Blog

Ted was out of town Thursday-Saturday for a theatre conference in New Philadelphia, Ohio while I stayed behind in Cincy to work my last day at the museum after a year-and-a-half (bittersweet!) and to continue running Next to Normal shows. Ted managed to stay safe amid the raging storms this weekend, dodging three tornadoes that touched down within several miles of his hotel and a house across the street from the hotel that was struck by lighting. Though both the New Philadelphia area where he was and the Cincinnati area where I was endured some pretty forceful winds (up to 60 mph), sand storms, flying debris, downed trees, and power outages, power was restored to Ted’s hotel after 9 hours of no lights, no a/c, and utter boredom, which is just plain lucky considering many parts of Ohio witnessed a ton of damage and won’t have power for another week yet. Anyhow, he’s back home, all safe and sound.

While Ted was away I spent Saturday morning blackberry and blueberry picking at a farm in Milford.

After two hours of early morning picking, I walked away with the pride of having picked our own food, a bundle of fat blackberries, and hundreds of sweet blueberries – a few handfuls of which quickly found there way into a homemade healthy blueberry lemon loaf later that afternoon (recipe forthcoming!), and nearly the rest of which found their way into Ted’s mouth shortly thereafter.

Then I stopped at the library to stock up on some juicy summer reads for the first half of camp…and took a nap.

Sunday after the matinee performance we closed Next to Normal, and to celebrate the closing of a fantastic production, the earning of my last four equity membership candidate points (!!!), and the beginning of my one whole week of freedom from any and all jobs before I head to camp, we enjoyed the wind and rain of a summer evening storm rolling through, stopped by the new Smash Burger joint nearby to try out their burgers and fries, treated ourselves to Dairy Queen blizzards and peanut buster parfaits, and redboxed We Bought A Zoo. The burgers at Smash Burger were good (though I’m not inclined to waste my calories on “good” burgers – only outstanding ones – I’m looking at you Kopp’s, Butterbees, and Culver’s!) but the Smash Fries seasoned with garlic, rosemary, olive oil, and sea salt were out of this world awesome! I have a bad feeling that I’m going to crave them – often. They really were that good.

We Bought A Zoo was pretty great too. I’d highly recommend renting it for a movie night this summer.

They crayddlers are still growing by leaps and bounds. You can tell they’re getting chunky because they start to look like this:

When they look like they’re wearing a sweater 3 sizes too small (see the white-ish gap between their body and tail?), it means they’ve gotten too big for their current shell and need to molt it, resulting in this:

A fully formed cray molt (at the back of the tank). When they molt they shimmy out of the shell that surrounds their eyes, antennas, pinchers, legs, body and tail, which is really cool and really creepy all at once. It’s kind of frightening seeing that in the tank, thinking you’ve lost a cray, until you realize that it’s just a molt.

Happily and sadly, the crayddlers, all sixteen of them, are thriving and are therefore getting too big and too boldly mannered to live comfortably and harmoniously in the same tank, so we’ll be parting with ten of them today. I’m really bummed about this, as I want nothing more to than to be able to keep and raise all of sweet Mav’s babes, but we know it’s best for their health, growth, and happiness if they have more individual space. We’ve found an excellent aquarium and local fish shop in Cincinnati owned by a pair of brothers who take great care of their fish and are very kind-hearted and knowledgeable. They will be the new home for our most of our porkchops. We stopped by last week to check out the accommodations and they have several marvelous, sizable, planted aquariums that I think our crays will be very happy in. I’m sad to have any to let them go, but I know it’s for the best.

Other than that, I’m taking this full week off to finish my camp choreography, lesson plans, preparations and packing, taking the car in for its check-up and some light repair work in preparation for the road trip, to do fun summery things, to sleep, and to spend some quality time with Ted before I leave for Michigan. I’ll try to pop by a few times this week, and of course I’ll have internet access at camp for the purposes of occasional blogging, though I do intend to spend much of my time up there unplugged and enjoying the peace of the great outdoors, just as a word of warning.

Lots happening here!

What have you been up to?