Monday the 10th – TRAVEL PLANS! – I spent most of the day working on stuff around the house, and making phone calls to prep for my upcoming visit to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to visit my family. I called the hotel I wanted to stay at and also arranged to rent a car.

Tuesday the 11th – GARFIELD & THE EMERGENCY ROOM! – I was at Buzzy’s early in the morning to do another session for the new “Garfield Show”, which will start to air on Cartoon Network in the spring of 2009. During the break for lunch, we were sitting around waiting on our food to arrive. I was sick of watching news, politics & the like. I hate sports, and those talk shows about “he’s the daddy of my baby but he’s married to my twin sister” and junk like that. I also didn’t want to watch soap operas. So I asked the folks at Buzzy’s if they had Boomerang. We found it on the receiver and we sat around watching classic cartoons. Now, our director Mark Evanier is one of the top cartoon aficionados in the world, so it was fun watching Flintstones with his commentary about who was doing which voice. Then, the best thing of all happened. Scooby Doo came on! And here I was sitting there with the great Frank Welker watching Scooby Doo with him! He started in on stories about how he got the job as Freddie Jones, working with Casey Kasem and Don Messick, and other great stories. It was a fantastic time! But our food still wasn’t there yet. The next show was “Fang Face,” another cartoon featuring Frank Welker! I talked about who created the show, how he came up with the voice, and some of the other actors he worked with on the show. It was like a DVD commentary, but he was actually in the same room! It was definitely a highlight of my career! After Garfield was wrapped, I went home and grabbed a nap. I got up in the evening to have dinner with Chuck McCann and company at Bob’s Big Boy, like we do every Tuesday night, when a friend of mine called me to take her to the emergency room. She was having a bad reaction from some medication. So I grabbed her, took her to the St. Joseph Hospital Emergency Room, and we promptly sat there and waited for an hour and half! She was nauseous, and breathing with great difficulty. Her heart was pounding, and still we waited. Meanwhile, a 17 year old kid came in with his parents. Apparently he was tripping on booze, heroin, pot and God knows what else. I got angry. My friend needed real help, (as did a few others in the emergency room) and this knucklehead who can’t get his life together was clogging up the system with his drug problems. I had to sit there and listen to him tell his mom the same story over and over (about 25 times, then I lost count) about how his girlfriend wouldn’t hug him goodbye, he begged her for a chance, etc. etc. I was getting angrier and angrier. How many of these druggies are clogging up the system and preventing people from getting legitimate health assistance in a timely manner? Can’t they create places just for people who abuse drugs, and leave the emergency rooms for people who have real medical problems beyond their control? Finally she got in. The doctor checked her out, the nurse came in to start her IV, and I prepared to leave. We got there at 1am, and I left at 3. What a night!

Wednesday the 12th – PARTY HEARTY! – I slept late, of course, but got up in time to see my chiropractor in the afternoon. Then I went to evening church. After that, I picked up my friend Jaime and took her to the Family Guy DVD release party at the Stone Rose in Beverly Hills. It was a fun time, and it’s always great to see my pal Fred Tatasciore, a fellow voice actor on the show. By the time Seth MacFarlane showed up we were getting ready to leave. But luckily Jaime got to meet him before we left! Even though I wanted to show my support for the DVD release, Jaime and I were noting that the whole L.A. club scene isn’t really my (or her) thing at all. I was very uncomfortable in those surroundings.

Thursday the 13th – TWO GIGS – I went over to Aspect Ratio to do a session for a videogame promo. Then I headed over to E! in the afternoon. I’ve done about 25 E! True Hollywood Stories in the past, and occasionally they need to have the content of those shows updated to reflect what’s going on currently in the subject’s life. This particular episode was the one about Shannen Doherty. I got to see my pal Iggi, who edited some of “Livin’ On a Prayer”, who works at E!, and strangely enough one of my neighbors works there as well. It was great seeing her too. It was a lot of fun and made me realize how much I miss doing True Hollywood Stories. Speaking of “Livin’ On a Prayer,” I stopped by Tropical Media in Burbank to pick up 200 copies of “LOAP” to hand out to people. I got the DVD mastered the way I wanted it, and the new cover art by Scott Sebring looks fantastic!

Friday the 14th – DOCTOR’S ORDERS – Since the cardiologist couldn’t diagnose the problem I’ve been having with heart palpitations, my regular doctor suggested I get a complete physical to see if we could come up with the problem. Sure enough, come to find out I have an arrhythmia. It’s periods of irregular heartbeats, which can cause occasional nausea (which I had), lightheadedness (which I had), chest discomfort (which I had) and pounding heartbeats (which I had). So, mystery solved. But now what to do about it? My doctor said it’s not going to kill me, but he’d like to see me get off of sugar and caffeine for two weeks to see if that helped. He said arrhythmia can be caused by smoking (which I don’t’ do), alcohol (which I don’t do), stress (which I don’t have much of) and caffeine (ooooooh yeah!). So, now the challenge is to find a diet soda drink I like, with no aspartame, no caffeine and no sugar. Luckily, Hansen’s Diet has none of that. So that’ll be my new drink of choice for awhile, in addition to the tons of water I drink. He also said to keep up on my jogging, but since the fires have broken out in California the air is much too smokey to jog in. But I told him I’d do my best. So for now, we’re not going to do any medication. After the doctor appointment, I went to my videogame session for “White Knight Chronicle.” The session was a blast, but afterwards it took me close to two hours to drive out of the Santa Monica area to get home! I promptly went to bed to take a nap. That night I stayed up late and did some stuff around the house.

Saturday the 15th – MAIDS AND MEALS! – My maids came by in the afternoon to clean up Planet Wallywood, and that night my friends Cher and Sara joined me for dinner at Barone’s Italian Restaurant in Sherman Oaks. What fun!

Sunday the 16th – ELDER DUTY! – I slept fairly late in the day, but had to be at evening church earlier than usual. It was an all-music service and I’d be singing “Oh Happy Day” for the service. So I went in early and rehearsed with the band. After that, I stayed to do Elder duty at the Spanish service, and then I stayed for the last half of the 7:30 service. I grabbed some groceries and a Subway sandwich on the way home. Just as I finished my sandwich, Chuck McCann called and wanted to meet for coffee. So I got back in my car and met him for a snack at DuPar’s (I had 7-up to drink and steamed vegetables!) Then I got home in time to do a bunch of auditions that were due, loaded them up on the server, and then I went to bed to enjoy some “Mission Impossible” on DVD, and an ice-cold Hansen’s Diet soda!

And how was YOUR week??!!