9/10 DAY OFF!

Today we had our first day off. Since the AM! guys were going to be chillin' at a hotel half way between the Bloomington and Lawrence show, we figured we might as well just spend the night at the same place as them.

We drove the four hours to St. Peters, MO and found their bus hanging out at the Holiday Inn by the side of I-70. Plus sides to the hotel: hot tub, pool that went from the inside to the outside and a mall only two miles away.

The window of our room was facing the AM! tour bus, so Matt had a brilliant plan.





We put this up in the window in hopes they would see it, but a few old men kept walking past making Matt nervous, so he ended up pulling it down. This gem will be stowed away for future hi jinx.

Kim and I then left to drop in at Office Max and mail out some orders at a post office. Inside the post office there was this totally old, totally gay dude trying to buy a stamp for a post card that was "being sent to the queens sister." The dude also had huge fake jewel encrusted rings on and was just generally being a hilariously cool old dude, spewing random comments about his beautiful stamps in his thick English accent. I look up to people like this.

We then drove back to the hotel and picked up Matt, Warren (the AM! dummer) and Christoph (the AM! sound tech). Next stop, the mall.

Warren took charge of the group and forced us around every inch of the mall. Standard mall. I got some sweet shorts for the planned pool party later in the evening. Although I somehow manged to NOT get a picture of it, both Matt and Warren bought SKULL HEAD AND SPINAL CORD BEER BONGS. I mean, holy shit. Who doesn't love skulls and beer.

Kim also spotted this treat inside the mall:











And this, which I had much trouble squeezing into.








Kim took my camera for a while and since I managed to also not get any pictures of Warren or Christoph, I thought I would include this completely blurry, completely unelucidating image of the two of them that she took:



Spencer's. A mall must.





After a successful trip at the mall, we topped our evening off with a wonderful dinner at Olive Garden. Pasta, breadsticks, salad and a "magnum" bottle of wine. I love middle America.

After getting to a beer store named "Dirt Cheap" 5 minutes too late, we grabbed some beers from a gas station and headed back to the Holiday Inn. I proceeded to drink a single Stag beer in the hot tub! This instantly made me tired, so Johnson and I skipped watching Arrested Development (Thea will be mad) in the AM! tour bus and promptly went to bed. Errr, I promptly went on the internet, wrote this blog while listening to Matt snore.

Tomorrow we have a not so long 4 hour drive to Lawrence where we will play a 9/11 themed show. Not really. But it is 1:35am as I write this. Making it 9/11 right now.

You will find no politically commentary in this blog.