I'm back in Minnesota

Well, I've certainly been remiss in my blogging duties! I'm back from the PartyLite conference in St. Louis, and I've jumped back into life here in the Twin Cities.

First of all, the conference was awesome! I learned tons of great stuff, got to meet some amazing people, and I got a lot of free products! How exciting is that? You should have seen the stadium of people when they were unveiling the new fall/winter catalog--they were showing us the new stuff, and then they would say, "and you're getting this for free"... the stadium would erupt into applause! I was right along with them! I'm so addicted to PartyLite :) I have a consultant website, which you can check out if you want :)

So now I'm back to work, and I've also started rehearsals for "Cannibal! The Musical". Sooooo much fun :) There's a crazy group of people doing it, and I love it. I'm so excited to be doing a show down here, I cannot even express it. It's a very short rehearsal period (we open Aug. 4), since most of the cast was part of the production that happened here in January. So a few of us have to catch up! But I'm not too worried, we have enough time :)

This is just a quick update, since I hadn't put anything on in a while :) I'll be sure to share some pictures from the PartyLite conference sometime soon.

Ciao for now,
Lindsay

It's a big arch!

Hey everyone! I made it safe and sound to St. Louis, and I'm just about to leave my hotel room to explore a little, but I wanted to let everyone know that the drive was nice and smooth. We only ran into a little road construction, but even that was only reduced speeds of 45 mph, so we had a good time!

Obviously I have internet access here, so I'll be sure to try and put some updates throughout the week--it just depends on how worn out I am at the end of the day!

Bye for now,
Lindsay

Meet Me in St. Louis!

I'm off to St. Louis in the morning for a PartyLite Candle conference. I've never been to St. Louis, and a group of us women from the Twin Cities are driving down together, so it should be a lot of fun! All of the consultants who have gone to conference before just rave about the experience, so I'm excited that I have the chance to go. I won free registration at one of my first regional trainings, so I've been looking forward to this for a while!

Of course, I'll try and take pictures and report in during the event. Hopefully I'll have internet access in my hotel :)

Of interesting note: Back in March when I went up to Alaska to do Pirate Tales, we sang a song called "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything." One of my lines in the song was "and I've never buried treasure in St. Louis or St. Paul"... Now I'll be able to sing this line with absolute truth...unless I decide to bury treasure...hmm...

It's a shpadoinkle day!

Ladies and gentlemen, I have officially been cast in my first play in Minnesota!!! I am so excited! I cannot express how excited I am! It just feels good to finally have some success :) I'm going to be performing in "Cannibal: the Musical" as part of the Fringe Festival that happens here in August, and we'll also have an extended run through part of September. The original is a movie that was Trey Parker's student film, and the movie is hilarious. I actually own a copy somewhere in storage :) It's a fun musical, and it will be great fun to do it--I have my first rehearsal on the 24th, so that's when I'll get to meet the whole cast. Hooray!

A funny episode

Last week I was invited to join my friend Melissa at her place for a BBQ. What was funny, was that this BBQ originally was going to be quite small--I was the 6th, and I was already an additional add-on to the party, originally set at 3 :) But then things quickly started to happen...

While we were preparing the food, there was a ring of the doorbell. Melissa was in the middle of something, and me thinking that it might be another guest, I went out to answer the door. It turned out to be a salesman for a security company. They were offering her a special deal, so I went and got Melissa. It turned out that she had already been thinking about getting an alarm, so she decided to go ahead and take advantage of the special. Which left the rest of us to get ready for the BBQ while she went through all the details with the salesman.

At some point we were just about ready to eat, and she was was STILL talking to the salesman, so someone went out to tell her we were ready, but that we didn't have butter for the corn on the cob. Here's where it gets funny: the salesman was going to be waiting around for the technician to come and install stuff anyway, so he volunteered if we gave him money to go get butter for us! Too funny! And that's what he did!

Of course, when he returned, we invited him to join us in our meal. There were 6 of us, now there were 7. At some point this salesman got a call from another salesman in the neighborhood, who was running into some sketchy situations, so we invited him to join as well--party grows to 8. Pretty soon the technician comes, and we invite him to eat as well. And so there were 9. It's a good thing we had so much food!

It was a great BBQ, and we were laughing the whole way through. The group that was there was kind of a hodgepodge of people that Melissa knew anyway, so we were all getting to know each other. All in all, it was a very fun night--and Melissa got an alarm system out of it too! You can check out Melissa's blog for more pictures and her description of the night if you want... just too too funny :)

TBA Theatre Presents...

During the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, there are various evening presentations. One night of one-acts was produced by TBA Theatre, Inc., and it was a night of plays by Alaskan playwrights that had been part of the play lab in previous years.

Now, remember, I surprised all my friends coming up to Alaska. One of the things that I knew I would be sacrificing was the possibility of performing with my friends at the conference, but I thought that even if I did tell them I was coming, it would still be too short a time to expect them to wait for me to come up in order to prepare something. So it was to my delight when I found out that one of the plays had a role yet to be filled, owing to someone not being able attend, and that they had not started rehearsals yet, owing to the fact that they were busy doing other productions! So I gladly stepped into one of the roles! Hurray! I got to have my cake and eat it too--surprise my friends AND perform at the conference! It was just icing on the cake that I was able to take part in the overnighters once I got down there as well. So great... :)

So I wanted to share some photos from the shows. I also wanted to give credit for the photos to Gen Hasagawa. He is at every single evening performance, taking photos while the show is going on (with no flash, of course!). He never gets to sit back and enjoy the show. And he captures a lot of stuff! So I'm very grateful that he does it!

I'm including a picture from each show of the night, and you can click on that photo to see all the photos from that show. The entire night was a lot of fun, and I'm really impressed with how people did. And of course, I need to give a special shout-out to Matt's cooler, who was the star of the evening :) Enjoy the photos!

In a Red Sea by Dawson Moore

Asparagus by Schatzie Schaeffers

Equal Opportunity by Andrew Day

Out to Sea by Nancy Lord

The Miraculous Resurrection of Humpty Dumpty by P. Shane Mitchell

Mid-Fair Feast

Well, I'm playing catch-up on all the fun things that happened while I was in Alaska. My friend Dave Brown is a great photographer, and he documents all the events of the Renaissance Fair. He's got his own website with tons of pictures which you're more than welcome to check out, but I've included some of my favorites here :) There are actually pictures of the entire fair if you want to check them out. I'll be sure to put some of them on the blog later as well. Thanks Dave!

The Mid-Fair Feast is a fundraiser that happens the second Friday of the Fair, and people buy tickets for a meal and entertainment. As you may recall of you've read previous posts is that I surprised my friends by showing up right before this event. They proceeded to find some clothes for me to be in costume, and we went to the Feast and performed! It was great fun, and we were singing songs from "Pirate Tales", the show we did in March... which was appropriate, since it was a Pirate theme :) I had brought my violin, so I was even able to play while people were standing in line for their food. It's so funny to think that I had just showed up, and I was tossed right into the mix--I love it! Enjoy the pics (you can click on an image to see it larger)!