My Work Uniform

I just got back from my daughter's open house. It was kind of fun because I got to dress up a little bit. Okay, I'll admit, my idea of dressing up is probably not the same as most people. I wore my nice jeans, dress shoes, and a button up shirt. That's pretty nice for me.

Of course, as a professional magician I own the obligatory tuxedo, but because two years ago I vowed I would only perform magic for children, I haven't worn it since then. When I perform I wear a costume, and because I plan my costumes well, they are things that, with just a little bit of modification allow me to be seen in public without drawing too much attention.

For example, yesterday I was in Lufkin, Texas doing a school assembly program called "Sport of Champions", which is an educational school assembly show about reading and math and about how learning is exercise for our brain, like physical exercise is for our body. Anyway, my "uniform" for that show consists of a pair of basketball shorts, a very comfortable soccer shirt, a pair of running shoes, a baseball cap, and a stop watch around my neck.

The person who hired me even commented "It must be nice when those are your work clothes!".

Yeah, it is.

Tomorrow I'm doing "Set Sail" a show about the writing process where I wear shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and sandals along with a crazy straw hat to give it an island feel. Hands down, this is my best costume. In fact, it is SO relaxed that I feel obligated to wear closed-toe shoes to the gig and then change into sandals after I get set up.

But I get so used to relaxed outfits that it is nice to dress up. As a former school teacher I respect what happens within the walls of a school and I want to honor the teachers who work each day with my daughter. So the least I could do was wear my NICE jeans, right?

Creativity at Sea

I just returned from a week long conference on creativity. The conference was held of a cruise ship out of Galveston that sailed to Cozumel and then to Progresso. This was the second year I've attended this conference and this year I brought my family along with me. It was not only very rewarding from a professional stand point, but I enjoyed having a "vacation" with the family and getting to write off my portion of the trip!

On the boat, Madeleine lost the second of her two front upper teeth. If you've been following my blog for any time you might remember when she lost her first two teeth (the lower front two). We had a little incident where she...well, you can read about here.

But the weird thing is that now she has decided that having a tooth fairy is much more fun than not, so she spent the trip speculating on whether or not the tooth fairy would be able to find her while she was away at sea, if she would know which cabin was ours, how she would get in, and whether or not she would leave US, or Mexican currency.

Ultimately she decided to wait until the trip was over to put her tooth under the pillow.

The cruise was lots of fun as there were several big name children's performers on the boat including Bev Bergeron (the original clown from "The Magic Land of Alikazam" that ran in the 1960s), Tim Sonefelt, Barry Mitchell, Glenn Strange, and my long time friend who performed on the ship for the talent show: Geoff Akins.

Geoff will be here in Texas doing his Bubble Show for schools and libraries during December and again in February. It has been a very popular assembly program that has almost completely sold out with out a single mailing: just word of mouth that he's coming back down.