“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca

So I'm going to be traveling every single week starting this weekend until the end of March 2010!

It should be interesting and hopefully I will have many things to blog about. I got Skype and a camera if you want to keep me company at my hotels...

Here are my destinations (not including many stops at the St. Louis Intl Airport and weekend trips back to Springfield to see Heidi and friends)

1. Chicago, IL (this weekend)

2. Edwardsville, IL (work)

3. Carbondale, IL (work)

4. Southern California (Vacation!)

- L.A.

- Orange County

- San Diego

5. Grand Rapids, MI (Thanksgiving)

6. Fort Worth, TX (work)

7. Decatur, IL (Christmas)

8. Grand Rapids, MI (Christmas)

9. Fort Worth, TX (work)

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

Downtown St. Louis

We also had fun walking around downtown St. Louis....

The State Fair on Sunday was cool, but I didn't have my camera and can't find some of the pictures that I wanted to post from Facebook. At the Fair we saw our friend Jeremiah sing in his group (he is well on his way to American Idol this year), we watched a high dive show and watched a Christian rap group called Grits.

City Museum - STL

While we were in St. Louis on Saturday we went to the City Museum. It is a really old shoelace factory that is turned into a playground for adults and children. They have all kinds of crazy things to climb on, slide down and very small dark tunnels to crawl through. It was so much fun. There is an indoor and outdoor section to the 'museum'. On the top of the building there is a bus, a huge praying mantis and a ferris wheel.

Forest Park and Art Museum - STL

I finally have a some time to update my blog a bit....this past week I worked over 60 hours and have been staying extremely busy with friends. Last weekend was a lot of fun. Friday night was the surprise birthday party I already blogged about, Saturday Heidi and I went to St. Louis for my birthday and Sunday we all went to the State Fair to see our friend Jeremiah sing in his band.

Here are a few pictures of Saturday in St. Louis outside of the art museum and around Forest Park. The park is almost as big as central park in NYC and includes the art museum, the zoo and much more.

"Surprise" Birthday Party

Last night a ton of my friends from Hope Church attempted to surprise me with a birthday party!!! It didn't exactly work out as planned seeing how I ended up working until 9PM on a Friday night! They all thought I would get out early because it is Friday, but yesterday happened to be one of the biggest 'due dates' for our GAAP packages. Heidi ended up just telling me over the phone that everyone was at my surprise party waiting for me...so I left work at 9PM, ended up hanging out at the party for about 45-60 minutes and had to work for another 1/2 hr because my work was due at midnight!!!

It was fun while it lasted! They gave me a couple cards and the balloons pictured here. The party was for Sue Brinner too, so everyone was able to celebrate without me anyway. Sue said she was REALLY surprised and had no idea!

It should be a fun-filled birthday weekend. I am leaving soon to go to St Louis today and will be going to the State Fair on Monday, so I'm sure I'll have a few more exciting things to blog about.

Cheers!

I SURVIVED SPRINGFIELD TORNADO 2009!

These pictures are from the Springfield State Journal Register of the tornadoes that came through Sangamon County this afternoon. I was working at the office and had to go downstairs to take shelter. We were suppose to go in the bathroom; however it was much more fun to stand in between the glass doors and watch the crazy storm blow through. I took a video with my phone, but can't upload it. :( Here is the article I got these pictures from:

http://www.sj-r.com/breaking/x1373192379/Sangamon-under-tornado-warning

A few pics from the Mat Kearney concert.

This concert in STL was really awesome. I knew pretty much every lyric to every song he sang. I took a bunch of videos with my camera, but they don't have very good sound or video quality...so it just doesn't do it justice.

This is outside the venue. It was sold out. The place is called The Pageant.

He walked right by me.

This is taken with my camera....but they were taking pictures of people and uploading them to Mat's website.

Excited for the Mat Kearney concert on Monday in STL!

I just booked tickets to Southern California!!

but the vacation isn't until November, so more to come!

The Producers

Friday night I went with some of my friends to see the broadway show "The Producers." It was held at The Muni, an outdoor theatre near Lake Springfield. The Producers is about a public accountant who wants to be a producer. They had a CPA firm on stage during a couple of the scenes. The accountant quits his job at the firm and partners with broadway producer. They

want to raise $2 million, put on really bad $100k show and keep all the rest of the money. The show they decide to do is a gay rendition of about springtime with Adolf Hitler. It turns out to be a huge success and one of the producers gets put in jail and the other one runs off to Rio.

Anyway, one of the friends I have been hanging out with has about 5 parts in the show and has to change costumes about 7 times! Her name is Lexie and she has been doing these shows and beauty pageants for a long time. Last year she won Illinois Idol and tried out for American Idol,

but didn't make it any further.

A lot of my friends here are musically inclined. Jeremiah in this picture with the black hat on has a CD coming out next week. He is in a Christian music group and sings for the church I go to.

He also might be on American Idol this year! He just tried out in Chicago, but can't tell us much about it. We know he made it to the next round and has to try out again in August.

I have another friend named Will in this picture who also has a CD out and is currently singing in Arizona and Nevada for the weekend. He plays accoustic guitar and writes all of his own songs.

It looks like his website is not working, but here is his myspace - you can listen to a couple of his songs here:

http://www.myspace.com/ashland24

More Muni Pics...

Various Pics from Saturday

Washington Park: Angel of Hope

Carillon Bell Tower.

Botanical Gardens

Old State Capitol

New Capitol

Day Trip to STL!

My parents came to Springfield for the weekend and we went to St. Louis on Saturday. It was a fun-filled day at the Anheuser-Busch Tour, the Arch and the Zoo. Here is a video I put together today of our STL trip....enjoy!...(the upload wasn't working too well here at blogger. Maybe I will try again later. Please check out my video at Facebook)

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=660557320895

18 Mile Bike Ride in 2m26sec

For those with a short attention span...here is an 18 mile bike ride from Springfield to Rochester and back condensed into a 2 minute 26 second video. I got Alvin & the Chipmunks to sing and record "Here You Me" to go along with my biking video. I biked probably 75 miles this week and still made time for work, church, friends and CNN interviews! Enjoy the video.

My CNN story made it to all these websites so far...at least.