For the Winter/Spring In Between
Winter Citrus Salad
- Field greens
- Boursin garlic and herb cheese
- Red onion
- Apple
- Avocado
- Blood orange
- Pomegranate
- Seasoned and sauteed white fish like mahi mahi or tilapia
A 2012 Recap
So, at January 16th, I’d say I’m way late on the 2012 recap that most bloggers had slammed out, oh, around December 20th. I wasn’t planning to do one at all this year. But here we are. Fate? Motivation? Sentimentalism?
Who knows. But it’s here. There may even be a few surprises along the way ;)
January
Ted and I went ice skating in downtown Cincy on New Year’s Day and my friend Allyson and I discovered the ultimate comfort food goodness that is Tom & Chee and their grilled cheese donut. Yeah, I felt my arteries collapsing too. But it was pretty stinking delicious. For a grilled cheese on a donut? Collapse away!
February
We drove to Chicago for my Grandpa’s memorial service. It was a beautiful mass to honor his life and it was great to see family I hadn’t seen in quite a while – some since I was only a child. I started teaching prelude theatre classes at the Academy of World Languages, which I concluded was the most amazing school in existence because they fed students a different exotic fruit or vegetable from around the world every single day and offered like seven languages for the kids to immerse themselves in (do you smell the jealousy?), and I tried my hand at making pho for the first time. Clearly, I also neglected to take any photos this month.
March
Those jerks tore down the BoarsHead Theatre in Lansing MI, where I got my start in professional theatre and met Ted, to build a parking lot – obviously I was pissed. We roadtripped to Columbus and Cleveland for a weekend to see family and cousin Michaela light her high school’s production of Cinderella. The beautiful spring flowers sprung, we had a full day of tornadoes when Mother Nature threw an epic hissy fit, and we brought home our sweet Maverick!
April
Friend Allyson won us tickets to see the oddly fantastic musical Thunder Knocking on the Door at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Ted and I were the youngest people by about 40 years to attend an organ concert at the Cincinnati Museum Center. We saw the great film “To the Arctic” at the Omnimax, ran two 5k races including the one with the epic killer hill, we went on the “Bosses, Breweries, and Burials” historical tour of downtown Cincinnati, and Ted saved a sweet old toad’s life.
May
We lost our sweet Mav, and it was absolutely heartbreaking. But a day later the eggs she had laid hatched and we welcomed the arrival of 16 healthy cray babies! I finished up my year teaching musical theatre at Hartwell School. We went on the “Bikes, Barons, and Biergartens” and “Newport Gangster” historical tours in Newport, KY and the “Cincinnati’s Abandoned Subway” tour, which was a rare and amazing treat! We explored Findlay Market and my girlfriends and I went on fun girl dates to Bakersfield and the 1215 Vine wine bar.
June
I ASM’d Next to Normal at the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati and earned the last four EMC points I needed to join Actor’s Equity! Our craybies grew so fast and we had to take twelve of them to the pet store to find new homes while two joined my sister in Chicago, leaving us with Ace and Gigi. We played around and at a few summer festivals and saw a bunch of double features at the drive-in theatre in Amelia beneath the stars, with the best cheeseburgers ever. Priorities, people.
July
I quit working at the museum, ended my time working with the wonderful dance company Pones Inc., and my internship at Ensemble Theatre ended. I grew tasty tomato plants, found a beach to lay out and swim at in Cincinnati, enjoyed 4th of July, went blueberry and blackberry picking, discovered we now had a pet snail who stowed away on one of the plants we brought home for the crays from the pet store, and I left Cincinnati for Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp on the shores of Lake Michigan for six weeks where I would serve as Acting & Musical Theatre faculty (beaches! cabins! bonfires! friends! Shakespeare! dance!). I flew to NY for an interview at a fantastic theatre, and drove home from Blue Lake for a “Weekend of Ted” that consisted of his parents coming for a surprise visit, a roller derby game, a visit to the aquarium, a tour of the the Louisville Slugger factory and museum, and Ted taking an awesome NASCAR driving lesson at the Kentucky Speedway, driving ten laps at 150+ mph – a surprise I’d been planning for months.
August
I spent four more glorious beach/camping/theatre weeks at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, finally got to see Friday the camp Rooster in all his glory (a.k.a. hiding out under one of the girls cabins crowing at 5 a.m….the rooster, not me. Just to clarify.), and spent a few days with my parents, my sister and her family, Ted, my Aunt Penny, and our family friend Martha relaxing at her lake house in Muskegon. We toured an old wartime submarine, checked out a bunch of lighthouses, and went for bike rides on the beach. During the day at camp my new friends and I would teach, enriching young lives with an intensive of beautiful art, and by night we’d cook our food over an open fire, then head to the beach for a swim and to enjoy a bunch of late night beach bonfires where we’d ate way too many s’mores and enjoy a cup of red wine, and then we’d head back to the campsite, crash in our cabins in the woods, try to ignore the spiders, and wake up the next morning to do it all over again. When I arrived home in Cincinnati Ted and I celebrated our birthdays at Kings Island roller coaster and water park, we went to the Packers v. Bengals game with our friends Patti and Todd, went wine tasting and cooked our own steaks at Valley Vineyard, and I was offered and accepted the job in NY! The decision was made…I was moving in less than two weeks; Ted would be staying behind. (Oh, you didn’t know that? Surprise! More on that later.)
September
I said goodbye to my wonderful Cincinnati and Ted and I took a road trip to move me up to New York over Labor Day weekend. I started my job and it was (and still is) amazing! The next weekend I flew to Michigan for our annual Wisconsin trip. We took the historic SS Badger cruise across Lake Michigan to Wisconsin, went to the Packer home opener at Lambeau Field, rode the Zippin Pippin (Elvis’ favorite roller coaster) at Bay Beach Amusement Park, and went to Door Country to celebrate our two year anniversary a little early. Back in New York I learned the ropes at my new job, adjusted to a new state, life without Ted and living in actor housing, volunteered for and saw a bunch of shows for the first Rochester Fringe Festival, met new friends, took up running, discovered the Farmer’s Market, saw Bandaloop and comedian Patton Oswalt perform live, visited the zoo and a few museums, and celebrated the theatre’s 40 anniversary with a fancy gala and opening night!
October
I enjoyed a real, beautiful fall in NY, donated blood for the first time, started volunteering for the soup kitchen, attended a great fall fest/pumpkin carving party at a friend’s place, immersed myself in the pumpkin patch and corn maze, toured and tasted the world’s best ice wine (no, really. That was the award it won) at a fantastic local winery, continued running a few times a week and exploring a new park or set of trails each time, hung out with new friends, braved the mini wrath of super-storm Sandy, ran in the photo finish 5k race and got my best time ever, and volunteered for a neat fundraiser for a super sweet little boy with SMA. Freud’s Last Session played at the theatre with lots of talkbacks moderated by yours truly, Ted and I celebrated our 2 year anniversary long-distance, I moved out of actor housing and into my new shared apartment with a great roommate and her husband while Ted moved out of our old apartment and into his new apartment, and I drove for 18 hours all the way to Cincinnati and back to visit Ted for one day.
November
I flew to Texas for my niece Jenn’s wedding. In Texas I ate my body weight in tex-mex and Blue Bell ice cream, hung out with the family – all of whom had flown in for the occasion, took epic southwest family portraits, enjoyed the beautiful wedding, met up with some old friends for girl talk and grub, loved on my cat, and had a late night bonfire beneath the stars with the family. A few weeks later Ted came to visit for Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful time together and went to a Christmas tree farm. At the theatre we opened A Christmas Carol and Ted and I saw the show with my roommate and her husband.
December
I started the Christmas season with the It’s a Wonderful Life in the Southwedge festival and fireworks display, took on a cupcake challenge, and wore an ugly Christmas sweater to the theatre’s holiday party where I did a blazing firebowl. We contributed to a fundraiser for our beautiful friend Kristine. Ted came to Rochester to spend Christmas and New Year’s with me. We braved a blizzard that dropped over 14″ of snow, spent Christmas Eve at the Mountain Horse Farm Bed and Breakfast, went ice skating and sledding, saw the Geva Comedy Improv show on New Years Eve, rung in the New Year with by ingesting an insane amount of pizza, and on New Year’s Day dined at The Melting Pot, saw Sue the T-Rex at the museum, and relaxed with Les Mis.
The Difference It Makes
One week later…
The Obligatory Reolsutions Post
So, last year I put a lot of thought into my resolutions. And I did really well. Making and keeping these resolutions is actually something I really look forward to! And I hope this year will turn out to be just as wonderful and successful and fun as last year did. So, without further ado, this is what I have in mind for 2013:
Professional Resolutions
– Get the initiation fee money together to claim the Actor’s Equity status I so proudly achieved last year. This is the year I finally go equity (I hope)!
– New headshots. Mine from 2008 just aren’t cutting it anymore. Go figure.
– Get my actor/director/educator website up and running. Finally. I think I’m the last theatre artist in existence without a website.
– Actually perform in a show this year. What a novel concept. Rightly so I’ve been focusing more on arts ed, which I love, for the past several years, but I’ll always enjoy acting too! So, I’ll be gutsy and aim for two – a play and a musical. Best of both worlds – education and acting.
– Continue lovin’ my job and working hard!
House & Home Resolutions
– I’d really like to live with my husband for more than 5 months this year. I think that’s a fair request. So, I’m aiming for at least six months this year….crazy, right!?
– Get a new living room furniture set, floor and desk lamps, and a new bedding set. It’s way past time for some upgrades from all our hand-me-downs.
– Build something together for our place – a pantry/armoire , new bookshelves to replace our old ones, an apartment patio garden – anything that gets us measuring and sawing and drilling and staining together again.
– Craft something cute and useful out of the 15 birch stumps I so desperately needed to have as table number holders for our wedding two years ago and have been carting across the country ever since. Surely I can, and should, make something awesome out of them.
Financial Resolutions
– Invest in, maintain, and grow a stock that is slated to do well in 2013 – better to risk and invest and play while you’re still young and can (kind of but not really) afford to do so, right?
– Add a certain amount of money to our 6-month emergency living expenses savings account.
– Save all our loose change for a full year and do something super awesome with it at the end of the year.
– Now that jobs and locations have changed we need to re-create a new, solid budget that allows us to have some dependable financial structure, live within our means, save money, and still afford the things we need and want to.
– Get our legal documents in order – wills, powers of attorney….all that difficult stuff.
Personal Resolutions
– Revamp this blog!! Really. Seriously. And for real.
– Start dancing again – tap, jazz, ballet…..all of it. But especially tap. I miss it.
– Volunteer for something once a month.
– Make our Cincinnati photo book on Blurb.
– Make an effort to stick to a regular exercise regimen regardless of the weather and how miserably cold and/or snowy it is outside. Oh, and drink more water.
– Read at least three scripts or books a month. At least.
– Practice makes perfect. I want to feel more comfortable driving in the snow and parallel parking, neither of which basically ever had to occur in Texas. Ever.
Travel Resolutions
– Take two in-state or near-state cheap and fun weekends of exploration/adventure, the likes of Niagara Falls, the Adirondacks, and NYC/Philly.
– Go to the Stratford Festival and Shaw Festival (both theatre festivals) in upstate NY and Canada! I’m so excited about this!!
– Scrape together the money and time to take one out-of-state vacation. On the top of my list are Palm Springs, Las Vegas, California for some girl time with my friend Rachel, and the Arizona desert! Decisions, decisions.
– Spend time with both sets of parents. We need to go to them, or they can come to see us. But either way, quality time with the parents is, as it always is, a priority.
– See one family cluster or family member we don’t usually see, like visiting my great aunt and uncle at their cabin in Wisconsin, or visiting my brother and his family in Virginia, or seeing Ted’s family in Jersey.
But, really…
– I want to go try more great food, drink more wine, go dancing more, read more books, see more theatre, dress up more, go on more dates with my husband, spend more time with my friends, and laugh more. I want to have more fun and appreciate this life and everything wonderful it offers! So this year I resolve to HAVE MORE FUN.
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So, there you have it! Resolutions. Let’s do this, 2013!!!
The End and the Beginning
I know you’ve been wracked with curiosity about what we did for New Year’s Eve.
We went ice skating in the Manhattan Square Park outdoor ice rink while a DJ spun the latest in obnoxious radio tunes the likes of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” (I actually had to look that up) popular with the tween crowd. It was wild.
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Then we went to the comedy improv spectacular at the theatre. It was indeed spectacular. And the place to see and be seen on NYE (I’m actually not kidding). You should totally enlarge the flyer, because it’s funny too.
And, of course, we ordered a stuffed crust pizza because we hadn’t already consumed enough pizza in the past seven days. And stuffed crust really is the best thing that could ever happen to a pizza anyway. On the drive home we caught a couple minutes of the 10 pm fireworks display – an added bonus. And then we spent the rest of the night ringing in the new year in our traditional fashion – pajamas, pizza, Wii games, a toast at midnight, and a movie…at home. Party animals.
Our super attractive first picture of 2013.
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Our “wild” New Years Eve gave way to a mellow New Years Day.
We slept in and cashed in a coupon to treat ourselves to a long, relaxing lunch of a shared cheese fondu appetizer and meat fondu at The Melting Pot. It was pretty luxurious and delicious. And I bought snow gloves on sale. I feel this is a totally appropriate first purchase for the new year ahead.
Then we went to go see Sue at the museum. She’s a chunker, that one.
{via}
And we finished off the day with a showing of Les Mis.
Not a bad end or beginning. Blessed, indeed!
What did you do? I’m curious, so do tell!
Snow Globe Sledding
18 inches of powder is perfect for nothing if not for sweet little red fox, darling deer, and epic sledding hills.
These little darlings were eating carrots and apples from the hand of a retired professor who, apparently, visits them frequently while their normal grassy grub is buried. Mental note: Bring treats. Make friends. It pretty much took all of the self-control I could muster not to sweep over, hug them, and take them home. That and Ted wouldn’t let me. But, for the record, I was close enough. I could have. 
2 sleds = best $40 ever spent. Totally worth countless years of entertainment ahead. The green sled is mine all mine. The black sled is Ted’s, but it can also seat two, which is kind of awesome for the thrills of the wild hills I’m still too chicken to tackle alone but don’t want to miss out on! The snow was well past my knees and Mendon Ponds park has at least seven excellent hills to explore as well as tons of trails for cross country skiing and snowmobiling. Some of the sledding hills were really long, curvy and fast like a water slide, and a few were short but steep and mighty! Two had secret ramps built into the snow for an extra tummy tickle when you find yourself suddenly airborne. Which is exactly why you always hold onto your sled with both hands so that you don’t catch two feet of air and come down without a sled beneath your hind quarters. But the resulting bruises do give you major bragging rights. Just FYI. Also, it is wise to tuck and roll out of your sled before you convene with the patch of trees.
The picture doesn’t show it, but there’s about six great hills just beyond that ledge. We sled for about two hours against the backdrop of pretty pines while the snow continued to fall all afternoon, and we walked away red-faced, wind-chapped, runny-nosed, purple-bruised, and completely soaked with frozen hair, twinkling eyes, and big smiles on our faces.
Come March, sale snow pants will be hot on my radar.
Our Holiday in Pictures
For what other purpose, beyond my own personal enjoyment and snark-tainment, does the Wal-Mart Christmas clearance section even exist? To clarify, that face is my imitation of the sleep deprived, desperate, and crazed look in peoples’ eyes as they maniacally shark the malls, pretending to exude Christmas cheer, on December 22nd whilst hunting for a thoughtless gift to fulfill some material obligation to someone who will be in line to return it at promptly 6 a.m. on December 26th. I think it’s pretty spot on. Also, I found my ugly sweater contest headpiece for next year’s competition (obviously). So did Ted. Can you believe somebody made one of these hats and actually thought “this looks fantastic!” and somehow conned a bunch of other clucks into agreeing with them because here these hideous creations lie on the shelves of Wal-Mart, inexpicably mass produced, yet oh-so-perfect for my mocking intentions.
I insisted that we visit Dallop Gourmet Cupcake Creations on the day before they closed their doors forever (not to sound dramatic or anything). This was a wise decision (the visit, not the closing). Cupcakes beat the gross, slushy snow blues every time. This is totally justifiable because, much like a polar bear (or something), I need a little extra fat on my bones to keep me warm in the winter. Also, please enjoy this rare shot of me actually wearing my glasses in public. This has happened approximately eight times since 2005 when I basically poured hydrogen peroxide into my eye, charred my eyeball, had to go to the hospital to get it flushed out, and was forced to wear my glasses for three weeks while my ph levels and eyesight returned to normal and my wounded pride healed. This was obviously a shining moment in my life story. But see! Here I wear them, of my own free will. There is hope!
Our simple, loveable Charlie Brown Christmas Tree and the gifts from the parents beneath it. I think we do a pretty good job of making our heater, a sawed bough from a pine tree, and a chincy fiber optic tree feel like home. Well done, us, well done.
So this picture pretty much has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but a few days before Christmas we journeyed through the snow storm pounding the NY state thruway to Syracuse to see Syracuse Stage’s musical adaptation of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. And it was all kinds of excellent. I drooled over the chorus girls’ shoes (duh). I drooled over their costumes (duh). I drooled over the great choreography and tap dancing (duh. Because I’ve kind of always wanted to be a chorus girl. Really.) I loved the songs. I loved the humor. The acting was lovely. The nostalgia and cheer were heartwarming. So, in honor of this wonderful musical I present to you….the outside of the theatre. You’re welcome.
The Packers did some winning. Clearly, that means making faces in public is totally appropriate.
I also feel roughly the size of a small house. I can’t imagine why. I think we ordered pizza four times in a week and a half. That, by the way, is Ted’s vision of heaven – a daily pizza. My thighs are crying. I only complied with this ridiculous pizza palooza because A) the local pizza place was literally the only place that was open in the tiny town near our B&B on Christmas Eve, B) it was blizzarding out like woah midweek and pizza seemed like the easiest and safest option, C) we always order pizza on New Year’s Eve. It’s tradition. But I can safely say that I’m pizza’d out for the next three months while I attempt to return to a normal body weight and resume a respectable level of sodium intake. In other news, I make divine kiss cookies (Santa agrees), the crab cake eggs benedict I ordered was incredible (who knew?), and Ted’s blueberry pancakes were breakfast perfection. The special reserve Woodchuck Hard Cider I discovered at Beers of the World (I’m not even kidding. This place exists and it is amazing.) last weekend tastes like normal delicious Woodchuck but then has this great bourbon aftertaste that is just plain epic (you need to try this stuff immediately). And, more cupcakes – vanilla chai and turtle. Because consuming my own body weight in pizza, kiss cookies, and beers of the world just wasn’t enough, apparently. Cheers!
Oh, and Ted hoarded the ball chute at the museum.
The End.
P.S. No, it’s not. I lied. More to come tomorrow. I hope you can sleep with all the anticipation of greatness to come. Again, you’re welcome.
Over the River and Through the Woods…
…to the B&B we go!
As promised, here are a few shots from our snowy Christmas Eve escape to the Mountain Horse Farm B&B in upstate New York, situated in the mountainous finger lakes wine country.
Obviously, it was fantastic and I’d return in a heartbeat, with family and friends in tow. Read more about our trip here.
Ring It In
Happy New Year!
I’ll be back in a couple of days with my new year’s resolutions, a recap of our Christmas Eve at the B&B in the mountains, some pictures and fun details from the past two weeks of holiday merriment, and a few exciting things coming up, but in the meanwhile…
Have a safe, joyful, fun, relaxing, and blessed start to 2013!