Hotter Than a Pepper Sprout

In my mind's eye, "#costumefail" blazed before me in neon. (I may spend a bit too much time on social media.) Recently I weathered a costume fail during one of our performance of our current Duck Soup Players production, "Murder on the Nile, or Where's My Mummy?"  NOT a "wardrobe malfunction," so nothing scandalous or exciting, but just a failure. Spoiler Alert: I'm about to reveal a major plot point of our current Duck Soup Players production, "Murder on the Nile, or Where's My Mummy?" So stop reading now if you don't want to have a surprise ruined... Where's the Mummy? Here's your mummy. I'm the mummy. Which you would probably guess if you did come to one of our shows as soon as you saw me in my mummy costume. Sad mummy headshot And to be perfectly honest, my costume didn't fail, I did. My costume was successfully doing what it was supposed to do, but I failed to actually bring all of it to the show. ...

Friday was "Finisher Shirt Friday." That's a rather confusing name without context. There are a lot of things that can get finished. Is this a day to celebrate dining companions who ask "Are you going to finish those?" as they are reaching for your sweet potato fries (no that does NOT sound like anyone I know). Running pride in my cube While I would be all for a day to honor food—and drink—finishing friends (hey, some of us are helpers) "Finisher Shirt Friday" actually means "Wear a Shirt That You Got for Finishing a Race" day. Now I can REALLY get behind that, and having a reason/excuse to wear one of my race shirts. My collection of race t-shirts has built up surprisingly fast, and I have a love/hate relationship with them. I love getting them and always feels pretty proud that I've earned one, but it's pretty hard to wear them on a regular basis. They are usually ill-fitting and not that flattering, and don't work wel...

Last Wednesday our band, Clusterflock, got to play at the Minnesota Music Cafe . Not only was it awesome, but it was so awesome that I thought I would certainly get a blog post out of it.... A week later and no such luck.  What's causing the dreaded writer's block? What are the barriers? The most easily identifiable culprit is the fear of disseminating "alternative facts." I thought my lead would be: "OMG we played on the same stage as PRINCE!" But did we, really?!  Yes, we all thought that the big banners around the Minnesota Music Cafe were emblazoned with the names of past performers, but is that true? Or are the banners just proudly celebrating MN music icons? I was so distracted at the time (not even drunk) that I don't know, and the interwebs information on the Minnesota Music Cafe is pretty crappy.  So with that disclaimer out there that I don't know if Prince actually ever played the Minnesota Music Cafe or not, I will humbly say th...

Our trivia team, Ed's Angel's, made a triumphant return tonight. We earned one of our highest scores ever (45) and we claimed third place. (If we ever start earning more points than my age we will be in sweet shape). Tonight's victory was definitely due to the contribution of every Angel. Each of us was able to use our unique spheres of knowledge to answer a variety of questions. I was surprised and quite pleased that I got all the Shakespeare questions right. And if you're thinking "Well, of course you did, you're a librarian," please stop. Being a librarian really has nothing to do with Shakespeare, and I wasn't even an English major. I'm ambivalent about Shakespeare, but I've seen enough Shakespeare productions that I feel I should have enough knowledge to give me an edge at trivia. And those are the questions that drive me nuts...the ones that I feel I should know the answer to, like Greek mythology or those related to Geekdom. I...

Here's to you, month of March. I don't know if you came in like a lamb, lion, or a honey badger, but you were one hell of a month. (I think you're going out like a rainbow butterfly caticorn!) March 2017 was a whirlwind of excitement: the MN Community Theater Festival in Marshall and our run of "Mr. Burns," running the Hot Dash 10 Mile Race, our Clusterflock gig at the Viking, and presenting at the Computers in Libraries Conference in DC.  They like us, they really like us! Yeah, I'm totally bragging. I was going to label it "humble bragging" but there's no humble about it. I think these things are pretty awesome and that I'm pretty awesome for being a part of them, and yeah, I want y'all to know about that.  I want YOU all to know, because that's the best way (along with booze) that I know to really know that I did good. You know? Sharing my successes is the best (only?) means I have to enjoy and savor my successes. And ac...

I just got home from a librarian conference, but long before it even occurred to me that I could or should be a librarian, I wanted to be a DJ. So I'm pretty excited that my current career actually led to a (very small) connection to the Current, my favorite local public radio station. I was so happy to be mentioned in a post on the Current's website not just because I crave attention, but because I adore the Current and love being associated with it in even a tangential way. I really can't overstate how important the Current is to my daily life. I totally rely on the Current to provide my daily musical soundtrack. I love not having to put in the effort to pick out my own music. I don't know what I want to listen to, especially when there are now so many musical choices available. I totally trust the Current to, well yes, keep me current on new music, and aware of local music, and educate me about all the classic rock music I missed.  And figuring out all the new d...

I think about how I'm a LOT like my mom in so many ways, especially around her birthday. But I did NOT follow in her footsteps recently. How did I stray? By refusing to take credit for my food-making prowess. Let me set the scene...one of our favorite Luedtke family memories is of the Thanksgiving when my mom prepared some type of premade frozen fruit pie. My grandpa found the pie to be super-delicious, and said "Colleen, did you make this pie?" (Not sure who else would have made or supplied this pie, but I assume my grandpa was just so excited he didn't think this through). And my mom replied, "Mm-hmm, glad you like it." One of our grandpa's nickname was "Popeye" for pretty good reasons... My sister, brother, and I were all like "What?!!" but we didn't actually say anything, and my grandpa didn't seem to notice our disbelief. Not saying we were terribly discreet, but he couldn't see or hear very well... When my g...