I want to be a Flying Monkey

In High School and College I dabbled in theater. It's wasn't a big interest of mine. For one thing, most theater in that age group is Musical Theater and I can't really sing that well. But also I was more into writing and working at WECI, the college radio station.

Don't get me wrong. I like to sing. And I can kind of, sort of, carry a tune. If I practice a lot and am singing with a group or the song isn't very challenging and very much in the middle of my range. Or all three.

But get up in front of a bunch of people and sing cold by myself with no one to support me? Not going to happen. Not in my lifetime.

Or so I thought.

Mini-Mac is Babette

I forgot to mention that Mini-Mac is Babette in the Stage1 production of Beauty and the Beast Jr.

They had their opening weekend last weekend and it was fab. It's a very different experience from her usual theater group. Instead of hundreds of kids in 3-5 casts all milling about, they picked the top kids and really rehearsed them.

It makes a big difference.

The show is much tighter and much higher quality and much more enjoyable to watch.

Plus Mini-Mac is awesome in it, of course.

I'm still glad Peter Pan Foundation is around giving kids a shot. Because every kid gets in, Mini-Mac has been able to have experiences that she wouldn't otherwise been able to get. She's gone from being in the Ensemble with occasional solos to having name parts. I don't think that would have happened if she was just auditioning and auditioning and not getting to production after production.

Plus they do so much good work raising money for charity.

The Toyota is Dead. Long Live the Toyota!

MacBoy totaled his car.

Okay, HE didn't total it. Some dude totaled it for him. The other guy was going at least 50 in a 30 mph zone. But says he had a Green light. MacBoy says it was a flashing Red.

Which means it's "he said, he said."

We think the insurance company will come back with "Unable to determine fault."

That's good in a way because it means MacBoy's insurance rates won't go up. But bad in a way because he only has Liability insurance and so he won't get a dime for the wrecked Solara.

The Cash for Cars people gave him a couple hundred for it though. And another couple hundred for his Aunt's Saturn that she gave him but he couldn't learn to drive because it was a stick shift.

He did try on the stick shift but he couldn't get comfortable on Mr. Mac's car and his Aunt's was in much worse shape and much harder to drive.

We ended up buying him a "new" one for his birthday with the understanding that he'd pay us back for most of it over time.

It's another Toyota but a Corolla. So quite the step down from the Solara in some ways. It's a 1997 too. But slightly less mileage. And not dying like the Solara was. At least not as far as we know!