Sorry about my lengthly absence, but I just have been finding the combinations of baby, work, classes, company visiting, pet issues and a nasty heatwave had all pretty much sapped any time or inspiration I had over the last month. However, I am slowly getting back under my feet when it comes to scheduling so expect to start at least a semi-regular, if not daily journal pretty soon.

A couple updates. Nathaniel is now 2 months old and is doing great. Very tall too…at 60cm. Melanie is doing very well too, having recovered completly from the gall-bladder surgery with no noticable side-effects.

I have an upcoming television shoot, for a series called Masterminds. One or two days next week, playing a police officer. It’s good to get back on camera again…hopefully I get a few more bigger and better gigs soon!

Ebay isn’t doing too badly. I’ve had no time over the last week, but I do have a bunch of merchandise to put up, and will attempt to do that this weekend.

Second City is going amazing. Level D finishes this Sunday, and I then get a few weeks off before starting Level E in September. We had our class show a couple weeks ago and as a whole we all seemed very pleased with the results. Certainly a good evolution from our first show in Level C. It should be interesting to see how we do in Level E, as it is the final of the standard levels and we have more capacity to put on a professional quality show.

I do have to get going, but I will tell one funny story before I run. During the Level D show, one of my spots was in a game called Actors Nightmare, where you have two actors onstage…one with a script and the other not. The actor with the script has to read lines, and the other actor improvises a response, hopefully keeping the dialogue in a straight manner. I was paired up with Dmitro, and was expected to run the game and be the script holder. In practice, we went over the normal rules. Actor flips through the book until the audience says stop, and then asks left or right as to what side of the script to start from. Easy right?
Well, Sandy forgot to bring the expected script to the show, so he was forced to dig up another one that didn’t lend itself too well to flipping. In fact, he found only one place it could start. So, we changed the rules. He would not show me the script. I just had to announce I was reading the script for the very first time and he would pass it to me. So, we began.
I explained the rules as expected to the audience, and then asked for a literary genre to use for inspiration. They called out Western. OK. Sandy passed me the script. I open to the bookmarked page and found….A POEM?????
Yes, a one page poem. Alright…I assume Sandy’s decided to screw with me a bit…see what I can do. So, I use the poem to the best of my abilities….playing up on the rhyming couplettes and Dmitro, though slighly thrown by what I was delivering, handled things fairly well. We finish, and the crowd loves it. I’m grinning on my way to my seat. As I sit, Sandy taps me on the shoulder and whispers, “That was good, but um….turn the page.”
On the other side was the dialogue he had expected me to use. The poem was just the introduction to the reader.
OK…you had to be there. I laughed most of the way home.

OK…I’m tired and there is a thunderstorm cranking up outside, so I’m shutting down for the night. See you again soon!