year. I guess I will have to keep an eye out as this recall expands or contracts. Peanut butter is in a lot of things I buy. I sure am glad I don’t have peanut allergies.

More about the peanut butter recall and list of products not recalled.

The following post, while going beyond my normally tame fare, just could not be resisted.  Besides, it reminded me of one of my favorite moments in the entire Brady Bunch mythos.  You know the moment when Peter threw a football and it came flying into the daydreaming face of Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.  Marcia screamed “OWW, MY NOSE“.  This gave the young lady a huge swelled nose and a severe blow to her ego as well as throwing any chance of her big date with the star football player out the window.  Well… a similar incident recently occurred at an establishment in Akron, Ohio.  However, it did not involve a football.

AKRON, Ohio — A northeast Ohio man who was smacked in the nose by a stripper’s platform-style shoe is suing a nightclub for $25,000 over injuries he says will require surgery.

Yusuf Evans says he wanted to entertain his cousin, who had come to visit from out of town, so he took him and a friend to the XTC Nightclub in Akron. 30 minutes later, Evans says he was doubled over in pain.

“When the boot hit me in my face all I could do is drop…and just holler for about ten minutes”, he said.

Evans says, while performing a dance move, a stripper’s shoe flew off her foot and smacked him in the face. “She ran, at a nice speed, grabbed the pole and flung her whole body around, all her weight flung like that in a circle around the pole and her boot flew off and it hit me in my nose”, explained Evans, who filed a civil lawsuit on Tuesday in Summit County Common Pleas Court. He’s asking for $25,000 in damages over injuries he says will require surgery. “Right here. It’s chipped”, he said, pointing to the left side of his nose. “This side of my nose, I often get clogged all the way up, where I can only breath out of (the opposite) side”, he said.

The lawsuit says XTC management allowed dancers to wear improper attire and required strippers to perform dances that made the stage a hazardous place.

“Safety reasons and that they’re responsible because it happened in their establishment by their employee”, Evans told FOX 8.

The owner of the XTC Nightclub had no comment.

Evans filed the civil lawsuit the same day he says he was injured exactly one year ago. The 37-year-old Akron man says he still has pain from the chipped bone in his nose.

He says he saw a doctor the day after he was injured. He has medical bills and was told he’d need surgery. “The bills, the pain, my nose that ain’t gonna go away unless I have surgery and I don’t like surgery so I don’t know what I’m gonna do about that.”

I guess next time I decided to invite a cousin to a night on the town, I would choose a safer place to be entertained.  I wonder what the man’s significant other thought about the incident.  The evening news reports that the victim is not a frequent patron of clubs and just wanted to show his cousin a good time.  I guess he thought the good time would be a little safer. [poll id=”15″]

Jamiahsh, a fellow blogger friend of mine, had a point when he noted that it’s been a long time since one of my famous anti-Walmart posts.  I hate the place, but as a mom of 4, I don’t have any other options that compare to the time and money I reluctantly have to admit I save shopping at Walmart.  It’s just their dirty tricks that drive me crazy, and I’ve ranted about those long enough – if you’re interested, flip through my blog posts and search for Walmart.  Right now, I need to address my most current Walmart disappointment: no more free cookies for the kids.

Those of you who have kids know that Walmart used to give out cookies at the bakery as a sort of rescue for tiresome kids whose parents are taking too long with their shopping.  I shop at Walmart once, sometimes twice a week.  It is a familiar habit for my two-year-old to get her cookie at the bakery while we shop.  If I’m lucky, it will keep her busy until I hit the dairy section.  But the other day during my weekly visit to Walmart, imagine my surprise when the lady in the bakery said they didn’t have any cookies.  Not only that, she thinks they won’t have them anymore, ever.  She wasn’t sure because the lady who usually handles the cookies (?) was on vacation.  Sounds like a cop-out to me…  I mean, is there really a lady who regularly handles the cookies?  I think she just didn’t want to have to tell this angel-face ‘no cookie’:

My daughter actually took it quite well…  of course, I bought her a pack of donuts instead…  It’s not that I’m a softie, but I just don’t think it’s fair that a two-year-old should have to bear the brunt of a mega-company’s policy change.  They gave cookies every time before this, and she has had to sit in the shopping cart and be good and do her time, and now all of a sudden, no cookie?  So I HAD to buy her a replacement treat, at least for this shopping trip.  Maybe in the future, I’ll try to prepare her ahead of time or just bring my own treat from home.  But in the mean time, their little plan worked, didn’t it?  Lure all the housemoms over to the bakery to get free cookies for their kids…  over time, they will grow to expect it, and then one day, no free cookies will cause them to pay money for something else for their kids – $CA-CHING$!

I admit it was a nice gesture on Walmart’s part to offer the free cookies in the first place.  Then again, we do spend enough over there; they should be able to afford it…  But it was a nice little perk, and as I said, something for the kids to look forward to about shopping at Walmart…  But in the end, it ended up being just another disappointment from our favorite big box retailer.

Our local non-Walmart grocery store still has free cookies for the kids, AND they’re fresh baked…  If I find more time and money, maybe I will make it a point to do more of our shopping over there…

How about your grocery store?  Is it a small mom-and-pop-owned place or a big box retailer?  Do they give free cookies to the kids?

The regular reader knows just what letter to place in the title parentheses to complete the picture of my day today.  Some time ago I wrote about an experience at a school that left me passing over certain assignments for the next year.  A couple of months ago took the challenge and subbed for that teacher again since most of those former ELL students were gone and was relieved that things had changed for the better, so when another ELL assignment popped up at that school I took it without a second thought.  It was for a teacher I don’t remember, but it shouldn’t have been a problem.  Well, we have second thoughts for a reason so taking the job without one was akin to famous last words like, “Nothing will go wrong; trust me.”

So, at the beginning of the day I arrived and it was mentioned that it was a two-day assignment.  What?  Two days?  I had to check my schedule again because I was sure it was only one day.  The teacher, who was there but would be testing students, finished going over the plans with me and I went right to a computer.  Yep- just one day.  At that point I was actually hopeful there was a mistake and it was supposed to be two.  By the end of the day I was glad it was not a mistake at all.  For some reason the two-day absence was put in as two separate assignments- my guess being that the software they use cannot support multiple-day assignments as I have never seen a multi-day assignment posted.  I had two such assignments a few months ago in this district, but it was put in manually as a different job number for each day which just serves to validate this theory.  So apparently what happened was I got one day, another sub got the other day.  I do hope she is up to it.   Ironically, she was there today subbing for another ELL class, the one I had no trouble with earlier this year.

When going over the plans I was somewhat pleased to find that I would be covering three math classes.  I expected the toughest would be 8th grade, so once that was over (it was the second class- 7th grade was the first) and things were still going, if not smooth, only slightly rough I thought it would be a pretty good day.  The rough spot for 8th grade was really no more than the quick quiz at the beginning being anything but quick for a few students, making less time for going over homework and letting them get started on their assignment.  So, after a two-period break I was ready for sixth grade math.  Remember those famous last words?  Ready- Uh-huh.  This was the loudest and most complaining class I’ve had in the last couple of years with some boys who loved knocking over the books of each other while I wasn’t looking.  Sigh.  They even complained when I didn’t check in their homework.  I mean, who complains about that??  Just take the extra day to have it done as a gift and keep quiet about it!  Then the plans called for them to take a test which they had in their packets.  Did you catch what was wrong with that sentence?  In their packets.  So what happens when some students couldn’t find their packets and the teacher didn’t leave behind extras?  Well, I found out.  I had three kids run to the office, which I only did because it was just down the hall, so someone in the office might take pity and make some copies for me.  Then I found some students only had one of the pages.  They had ripped the other page out, which had a prior assignment on the back.  Back to the office?  Not a chance- the secretaries suffered enough with the two runs (they only copied the first page last time) so I just marked down their names and let it go.  I also forgot to thank them after school too when I checked out- oops.  And throughout this there were some students who just would not stop talking.  I needed this class before the two-period break, not after.

So after this class was a multi-grade language arts class.  Needless to say, some of the 6th-graders from math were back for two more periods (block period).  While not as bad as the prior math class, it had its own challenges.  8th grade left after the first half to see counselors from their respective high schools they would go to next year, and that relieved some pressure but not all- remember 6th grade was still there and so was a very obnoxious 7th-grade girl who loved talking back and doing as little work as possible.  After this class and a tutorial class (study hall) the day was finally over.  Now I’m writing it up for you to enjoy too…