Strange As You Might Be, Be Yourself!

I just heard that one on a message by Joyce Meyer, and it tossed aside whatever title I was going to use today! Because yes, I am capable of being strange as my wife and kids and friends (I do have those) will tell you ... it's all part of my cunning plan, Baldric. Last night and tonight the Magic City Skating Club are presenting "Hansel and Gretel: Legend of the Witches" and I met Martha and the kids there last night after my boss Erik relieved me an hour early from work.

I am so thankful for that, not only because had I arrived when I would normally be getting off work would the show have been over -- it was an hour long and started at 6:30 pm, with normal closing time for me being at 7 -- but also because Martha, Sarah, Jeffrey, and I over the course of our lifetimes will not have a lot of time together. It helps to have moments like this, especially to watch such talented people as Dalyce (my teaching assistant in Sunday school), Carrie, and the rest shine!

And quite honestly, they made better witches than those they were crafted to resemble, the Sanderson sisters from Hocus Pocus! (Alternate title: I Put A Spell On You) Two skaters each resembled the movie witches -- played by Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker respectively (grew up with SJP, Bette Midler's hard for me to take, and Kathy Najimy's got the same birthday as Ronald Reagan, February 6).

Younger kids were Hansel, Gretel, and previous main courses the witches had taken. Sequences ranged from the "game show" Wheel of Torture to various popular songs with the older audience such as "Burn Baby Burn". There was even an "intrusion" by Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf who both got shooed by one of the witches ("Hello? Hansel? Gretel?") I thought I'd remember more lines from the Maysa Arena, but like the program I didn't buy for the show, nichievo.

This morning after I dropped the kids off at school I went to our local Menard's to pick up some groceries and my cashier was also named David, also grew up in Florida (Orlando, "Mickey Mouse town", whereas I grew up two hours north of it), and he'd -- obviously -- just recently moved up here. I got all this from a conversation we had while he was ringing me up and that's what makes doing the retail stuff easier.

(It would the wholesale stuff too, I just have to get out and talk to more people!) Orlando, Orlando ... there's that Thursday reader Jeffrey had by the same name last week, about a pig who led his family away out of a fire. And for ME there's an interest in reading about unsolved crimes among other things (in Louis Solomon's Great Unsolved Crimes, ISBN 0590030205 and George Sullivan's Unsolved! II: More Famous Real-Life Mysteries, ISBN 0590203576) that sustained me this weekend.

We got to a commercial as we were watching the latest episode of Once Upon A Time and Sarah loudly lamented that we can only watch it a week at a time while Jeffrey visibly tensed and I laughed and said, "Boy, Jeffrey, this is keeping you on the edge of your seat, isn't it?" Then Jeffrey MOVES to the edge of his seat -- he was sitting back in the couch. I told him he could relax again, it was just an expression!

Now I need to get off and be myself (again), David