A Fairy on the Ferry

Woah, a day off! It's so rare for us! But that is what happened today and we spent it exploring Door County (or as I said in a previous post, The Cape Cod of Wisconsin).

I don't know how the Wisconsinites would feel about me calling it that, but that's what I'm sticking with! We're also leaving this week with a lot of Door County souvenirs because we received the world's most generous thank you gift yesterday. We couldn't believe it. You'll see Jas's overflowing arms on your right.

Our destination was Washington Island, but we knew that there would be stuff to do and see on our drive up there. Although, technically we weren't driving there, we'd be driving to the very tip of Wisconsin and taking a ferry to the island. We did drive the truck onto the boat, so yeah, basically we drove there.

As I said, we knew there would be stuff to do on the way there because there were a lot of pamphlets in the motel that we've been staying at and the top priority of the morning was pie. Jas found a flyer for Sweetie Pies and just about lost his mind. We had to go, so that was our first stop of the day.

On the drive, it became even clearer to me that this is a tourist area because every other town we drove through was "Unincorporated" but had restaurants, shops, hotels, etc. Unincorporated usually means, there are enough of us here to call it a town, but we aren't actually a real town. Here it clearly means, we aren't really a town, except for the four months of the year where the tourists take over. Not that I'm complaining because it made these towns a lot more interesting than the other unincorporated ones I've spent time in, just commenting.

Anyways, pie! Jas wasn't leaving without a whole pie (ok, he ended up getting a miniature pie but it was an entire miniature pie). I settled for a slice of apple pie. The woman who was working told me that the apple wasn't her favorite because she didn't like all of the spices and I had to agree with her (she didn't tell me this until after I'd bought the pie, of course). It was still good, but overdone if you ask me (which you didn't technically do, but since you're reading MY blog, you are choosing to get my opinion on these things). We asked her about the tourism in the area as well and she said things really go crazy from June through October and that last year, this tiny pie shop sold 11,000 pies (and one third of those were their best seller, cherry). THAT'S A LOT OF PIE! Jas left with their triple berry "cutie pie" and I have a feeling that the pie will not be driving with us to Mondovi, WI tomorrow.

We drove on to the ferry! Because I am a professional troublemaker/sarcastic commenter, the first thing I said when we got out of the truck was "I wonder if we'll see a whale!" My next comment was "I'm surprised because this isn't the type of fairy I'm used to." Jas then said in all earnestness, "Hopefully the truck doesn't end up at the bottom of the ocean," to which I reminded him that we were on Lake Michigan. He wasn't impressed when I tweeted that little exchange, so I then tweeted about how he could have been tweeting all of the dumb things I say for five months now and hadn't been so it was his loss, really. I didn't realize until the ferry ride back that Jas had never been on a ferry before which is why he was worried about the truck sinking. Oh well...

So pretty <3

Washington Island, like so much of Door County, is really a summer getaway and hadn't really gotten into the swing of things yet, so a lot of the big draws were closed, but we had come for one thing in particular and they could not close that thing! We were going to Schoolhouse Beach. We'd heard about Schoolhouse Beach when we were in Luxemburg. It is one of just five sandless beaches in the world. Instead of sand, it is made up on perfectly smooth limestone rocks.

It was beautiful! I sincerely wish that I could have taken a rock home! They were so tempting!!! But rock taking comes with a hefty fee and even though I easily could have gotten away with it, I decided to stick with the spirit of the rule and take pictures instead. I also built myself a little city of rocks! I spent a good 15 minutes dancing across the rocks because I liked the sound they all made as the rolled over each other. I also spent another five minutes throwing rocks into the waves because that also made a very satisfying sound.

After that, we drove back onto the ferry and back to our hotel where I have spent three hours poorly multitasking as I tried to write this blog and do a thousand different things at once! We're heading to Mondovi, WI for our penultimate week tomorrow and will be making a pit stop at Dunkin along the way!!!

Grilled Cheese Museum

So, if the blogging career doesn't work out (not that this is a career or anything... no one actually pays me to read this...), I have decided that the next best thing would be opening up my own museum exclusively dedicated to my photographs of grilled cheese sandwiches, because this blog is essentially an ode to toasted cheese bread. I'm about to add another designer grilled cheese to my collection of grilled cheese photographs! Yesterday, we stopped at Renard's Cheese Shop on our way to rehearsal and yes, I got a grilled cheese sandwich. Not just any grilled cheese sandwich, however, their signature grilled cheese sandwich. The signature grilled cheese was spinach, provolone and pesto in between two slices of Texas toast then topped with Parmesan cheese. Now, it wasn't as amazing as the superbly good grilled cheese that I made for myself last week (seven year cheddar and specialty cream cheese on good, old traditional white bread!) but it was something new and pretty great.

I am going to miss the cheese here. I don't know how I'll go back to life as it was before this tour...

The sandwich also came with a pickle.

Totally random thought, but this summer, I am going to the Middle East and Central America. I'm basically going to be the cream cheese in not one but TWO continental bagels (or the peanut butter and jelly of two continental sandwiches, but I don't really like PB&J, so I'm sticking with the bagels). Just food for thought... and now I'm hungry for some breakfast!

Peace out, girl scouts (ooo, cookies don't sound so bad either!)

The Cape Cod of Wisconsin

I am writing to you from Door County, Wisconsin, which appears to be the Cape Cod of the Midwest. We're working in Brussels, WI this week, but staying in a town called Sturgeon Bay (in a 1950s themed hotel, I might add) and the whole area is made for tourists. We aren't complaining though because it means that there is a lot for us to do! They have a lot of county pride here, by the way. The towns are nice, but the county is the ultimate, apparently.

Today, Jas experienced his first ever wine tasting when we visited Door Peninsula Winery! It is Door County's oldest and largest winery (but not their only!) and we had a free tour coupon! This week is kind of crazy, so I treated myself to the aptly named Chaos Red, which has won some big awards for the winery, I guess. It tastes like cherries! And wine, obviously!

We'll have more time to explore Door County this weekend because our shows are on Friday so we have Saturday to ourselves, but I figured I'd share an update. 

I also just received my itinerary for my trip to Israel, so that is very real and getting closer every day! I can't believe how much is happening!!!

Zebra Ice Cream

No, it isn't made of zebras. It is what Briq's Soft Serve calls chocolate/vanilla twist. And what is Briq's Soft Serve? It is the home of the one pound ice cream cone. Yup, a pound of ice cream. I couldn't believe it when I heard it either.

We actually first heard of Briq's when we worked in Edgar two weeks ago. There is a Briq's in Edgar but it wasn't open for the season yet so we couldn't go! I just wanted to know what a pound of ice cream looks like!

Yeah, that's what a pound of ice cream looks like...

On Friday, Jas and I made that dream a reality! We decided to split a one pound cone, but we made it a cup because we didn't want to deal with the mess. First off, guess how much a one pound cup of ice cream cost?!

$2.85!

Yup, less than $3 for an entire pound of ice cream. I can't even get a small for that much some places!!! This was dangerous stuff. And then, we ate. I didn't expect to eat the whole thing because how could two people possibly eat an entire pound of ice cream?!

Jas had other ideas... I mean, at first, he'd agreed with me that we couldn't do it, but when he saw that we were close-ish to eating the whole thing, he told me that I couldn't give up. He told me that it was all my idea and that I'd been the one who wanted to do it! I told him that I'd just wanted to see what a pound of ice cream looks like and not eat an entire pound of ice cream! But, yup, we did it. I think my stomach grew five sizes. I was very full after it was all said and done, but boy, it was worth it!

Happy Monday (Even though I'm posting this on a Tuesday)

As you all know by now (or maybe you don't, it's hard to tell what people do and do not know when you're sending your own random nonsense out into the faceless void of the internet without ever hearing back), Monday is audition day! Every week we get a fresh start, new school, new cast, new everything. As exciting as that it, it's usually the most stressful day of the week and yesterday was particularly stressful, but instead of writing about it, I'm going to let you experience the joy of it for yourselves in this video that I made!

Spoiler alert: Everything turned out fine, but still!

Jas's Birthday Plus Four Shows And Another Drive Day

Well hello again, readers! Tis I, your humble captain (am I a captain? Today I'm going to be a captain -- dream big!).

We have lots of catching up to do! My last post was a side-splitting recounting of my trip to Lambeau Field and while I have no more sport stories to report, I do have more adventures to retell!

Thursday was Jas's 23rd birthday! I love birthdays! I mainly love planning birthday surprises and I was on my game for Jas's big day. I got him a shirt that combined our longstanding bald eagle joke from Red Wing, MN with our gym obsession and took him out for lunch. Jas loves Italian food so I asked our contact where we should go in the area and she immediately said "Victoria's!". There is a "Victoria's" down the street from my house but I can tell you that the similarities end there. Our contact told us that their portions were huge and that they basically brought the to go box to the table with your meal and she was not joking! The portions were scary big. Even Jas was intimidated and as he said, he doesn't usually believe people when they say that he won't be able to finish a meal! My meal basically looked untouched when I slid it into the to go box (that had not been provided with the meal, but wasn't far away when the time came).

Now, not only did I ask my contact to supply me with the name of a great Italian restaurant, but I also asked her to serve as my accomplice. I ordered Jas a cake for his birthday and had her pick it up! He had no idea!!! It was such an amazing surprise! All of the kids were excited as well (free cake, duh!). I told the kids on Wednesday night that we wanted Jas's 23rd birthday to be one of his best and I think that we might have achieved that goal by the end of the night.

Also, the cake was super huge -- way bigger than I'd expected -- so Jas and I get to have cake for like the rest of the tour.

Along with Thursday being Jas's birthday, it was a crazy day because we had our first show on Friday morning. This is not normal for us. Typically, the earliest you can schedule a Friday show for is noon, but Luxemburg got special permission since they've been doing early Friday morning shows for so long. To add to the strangeness of Friday, we had three shows scheduled for one day (and another one on Saturday!). Normally, we only do two shows for a residency! Four is a lot (we get paid extra for the extra shows, but it is still a ton of extra work). Four is so many, in fact, that I took a photo log of exhaustion of my day and made a collage for all of you lovely readers:

Long day.

In between shows, we did get to do some exploring in Luxemburg, which we hadn't been able to do up until then. There had been a cheese shop that I'd had my eye on all week that we stopped in between our second and third show of the day! Now, I didn't buy this, but I did take a picture of it because I didn't think anyone would believe me otherwise -- the pumpkin spice epidemic has reached Wisconsin and they now have... pumpkin spice cheese curds! Why would you want pumpkin flavored cheese? I don't know. Like I said, I'm not going to try/buy this but I did think it was funny. I did, however, buy myself some cream cheese and that is delicious and is flavored with herbs and spices and not pumpkin.

We finished up our residency in Luxemburg with our fourth show on Saturday and then treated ourselves to a night at the movies to see The Jungle Book.

On Sunday, we said goodbye to another town but also said hello to a familiar one! We drove back to Stratford, WI, which is where we'd been staying while we worked in Edgar two weeks ago. We're at the same homestay, so it was basically like coming home again. It's a new feeling for us! They had, however, stocked up on the local paper, which featured pictures from our show in Edgar and spoiler alert, I'm amazing!

So We Went to Lambeau Field...

and probably upset more than a few legitimate sports fans...

We're in Green Bay so we decided that not going to Lambeau Field would be bad but neither Jas nor myself know anything about football. We always play up the fact that we do theatre for a reason, telling the kids that we know the Packers are a basketball team and that you play baseball with a puck (it really upsets them when we say that this past Superbowl was "the kitties versus the horsies") but in reality,we do theatre for a reason. I know that I'm a Patriots fan because I'm from New England and it's what you do but besides the words "touchdown," "field goal" and "half time show," I know nothing about football.

Jas and I brought our very own sarcastic flavor to the tour. First of all, we needed to walk through "The Pro Shop" to get there and it was green and yellow EVERYWHERE. It attacked my face. They had the Packers logo on anything you could imagine. Throughout the whole thing, we kept talking about all of the other sports they might have played there. Shuffleboard, curling, and Olympic diving were among our favorites. At the start of the tour, they asked everyone where they were from and Jas and I decided to have some fun by answering in unison "New England" and letting them fill in the rest.

We could literally be anywhere...

Hearing about the history of the Packers was actually pretty cool -- turns out they don't play soccer! The tour ended with getting to go down to the field, which probably would have been emotional if we were football fans... They told us that we weren't allowed to do a "Lambeau Leap" but we didn't know what that was, which horrified them. Apparently it involved jumping. Word to the wise: don't let your 900 year old tour guide take a picture of you and your tour partner because it will end up being a close up of your face instead of... oh, I don't know, a wide shot of you so that you can actually see the field?! Yeah... I wish I was joking! But we managed to take our own pictures so that you can actually tell where we are!

While we were on the field, the sprinklers were running and when they starting coming towards us, I ducked out of the way, shouting "No! No! No! Not today!". Jas laughed while another visitor said "Why are you complaining? This water is a blessing!" I didn't want to be blessed.

The trolling didn't stop after we left either. Jas was texting a friend whose a Packers fan and when the friend told him said "You got to walk through the tunnel?! Do you know how many times Brett Favre walked through that tunnel?!" He replied with "No, was he a big fan too? How many times did he go on the tour?"

Yup, there is a reason we do theatre!

I Spy Cheese!

CHEESE

So, I might now be in Green Bay, the Mecca of football, but I need to write about  the awesome day I had in Edgar (ok, so most of it wasn't actually in Edgar, but it was in the area around Edgar, so it counts).

Our homestay wanted to take us out around the area and they started by taking us to the Wisconsin Dairy State Cheese Company in Rudolph, WI. Well, so much cheese, so little time. I literally didn't know where to look! They make cheese there, so I started with that. It was so beautiful!!! But seriously, we walked around and there was so much stuff and I just wanted all of it. We did end up getting a lot of cheese, including but not limited to three different types of cheese curds, two types of cheddar and some string cheese! That is a lot of cheese... Basically, I might have found heaven in central Wisconsin.

After cheese (yes, they were able to tear me away from the holy land), we drove to Wasau, WI to the Leigh Yawkey Museum which had a Walter Wick exhibit. You probably don't know that you know Walter Wick but you do. He created all of the artwork for the I Spy books! Not only were there plenty of opportunities to relive my childhood by looking at his pictures but they also had some of the models he used to create the photos! It was very cool.

So, today we said goodbye to Edgar but we'll be back at the same homestay in a week (which is good because I left my sweatshirt there) and now we're in Green Bay and yes, we're planning on going to that place where the cheeseheads get together to watch basketball or soccer or whatever sport they play here.

Edgar Wildcats

I've had a very busy week but I have a free day today (a rarity!) so I shall update you all on what I've been up to.

Not only have I been busy, but it's been snowing here in Edgar, WI (yes, in April), so if I had free time, I probably would have just sit back and watch TV...

Basically the most brilliant thing of the week was when I got frozen hot chocolate in the snow! Yeah, frozen hot chocolate. Not regular hot chocolate, but frozen hot chocolate -- an intentionally cold beverage in unseasonably cold weather.

Today, we're going to get to explore the area because our shows were actually yesterday. It's been a while since we've had a free day like this! Another really cool thing is that we became honorary Edgar wildcats when we got awesome sweatshirts as a thank you gift. They look amazing! I'm gunna be so snuggly and warm!!!

Another totally insane thing about this week is that while we were working in Edgar, we've been staying in Stratford and we have a residency in Stratford the week after next... AND we'll have the same homestay! That's a first!!! The same incredible homestay who will be taking us on all sorts of adventures today.