Scott AFB, IL and St. Louis, MO

So it wasn't the most glamours vacation (considering all I've been thinking about is Hawaii and France lately).. but it was a pretty great vacation. I decided that after the volunteer appreciation dinner I needed a break so I went to go visit some friends in Illinois. I flew into St. Louis and John picked me up from the airport. Boy was it warm! Thank goodness! I had enough rain and it felt nice to feel sun and see sun and wear tank tops and flip flops instead of rain coats and boots. We grabbed some food and just caught up, hung out w/ some of his military friends and just relaxed. On the way home we picked up Whitecastle burgers.. I was so excited!! They're just as tasty as I imagined and the chicken rings covered in cheese.. so good. I love food.

The next day we took a tour of the Anheuser-Busch factory in St. Louis with two of his friends. It was pretty interesting, granted a lot of it looks like the same stuff I see in most beer factories. Guiness is a little bit different, but still interesting. It was fun to see the clydesdales, they're beautiful horses. We also encountered a sleepy cat that looked like it had dipped into one of the barrels of beer. Good times, quick tour, then off to TGIF's (there's no real St. Louis food apparently) and a short nap then.. bowling! Ah yes.. the favorite blue collar sport of everyone. I bowled a 143, not bad, my highest thus far has been 145. I sent the picture to my friends in England, we're having a contest right now to see who can bowl the best.. Peter's winning with 150 I think. Afterwards, we ordered Chinese food (they deliver!!! I wish there were more delivery places in Nor Cal). Poor John, the moment they got here, a thunderstorm hit so he had to drive out and quickly exchange money for food. It was amazing, one minute it was nice and all of a sudden, crack, boom, pouring rain. I loved it. I wanted to go run around, but I don't think it would have been appropriate and they may have locked me up (j/k). Not a bad night, we putzed around on computers and watched TV. My brother laughed and asked if I couldn't have done that at home.. it's not the same though. Because at home I'd still be thinking about all the stuff I should be doing, like cleaning the house, etc. This way.. all I'm doing is having fun. Plus I hadn't seen John since my mom's funeral and that was over 2 1/2 years ago!

Monday.. went to see the St. Louis arch, it's pretty amazing. I learned quite a bit there and took some amusing pictures with stuffed animals. In order to get up to the top you have to travel in this pods that only hold 5 people and look like they came out of a 1960's space movie. I hit my head twice inside, once on the way up and you think I'd learn something... but no, once again on the way down. The view was pretty from the top, although it was mostly buildings, trees, lots of greenery and the occasional water tower. St. Louis.. not exactly glamourous. Then more fast food, computers, and TV. Yes I know.. we're terribly exciting. Actually we did rent two movies - Turtles Can Fly and Fun with Dick and Jane, Turtles Can Fly is an Iraqi/Iranaian film about these kids and what happened right before the war. Pretty interesting. Really sad too though. Fun with Dick and Jane was pretty amusing, good thing we saved that one for second.

Tuesday.. THE ZOO!! I love animals and happened to look up things to do in St. Louis and spotted a brochure.. so the zoo it was. Plus it's free and nothing beats free. We oogled fish, turtles, frogs, zebras, hippos (those are awesome), rhinos, elephants, monkeys!!, and quite a few large cats. It was freaking cold that day.. weird.. one day it's 70 and the next day it was 50. We trotted through the zoo pretty quickly and went to eat... where? the old spaghetti factory! I don't think it tastes quite as good as the one in Newport Beach, but then again I was a poor college student who happened to live across the street. Might have been more fun coz Mike was working there at the time too. Good times. Headed back and more computers and TV. My friend Todd drove down from Champaign which was nice of him. Poor guy was sick and still came down to see me. The three of us chatted and watched reality TV.. again terribly exciting aren't we. :) It felt good though, I laughed a lot this weekend and it was great to see the two of them. It's nice to know that even after years of not seeing friends you can still just jump right back into that relationship.

Anyway, if you read all of this.. wow. I'm surprised.. this was a pretty boring blog, but I didn't want to forget the stuff I did. Check out my smugmug site for pictures, Illinois 4.22.06-4.26.06.