Always room for Baseball!

It's not all murder mysteries and workshops... we have found some time for Baseball. Sunday night we drove over the Blue Bridge into Indiana and Pete & I plus 2 actors, Mick and Sam saw an Evansville Otters game. It WAS a gorgeous night for baseball and we discovered once we got to the park that the team had been rained out Friday night and at the end of a double header Saturday, suspended the game around 1a in a tie and were scheduled to pick up that game in the 10th inning prior to the scheduled Sunday night game. Luckily, the suspended game only took 1 inning for the Paints to beat the Otters and after about a half hour break our game was underway.





We were a little disappointed that it was only scheduled to be a seven inning game until the bottom of the 6th when we started to see lightning in the distance beyond the outfield. By the middle of the 7th it was coming down fairly steadily and when the Paints recorded the final out, it was like the sky was waiting! It opened up and DUMPED rain on us! Thunder... Lightning... quite a show!

This park is beautiful, and also the site of much of the filming of A League Of Their Own. They still keep the Racine Bells signs up and their cheer leaders wear the team uniforms from the movie. Very sweet.


This week, on a day off from the festival, Pete and Jeff (one of the actors in the show) took a field trip down to Nashville for a noon game of the Sounds vs. Oklahoma Redhawks (a team we saw last summer!) This is also a nice park, similar to the Iowa Cubs ball-field but a little older. The unique feature of this park is it's guitar shaped scoreboard. It was a great game, the ball was carrying very well and we saw not only seven home runs but seven doubles between the two teams!! In the end, the Redhawks prevailed and the Sounds lost 13-9. But it was a great game and we had a nice time sitting in the sun!

International Mystery Writers Festival

The festival is finally open, we spent more time in tech than the number of performances we have! It seems a little disjointed now that we are no longer all at one hotel, but things are going very well. Almost everyone in my cast (The Final Toast) went to the opening ceremonies and then the opening performance of Chimneys. PIctured above are my playwright Stuart Kaminsky and my director Mark Bellamy. Following the performance we all relaxed at a local bar, Bacchus and our own Bing Putney (now a local favorite) took the stage!

Friday my play opened to a sold out house and a very good response. Since then, we have been enjoying many of the other plays that the festival has to offer, a lot of live radio performances and workshops. One of our favorite activities have been the Writers Reels at the end of each festival night, a Q & A with different 'celebrities' as we view movie clips of their work an a huge movie screen on the river front. We saw Josh Hutchinson (Upcoming Journey to the Center of the Earth, and in the past, Zathura and Bridge to Terrabithia etc) And I am pictured here with Rene Balcer, head writer for Law and Order and Creator of L & O Criminal Intent. We also met one of the writers of Monk who is a riot, as you can imagine. He was honored at the curtain speech for one of my performances and we practically had to wrestle the mic away from him to get the show started. Last night we stopped in to support Stuart (Kaminsky)'s Reel, but instead of clips, they showed his entire movie, Once upon a time in America, and we just couldn't sit through an almost 3 hour movie that started at 9;30! Tonight, Rupert Holmes (writer of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, but more well know; The Pina Colada Song) He is showing a series of clips of all the movies where that song is used. It should be fun!

We are actually finding time for baseball, and I'll blog later today or tomorrow about the two minor league baseball games we have taken in, but right now I'm off to a workshop on Mysteries in the era of Agatha Christie etc.

Back in KY

Meanwhile, back in Kentucky things have been CRAZY!! There was a scare last week that we might have to move out of our hotel, what started as a rumor we discovered was going to a hearing on Tuesday and later Thursday but by Thursday evening we had good news, a judge said that the hotel couldn't close without giving its employees 60 days notice. Whew!

Here's where it gets strange. Around noon Friday we got a call that the hotel had closed it's doors and everyone had to be out by 6p on Sunday! So now our poor festival had to scramble to find the over 1200 room/nights for all of us and all of the new people whe had just arrived and for all the incoming festival participants and celebrities. It was Crazy. But on Sunday I bid farewell to my river view and moved 4 miles away from the theater to the Super 8. Instead of all being in one place, the festival participants are now spread out over 5 hotels all over town. We feel a little disconnected but things are moving on.

Before moving day, several of us made our second trip to Goldie's Operyhouse in downtown Owensboro to see our Marketing Director (Travis') wife doing a Dolly Parton review. Tara was FANTASTIC! She looks like Dolly and even more, she SOUNDS like Dolly. The show got a little surreal toward the end of Act I, but overall it was a good time!

And tonight... the Festival officially opens with an Olympic Type opening ceremony at 5p and we'll be off and running. My show opens tomorrow night and then we'll have 10 days to see 14 performances and do all the other things I want to show Pete now that he's here!

While I was in Kentucky...

While I have been down here working and having fun in Kentucky, Pete has been very busy...

He went to a Brewers/Cardinals game with Anita and Jeff, Celebrated spring birthdays plus Mothers and Fathers day with my family AND got a nice surprise; Dan and Christina are expecting a new niece or nephew for us in December.



When he wasn't taking some of the 500 pictures he now has to sort and upload to Flicker, he was busy building these models for Mayfair Mall's Rosetta Stone exhibit.


He did have a little time to take the puppies up to Appleton to visit their cousins and then he was off to St. Louis where he spent several days with his family, working on projects for Mom & Dad, playing cards with Jeremy and Patty and a trip to the zoo with Mary Jo, Evan and Erin.

But now... FINALLY he and the puppies are here in Kentucky with me where they belong (in my opinion!)

Baseball and Eucher

Another week in Kentucky has gone by and things are still fun and running smoothly. Didn't want you to think it was all fun and no work. Here is a picture of our stage. It is set up for rehearsal right now, our set loads-in for performance today, so more pictures next week. Here is an important safety tip from Amy, the only woman in the show; "lace up your shoes before your corset!"

The sunsets over the river outside my room continue to be stunning.

And a small group of us made it to opening night of the Owensboro Oilers (Kitty league, similar to the Northwoods league) It was a very strange game, disappointing in it's lack of beer, but a fast game and we sat in front of the Catcher's father, so we got a lot of fun little trivial info! I'm bummed that my group picture is blurry, but you get the idea!!





Mark, our director had us to his house for some grilling, LoTS of chips and drinking & Eucher in the courtyard behind his apartment. It was a lot of fun!