Yesterday morning, I had a spurt of productivity and got my windshield replaced at 7:00 AM. It was finished by 8:30 AM, which meant I still had over fours hours before I had to leave for South Dakota with GTC. I’m not used to having that much free time at a stretch, so I kind of wandered aimlessly for a while. On a whim, I drove through the cemetery in my neighborhood.

I was inching through the cemetery, looking around and listening to music, and as I came around a curve, I saw about a dozen Canada Geese walking around and feeding among the headstones and trees. It seemed kind of odd and really neat, but as I continued around the curve, I noticed more and more of them. I looked around and realized that I was surrounded by Canada Geese. What appeared to be a couple hundred geese covered an enormous area of the cemetery in all directions. As I passed through their ranks, they would stop what they were doing to eye me suspiciously. It was kind of surreal.

“I had this weird dream! I was in Jurassic Park, but instead of dinosaurs, the animals were geese. And there were headstones everywhere, so it was like, I was in the Park, but it was also a cemetery. What an effed-up dream.”

Shortly thereafter, I had raspberry waffles for breakfast at the Birchwood Café. A very friendly lady named Carol noticed that I was on my laptop and decided to ask me about computers and ISPs. That eventually led to a conversation about just about everything. As she ate her granola, we talked theatre, New Orleans, accents, politics, religion, Minnesota, and more. I learned that she’s a musician who attended the U of M, moved to NYC after graduating, and came back to Minneapolis. She has a niece (or some kind of younger relative) currently in the theatre program at the U of M. Hooray for making friends with strangers! Eventually, I had to excuse myself, because it was time to hit the road with GTC.

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, we performed an 8:00 PM ”Strange Like Me” for a smallish (and 100% white) but appreciative crowd at Augustana College. The venue was called “The Back Alley,” and the cinderblock walls were painted to look like red brick with graffiti. I guess it used to be a bowling alley, judging from the wooden floors with lane markings and the general layout of the place, but its current configuration had the look and feel of a comedy club. The show was abnormally quiet, but still a good one.

We spent the remainder of the evening at the Holiday Inn playing Yahtzee and drinking different varieties of Michael’s home-brewed beer, all of which were very good. I had never played Yahtzee before in my life, but I managed to win the second game. I’m told that my counterpart Ben is a Yahtzee enthusiast, and Yahtzee is a major company pastime when he comes along.  (He’s the other actor in the company who plays the same roles as me.)

Michael points out that the majority of the actors on our poster are no longer in the company. Time for new photos.

Immediately upon my return to Minneapolis today, I came straight to work, just in time to catch my company’s End of Summer BBQ. Free burgers and brats proved that coming into work this afternoon was a good decision.

And hooray, I swung by the Electric Fetus yesterday morning and treated myself to some CDs. We listened to most of them on the way to and from Sioux Falls.

The Smiths – Singles (Used)

The Psychedelic Furs – All of This and Nothing (Used)

The New Pornographers – Challengers

Arcade Fire – Neon Bible

And a surprise gift for Kat which I won’t spoil here.