Thanky-ness

     Today is Thanksgiving here in the states (Canadian Thanksgiving was Oct 10th) and we celebrate by heading to Grandma Gerry and Grandpa Jacks for dinner with moms side of the family. It's a fairly traditional gathering with turkey, mashed taters, green beans, and pumpkin pie. The fact that they live in a log cabin in the woods only heightens the traditional holiday mood. Booze helps too :-)  It's nice to get together with the family and swap stories and reminiscences. After we've stuffed ourselves silly, and had a brief nap in my father's case, we bundle up and drive over to spend the rest of the evening with dad's side of the family to consume deserts, play games, and drink a bit more. We bring board games, card games, and Wii games to whittle away the night. Eventually the evening ends and we head home (hopefully with leftovers in hand) to put the kids to bed and sleep off the feast. A good time is had by all!

     I'd like to take this opportunity to share my list of things I'm grateful for, in no particular order

     I'm thankful for family. My family is very important to me. I would not be who I am without their influence and example to go by.
     I'm thankful for friends; old and new. I'm fortunate to have many, many friends, and I love them all.
     I'm thankful for my health. Though I am currently battling a sudden and unexpected head cold, my immune system is usually pretty impenetrable. On that note...
     I'm thankful for lemon tea with ginger, honey, and vitamin C. It's keeping me functional at the moment.
     I'm thankful for my wife and kids. Yeah, they're included in the "thankful for family" bit, but these three are special. Though they may drive me out of my ever loving mind at times, Jillian and Gavin are the best thing I've ever made. I don't know how she does it, but Belinda puts up with my insanity.
     I'm thankful for "the arts". I know, it's a catch all phrase, but I'm love it all. As an artist, writer, actor, sculptor, singer, puppeteer, etc, etc, tis the arts that feed my soul.
     I could go on and on ad infinitum with all this thanky-ness, but I'll spare you the long and winding list.

     I wish you all a festive Thanksgiving full of good food and good company! If you're not celebrating Thanksgiving today, I still wish you the same; it's never a bad time for food, friends, and family.

Happy Turkey Day everyone!

Adventures in dinnertime

      Dinnertime at the Hamilton house and I'm looking through the pantry wondering what to make that the kids will actually eat. Hmmm... Got it! Boiled octopus with octopus eggs! Well, not exactly... Jillie and I made the octopi from items most households already have. Here, I'll show you.

Everybody loves hot dogs. Even the Arrogant Worms! http://www.arrogantworms.com/music/hot-dog-song/
We have hot dogs in abundance. Spaghetti is always plentiful. Olives? Yup, we gots olives. And last but not least, string cheese. Cut a couple hot dogs into sections and break a small bundle of spaghetti noodles in half.

Take your little spaghetti spears and skewer them into one end of the hot dogs in a circle. You can put as many or a few as you like, but Jillie insisted that octopus have eight legs so we stuck to realism.

these guys seem a bit stiff to you?

invaders from planet Frankfurter

Bring some water to a boil (if I have to tell you how to do that, just stop reading now. Walk away from your computer and go stand in a corner) and drop the little fake cephalopod's into the pot. Jillie made little "No! Help me!" noises as she mercilessly drowned the poor things, but you don't have to if you don't want to. Let them boil for about seven minutes. You may need to gently separate them with a spoon occasionally to prevent tentacle tangling. Once the tentacles soften up, your octopi should start swimming around. It's kind of hard to see through the steam, but ours spun in circles like aquatic wind socks.

While they boiled away to their hearts delight, I cut some string cheese into little wedges and stuffed them into the hollows of the olives to make inky eggs. When time is up, gently remove the little guys from their bath of doom and plate them up. Jillie doesn't like spaghetti sauce, so we didn't make any. You're perfectly welcome to add sauce to yours but it may make the plates look like a scene from CSI: Pacific Coast.

Jillie and Gavin devoured them with glee, nibbling off tentacles and squishing gooey yolks. Dinner and a show! Let me know if you try this with your own monkeys. Happy Eating!

Curtain call

Tonight we finished our run of "The Green Room." It's been a great journey from auditions to cast party. We had  more than our fair share of set backs; illnesses, multiple rehearsals spaces, even a last minute cast change (Carolina Rios, you rock!), but in the end we put on a great show. I've made new friends along the way and I'm really gonna miss seeing them damn near every day. I'm looking forward to auditioning for Mask & Mirror's next show, "Robin Hood: The Musical" and I hope my new friends are there with me. I've had a great time doing this, it's what I love to do, and I hope to keep doing it for the rest of my life. To Jenny, Maille, Greg, Mason, Carolina, Rod, and Arleen, you guys rule! I loved doing this show with you. I couldn't have asked for better castmates. To Gary and Pat, thank you for casting me and being a wonderful director and producer. To Sue, Michal, Chris, Deidre, Christina, Bev, and any other crew I may have missed, thank you all for keeping this show chugging along. And to Peggy Glisson, thank you for allowing us to be the first group to "test drive" your script. The Green Room is a delight! I'm sad that it's over, but happy that it happened and that it went so well. The show must go on!

More thank you's...

Thank you to my family and friends who came to see the show, I love you all. Thank you to my wife Belinda for putting up with my absence so I could go to rehearsals, I love you tons! Thank you to EVERYONE who supports the arts in their community, without people like you we couldn't do the things we do. And one last quick thank you to Drea Ferguson, my high school theater teacher. Okay, I think I'm done now. If I've forgotten to thank you, I'm sorry, I'm getting old and tired and my memory isn't what it used to be. I think I may have hit my head a few too many times; I hear ringing and I can taste colors. I think I should go lie down. G'night folks!