BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02605 When Allison and Eva returned from London Eva had brought back some itty Pops of Transformers for me. However the mystery figure in this set was a Lite Brite and not Soundwave of The Transformers. There were other Mystery sets and I found a low priced G.I.JOE set. I figured that I would give it a shot and maybe get Soundwave. No, I actually got the real G.I.JOE mystery figure, Dr. Mindbender. So now I have a whole set of G.I.JOE but I am still missing the bitty Soundwave figure. I have a feeling that this is going to rabbit hole very soon. In other news tonight we had our first dress rehearsal in front of people. A handful of The Masons came down and watched the show. This is our last rehearsal before opening night on Friday. I had most of my lines down so I'm feeling pretty good on it.

Photo-A-Day #02604 The professional headshots are in and the board is up for the lobby of the Attleboro Community Theater. I've got a rather shiny head because I had just shaved it and also my smile is looking a little psycho because I can't hold a real smile for that long and then it starts to look too intense. One extreme or another I guess.  Tonight we had another run through but not in full costume. We did well tonight. Our director was very pleased. Our main actor, Emma, did so well. She's only 13 and she is carrying the show. A lot of pressure for a young kid. I asked Andy to make me some Christmas cookies for one of my scenes. They did a great job on them and even made Ninja Bread Men, which I think Emma will love because she takes karate at ABD. I learned that my former Sensei is coming to see a show.  Emma, who is a little smart-ass, said, "He's not coming to see you, you quit." I'm actually glad that she is feeling comfortable enough to tease me,...

Photo-A-Day #02603 I don't know why I look so annoyed or mad in this photo. I shouldn't be, things with the play are going well. We had our first full on run through yesterday and tonight we had a full dress of the show. It went very well. I mixed up a couple of things but overall it was good. I'm at 98% of having all of my lines ready to go. There area  couple that I either am not getting the exact wording for or I am mixing up when I say them. Just a couple but I keep working on it. We also had professional photos taken tonight. So that was a little nerve wracking since the photographer was taking photos all throughout the play. It sort of threw me off in one bit of it but wasn't too terrible. His photos are always great.

Photo-A-Day #02602 Andy has been getting into making Wax seals. They have learned how to use multiple colors to make very special seals. So I picked up a wax seal of a wolf and I asked Andy to make them with a metallic blue and white. They are for the people who are part of The Winter Wolf. Andy did an excellent job on them. Today we had the start of Tech Week for The Winter Wolf. We started with doing the technical queue run and at the intermission point lunch arrived so we ate lunch and then did the tech and queue run of the second act. Overall things went well. Once our tech runthrough was done we did it again with all the tech queues. We made some mistakes but overall I think it was going well. Tomorrow night we do the run through in full costume with a photographer. Then we do two more days of run throughs with Wednesday the performance for The Masons.

Photo-A-Day #02601 The day started poorly but ended up excellent. This morning I got off work and went to bed. I passed out with my phone in my hand and awoke an hour later. The house stunk. I knew what had happened. The shit pipe int he basement had overflowed once again. Luckily it wasn't a lot. It was more than enough to put a stink throughout the house. I had to run to Lowe's to pick up some heavy duty main line drain clearer and also get some baking soda at Walmart. So I did not get to sleep until well after 12. I then slept for 2 and a half hours and got up because I now have to find a solution to this problem. A long term solution. Allison and Andy were at the METG (Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild) HS Festival 2026 Preliminary Round of one act plays. Eva's school was performing Around the World in 80 Days. She made many of the costumes and she and her team won for Best Costume Design. They now continue on to the Semi-Finals in two weeks. I can't see the s...

Photo-A-Day #02600 The ice cream that I made on Wednesday.  I picked up our ice cream yesterday and well, I ate my ice cream before I took a picture yesterday. Today I have a nice photo. A soft lavender color to the ice cream because of the black raspberry and cherry juice. It also contains some hot honey, can't taste it, Nutella, can't taste it, peanut butter, also can't taste it. It also has toffee pieces, peanuts and oreos. The fruit flavors are subtle. It tis rather enjoyable overall. I have a feeling that at some point I'm going to get a big bit of something that I didn't mix well. I have many ideas to make another batch but this one will take a while to finish. Plus we have Andy's batch. That is a very honey heavy one.