Search Results for: blog compelled to play

Reading the Stageplay

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I’ve always been an entertaining kind of guy. Some have interchanged “entertaining” with “annoying” but you get my point. It’s probably why I got into music, magic, juggling, and eventually theatre. I’ve always enjoyed making people laugh, smile, and generally enjoy themselves. A few years ago I was fortunate to be in yet another play portraying yet another character. This particular character had a higher voice than my own, a bizarre way of putting often surprising words together, and an even stranger accent. All of this was rolled up into a character in (you guessed it) a comedy. The comedy, … Continue reading →

Compelled to Play

Last time I talked about the compulsion to go outdoors as the weather has improved. We found ourselves at the park more and more often. While we don’t go everyday, a couple of times a week (generally before noon) we find ourselves excitedly pulling into a parking space and walking our way to the swings or the slides or the body of water that holds the many ducks. It rains so rarely that the water has been drying up to reveal more and more land to walk out on. We get closer and closer to the center of the pond … Continue reading →

Chocolate Football Rice Krispie Treats and Playoff Pinwheels

With all due respect to the Green Bay Packers (who walked away with a victory tonight and are one step closer to the Super Bowl)–the best part of the playoff party I just attended was the food. In my previous blog I shared two hearty dip recipes that I took to the football viewing party I just came home from. My friends and I gathered together to cheer on the green and gold, but I must admit when the team was down 14 points I made a dash to the buffet table and stayed there for much of the night … Continue reading →

Lance Armstrong Comes Clean to Doping

The other night, I was in bed, looking for something to watch on television.  I know, I know, experts say you shouldn’t have a television in your bedroom, but I find it comforting to watch a little before I go to bed. I was channel surfing when I came across the Lance Armstrong interview on OWN.  I didn’t realize this was the first airing and I am not a huge cycling fan, but something compelled me to watch. It has already been leaked to the media that Armstrong would confess to using performance-enhancing drugs to Oprah, but I wanted to … Continue reading →

He Never Ceases To Amaze Me

As toddlers grow, they often surprise their parents with the depth and range of emotions that they experience. The other day, Dylan treated me to a glimpse of an emotion that is not often associated with toddlers – generosity. Not just the sharing kind of generosity, but the kind of generosity that involves giving and expecting nothing in return. We were out hiking, and suddenly Dylan stopped in the middle of the trail to pick something up. I was halfway through asking him not to pick any more leaves off of the trees when I realized that he was not … Continue reading →

Writing about your Children

Writers naturally write about their experiences. Mom writers will tend toward writing about their adventures of being a mom which includes using their children as the stars of their articles. Where is the balance between sharing too much and sharing just enough? What is too private to share? Mom writers want to be cautious not to embarrass their children yet they feel compelled to uplift other moms with their stories. Often the stories are powerful and have great impact on the readers. With a pure heart, many moms share struggles and this has proved comforting to many others. But what … Continue reading →

Excessive Care Increase Cost of Health Insurance

Health insurance is expensive. This is true whether you get your health insurance from your employer, from a private insurer, or from one of the government’s public insurance programs. One of the things that increases the cost of health insurance is when patients are given too much health care. There are reasons why doctors feel compelled to do too much for patients. There are a number of factors that make health insurance expensive. Doctors in America are paid a much higher salary then their counterparts in other countries are receiving. Insurance companies can influence the cost of certain types of … Continue reading →

Bouncing the Ball

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One of my favorite memories from childhood was playing baseball with my Dad and my brothers on Saturday. We lived across the street from a school with a large, open field that could be used for anything you wanted. We wanted it to be for baseball. Saturday would come along and we’d get our gloves and a bat and a couple of balls and head on out to that field. Dad was the pitcher. One of us would bat. And whoever was left would be in the infield (we weren’t big hitters yet). We’d play for what seemed like hours … Continue reading →

The Words in the Song

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Before I was a father (and even before I was married) I found myself sitting in a strangely named sandwich place (something like “the inebriated capra aegagrus hircus) reading the nearest offbeat magazine sitting on the table as I took my lunch break from the next door theatre were I was volunteering as the intern to the executive director for college credit towards my management degree. Inside that offbeat magazine I found an unexpected article. Among the typical politically charged and occasionally intentionally offensive artworks there was an article about a children’s musician who’d attended a local high school and … Continue reading →

The Baby

I’m a dad. I’ve got a wonderful wife and together we have a very adorable little son. He’s got ten toes and a cute face and beautiful eyes (like his mom) and a heart-melting smile. But he’s not the baby I’m talking about. No, I’m talking about his “baby,” a little doll that was used once for an acting project by a friend of mine and donated as a toy to my child long ago. At the time he was too little to even play with a mobile (he couldn’t even focus his eyes on it way back then), but … Continue reading →