Good afternoon!  It’s a little cool and rainy today, quite the contrast from earlier this weekend when Minneapolis checked in at 73, which at one point was warmer than Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Houston.  But, looks like it will be back to above average temps this week.  It’s been quite the weekend already, and now it’s time to hang around the house and get a start on laundry.

Friday night after work, Lauren and her friend Nicky went to the Twins game together.  Since I had a rare night alone, I couldn’t decide what to do.  I wound up chilling on the couch and watching the game on TV, but when the Angels took the lead in the fifth, I decided to go for a walk.  I wandered down Lyndale and ended up at the VFW where there was karaoke going on.  I signed up for a couple songs, had a couple drinks, and watched the game on TV as the Twins’ bullpen imploded and the Angels took a 9-4 lead into the eighth inning.

A while later, I ran into Tuesdays Robot’s lead singer Rick, a guy I have run into time and time again at various Travis & Jonny shows.  Tuesdays Robot is one of my favorite bands—not just locally, but overall.  I hung out with him and we watched on as the Twins made a miraculous comeback in the eighth, capped by Jason Kubel’s grand slam/cycle.  Everyone in the bar was hooting and hollering and jumping for joy.  I called Lauren, only to discover she and Nicky had left the game early and had missed the excitement!  I can’t blame her, I probably would have done the same with the Twins getting blown out.

Saturday morning, I went to MCTC for my three-hour Intro to Voice-Overs and Voice Acting class.  It was quite an interesting mix of people, young and old.  The instructor was a professional voice-over actress whose claim to fame was doing the voice of Mario in a Nintendo game.  Everyone in class had to get up in front as part of a small group and read a real script, which will be sent back to the headquarters in New York for analysis.  I was applauded for my role as “Grandpa” in a Sprint commerical.

Some people in the class were very good.  In fact, most were good, but you’d never know it to look at them.  There was a big, sweaty, fat guy whose gut hung out from his shirt.  Much like Susan Boyle, I mistakenly judged the book by its cover, as this guy dazzled us with his enthusiastic readings!  There was another timid little shy girl sitting near me who I expected to go up there and whisper, but she belted out a great valley girl impression and the class approved.

So, we’ll see.  The concern I had was the major investment of getting a professional demo disc made, and then you basically have to market yourself and send out demos to anyone you think might produce some sort of voice-over commercial.  It’s not an easy field to get into, but she did stress that if you are good at it, it’s very easy money.  Ten minutes in a recording studio a couple times a week and you can make a good living.

Afterwards, Lauren picked me up and we went to two flower shops for wedding floral consultations.  I was wildly bored, but I am being a good sport and coming along, because Lauren herself doesn’t even enjoy going to these consultations.  It seemed to be very stressful for her.  I wouldn’t say it was stressful, just boring.  Neither of us care that much about flowers, but they are a staple of any wedding ceremony.

At night, we went over to Tim and Kate’s house for some grilling.  We brought some unusual sausages/brats from the Wedge, our local natural foods store.  Later we moved inside and played Scrabble before I passed out on the couch and then moved to the guest bed, which is my old bed that Patrick rescued from the trash for me in Eden Prairie.  I slept well and we woke up this morning to Kate cooking breakfast for us.  Mmm, thanks Kate!

And now today we will try to relax and get some stuff around the apartment done, like three weeks’ worth of laundry and some much-needed cleaning.  Though we are frustrated by the old, flattened carpet in the apartment that will not vacuum clean under any circumstances.