ALASKA!! Karaoke Queen

Sorry I haven’t been posting. I’ve been napping a lot in the afternoon because I’m not sleeping well. On the second night, we went to a karaoke deal in one of the little lounges so I could make my mom sing with me. I thought it would be fun. I went first and sang “Heartbreaker” by Pat Benatar. The guy in charge of the entertainment came up and asked me to sing in their Karaoke competition the next night. I’m not really a big karaoke girl...I think people take it too seriously, and it can become their whole identify. I have a life, so choose not to do the karaoke thing very often. But I agreed, thinking it was no big deal. It’s a cruise ship, after all.

So come the next night, I find out we’re in a much bigger lounge and there were a LOT of people coming to see it. I started to get super nervous. And then I had to go second to last, even more time to get nervous. I started to sympathize for all my students when they sing for our talent show. Anyway, I sang and didn’t die, though I thought I might pass out since I was so nervous I couldn’t breathe. I talk and sing in front of people all the time, but those are people from my school who love me anyway. This was a bunch of people I was going to be looking at for the next week. But I think I did okay. Here I am singing on the little stage.

Since I didn’t go to the initial meeting about the contest, I didn’t know they were going to pick the top three out of fourteen. I thought they’d pick more people. The judges all said I did “fantastic,” so I wasn’t too surprised when they called my name. Here I am looking happy that I got picked. I am competitive after all, and didn’t want to lose...losing sucks! 

This is the mug I won. Whoo-hoo! So exciting.

THEN I found out we do the final round in the biggest theater. Oh, crap. So for the last few nights I have not been sleeping at all. I just lie there and stress out and rehearse in my head. I have vowed to never enter another karaoke competition. I am just not the kind of person who can deal with the stress of performing. I am so much happier helping my students perform their best than worrying about myself. I’m glad I did it, because I’ve learned more about myself. But never again!

Anyway, the final competition is at 4:00 p.m. Then it will all be over and I can relax and just enjoy the rest of the cruise. I’ll let you know how I do. Maybe I’ll get a keychain this time! Yow!

And by the way, I did get my mom to sing karaoke with me. She freaked out and couldn’t breathe either. So it must be hereditary!


UPDATE: I did not die at the performance. But I didn't win either. The winner did an absolutely hysterical rendition of "Coming to America" by Neil Diamond, complete with writhing 30-something male back up dancers, called The Accountants. He rightly deserved to win since it's all in fun, but I was very disappointed. And I didn't even get a keychain. (I did get a towel though.) NEVER AGAIN!!! :-)