Here I am!!!

I bet you’ve been wondering where I’ve been. At least I hope you’ve been wondering - I would hate to think I hadn’t been missed…

To tell you the truth, I’ve been bad…I snuck off to St. Louis and attended the 50th annual Midwest Magic Jubilee. Tony lectured and I helped host the hospitality suite. So what is a party full of magicians like? Well, you really have to be into two things 1) drinking and 2) magic. There is going to be plenty of both. We went through about six cases of beer, a couple bottles of wine, too many fifths of liquor to accurately count and tons of pop. All these liquids only served to lubricate throats and fuel discussions, gossip and tall tales. Magic parties tend to be pretty tame. Of course there was that one time when the German biker gang showed up…



Here is Whit Haydn. Whit is an old fashioned southern gentleman – some would call him a scoundrel, others would call him amusing…I fall into the later category. If you get a chance to see his show at the Magic Castle in LA, do it! For those of you who can’t get to the West Coast, here are some video clips from his website to tide you over.



Here is my souvenir from the convention: a donut.



It was sneezed from the nose of this man – Oscar Munoz. . I laughed every time he made a donut come out of his nose. Does that call into question my maturity level? Oscar hails from Texas and most of his performances are motivational shows aimed at elementary age kids. If your kid goes to school in Texas, there is a good chance Oscar has been to your school



And here are some of the members of the inner circle – those in the “know” so to speak.
From l to r: Mike Powers (a retired physics lecturer who now does magic professionally), Eric Grossman (bassist for K’s Choice), Jason Dean (a full time professional magician who tours with rock bands and performs in their green rooms), some pain in the butt kid who kept sneaking in, and my hubby Tony.

So what did I eat while I was away? Usually, I try to get out and eat at someplace new every time we visit a different city, but this time we were too busy. We stopped by our favorite Mexican place – Las Palmas. The food was great as always, and the service impeccable. I cannot say the same for the hotel restaurant (Hilton St. Louis Airport). The food was mediocre at best and the service was some of the worst I have ever received. I can only hope the convention organizers decide to change hotels next year.

On the way back, we stopped at the Blue Springs Café. It is a family style restaurant that specializes in “foot high pies”. While we were waiting on our lunch, two guys stopped in on their way to Chicago to pick up four pies to take back to the office. That made me really excited. The pies must be really good to make a special stop just for them.


The lunch menu has some good choices. I ordered meatloaf. It was nice – plentiful and moist, but fairly bland. The green beans were straight from a can without much flavor and the mashed potatoes and gravy were tasty but nothing special. I ate through the main course with the quickness so I could get to dessert: coconut meringue pie! I love coconut pie. A lot. I had seen the pies cooling on the counter as we came in, and all I could think about was pie. The pie came to the table…it was tall…it had height…it was a lot of meringue…over a pretty boring filling. I was crushed. The filling was just vanilla cream with a little coconut tossed in for texture. It was a tad too sweet when pared with an already sweet topping. The crust was a frozen food service crust – acceptable but not superlative. The search for the perfect pie goes on…

Once we got home, I had to see to the garden. When I left, it was being ravaged by disease and critters. Tate, my garden partner, had purchased a humane trap to try and capture our annoying neighbor, the groundhog. It has not worked. I am still finding half eaten tomatoes all over the yard. Bad groundhog! I’ll get you yet! As far as the diseases, they took out the monster zucchini and it is now starting in on my cucumbers. I pulled up the dying plants and had them carted away as biohazards.



On a more positive note, the hot peppers have been immune to any and all problems - boy, have they paid off in a big way.



I spent this afternoon making Agent Orange hot sauce from the 60 + habaneras that I picked this morning. The recipe came from this site run by Michael Stines. It was good – real good. It was hot – real hot. It made my nose run. It made the hubby hiccup. Then we went back for more. Yum!

So that’s it…it is not that I don’t love you all…but sometimes a gal just has to party!