Still a little behind on the summer

Still catching up on the rest of our summer vacation...
The weekend after Pete went back to work we were able to participate in the wedding of our friend, David Mauer. David was my assistant at New American Theatre for a few years and Pete's good hockey buddy. It was a pretty wedding.










The next weekend we were keeping up with our now tradition of trying to see a Cardinals game for our anniversary. We went down to St. Louis, and finally got to see a winner! We also got to spend time with family at our niece Emily's birthday party and a Sunday Brunch that included The WHOLE family and ALL kids!










Our last camping trip of the summer we were back to Token Creek County Park in Madison, this was where Puja had her first camping trip a few years ago. It's a small camp-ground, but it's very close to the Mallards park and there's an off-leash dog excercize area in the park. We got a chance to try out our new tent (third tent of the summer) I think we finally got a winner and it comes in our favorite color!!

We had some beautiful sunsets, a pretty fun Mallards game (even though they lost in extra innings) and the puppies got a good run in the park. We love our new tent and are only sad that we only got to use it once this summer!

The last of our short 2 weeks!

Off to glamorous South Bend Indiana


So off to the South Bend Silverhawks. Pete found us a State Park and we were on our way. The park is beautiful and a bit of a maze! We had to replace our tent when we left Toledo because we blew out the zipper on the door. It's too bad, it was a great tent and we still could have used it if we wanted to climb in and out of the window, but we decided to give ourselves an early anniversary present! We struggled with the shape of the tent, but we love the screen porch element of the new tent.

The park was very nice. There was a beach and we saw a whole family of racoons! It was pretty funny. They scattered when they saw us and the babies were stranded until mom came and herded them all back into the brush. The beach was separated into regular and dog sections so we were able to take the pups down to splash around a little. The game was a pretty good time, the park is a little bit of a cinder-block, but the game was fun.







The final leg of our vacation - 4th of July camping at outside Beloit with Mom, Dad, Dominic, Brenden and Madi. It was an adventure!

We had a blast at the beach, but the mosquitoes in the campground were horrible. We all went to a Snappers game on the 4th but I got a call during the bottom of the 7th to let us know that our dogs had broken out of the tent and were running around the campground. So Dad and I had to drive back and coral them. At least we saw the fireworks from the highway on the way back. Thank goodness we were headed home for a little vacation break, we discovered that our new tent was a piece of crap and our grill broke!

But, just because Pete is going back to work doesn't mean the summer vacation ends! It's just limited to the weekends for a bit!

The Journey Continues

We were looking forward to some camping outside Detroit for a few days while we caught a Tigers Cardinals game. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas. It took us a long time to find the campground that we'd used a couple years ago, and when we found it, it was underwater! So we camped at the Motel 6! Pizza, TV and air conditioning.



We lucked out with a fantastic ticket agent at the Tigers, without a secret hint, we would have been in standing room, but she encouraged us to buy our tickets in the morning and we got seats in the handicap area on the lower level! No row to climb over, no one sitting in front or behind us, just a very nice Tiger's fan taking his elderly father to his first game! We had a great time, until the Cardinals lost in the 10th. It's still a beautiful park, I just wish we'd seen a winner.


FINALLY we got some camping in! We drove down to Toledo and decided to try to buy our tickets on the way into town. Luckily! There was nothing but standing room available until Sunday night's game. So we bought our tickets and then looked forward to a couple of days of camping. One of the actors from the festival was originally from Toledo and recommended a state park (Maumee Bay). It was very pretty and we finally got to relax and camp after almost a week on our trip! We even got to dip our feet in Lake Erie!

The game wasn't bad either! The park is beautiful, we had a little time to prowl around before the game. During the game, we were rooting for the Mud-Hens against the Louisville Bats, there were quite a few Bats fans sitting in the row behind us. Around the 7th inning, one of the guys behind us asked how many strike-outs the Bats pitcher had, he had 7! We found out he was the pitcher's grandfather! Now we were still rooting for the Hens but we were also pulling for the pitcher! Well, the Bats won but the Mud Hens made it interesting so it was a great time.

What we did on our summer vacation...

When we left Kentucky we had two weeks to cram in as much camping and baseball as we could. Our trip started in Indianapolis. We stopped for one night at a KOA, usually we steer clear of the resort type camp grounds, but this one boasted a brand new dog park. The dogs LOVED it! It wasn't anything big but it was right next to our campsite and though it was against the rules, there was no one else camping on our side of the river so we were able to toss the dogs into the dog-park while we were setting up. Then we were off to the game - Indianapolis Indians at Victory Field. It was a fun game. We were crammed into our section and after a couple of innings moved to the empty section next to us and then it was GREAT.















Early the next day we were off to Fort Wayne and a Wizards game. We thought we were going to have to stay in a hotel because we couldn't find a camp-ground anywhere in the Fort Wayne area. But we called the ball park to confirm the game time and asked if they knew of any campgrounds in the are and the only one they could recommend was the one in the back-yard of the stadium. It wasn't the most private or rustic of parks, but we did get to walk to the ball field!

The tip of the catch up iceberg!

Pete and I finished up at the Festival and then took two weeks of camping (much of it in the rain) before Pete returned to work. Here is the end of the Festival, I'll have pictures of camping as soon as I sort through them. Pete took about 700 pictures!!!













My director, Mark Bellamy, was even made an honorary Kentucky Colonel! We've been calling him Colonel Bellamy ever since!

My time in Kentucky wrapped up with the festival, where I met a lot of great people and writers. Our show went well and at the final ceremony/awards The Final Toast won Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Playwright and Best Director. They gave the festival a final curtain call where everyone was invited on stage to take a final bow. It was great!




































Of course you recognize Gene Hackman (and he looks GOOD for his age) The other man I am with - Anthony Zuicker the Head writer of CSI and creator of the whole series. He is very sweet and has great & interesting stories about CSI.


But we didn't spend all our time rubbing elbows with the elite! As I've said before, there's always time for Baseball! On Wednesday, in the middle of the festival, Pete, my Cardinal buddy Jeff and I drove down to Nashville and saw a Nashville Sounds game (AAA affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers). It was a pretty good game too - 7 home runs, 7 doubles, sunshine and beer! It was a blast!

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!