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This weekend I found myself doing something I never thought I would be doing; or at least not for a long time. I found myself back in St. Louis seeing a show at the Muny. Only this time, I wasn’t seeing David, I was seeing my little sister, Sydney. It was awesome.
So yeah, Nicole and I did a bit of traveling this weekend. And oh yeah, we went through the airports with the new security regulations.
So Friday afternoon, Nicole and I flew from Boston to Chicago to St. Louis. Now, we started the trip at 4:30 at the Kendall Square T station. Our flight time? 8:05. We decided that we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to get through security. Well, by 5:35, we were already at our gate ready to go. Seriously. It took us just over an hour to get from Cambridge to Gate…and we late leaving Kendall due to me not finding Nicole.
The rest of Friday was pretty uneventful. Nicole and I were exhausted, but nothing major happened, and we safely arrived in St. Louis just before midnight. All in all, it was pretty chill.
So Saturday started off where Friday ended: chill. Nicole and I got up to catch the free breakfast at our hotel and then promptly went back to the room to take a nap. From that point on “chilling” wasn’t really in the cards. At 1:25 we got a call from my sister asking if we wanted lunch/wanted to go hang out for a bit. We did, but neither Nicole nor I were dressed for such an event. Of course, we agreed to do something and said we’d be ready in 15 minutes. In what can only be described as hilarious, Nicole and I went from grody to fully showered, dressed and ready for the day in 15 minutes.
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My parents, Syd and Derek (Sydney’s boyfriend) arrived about 20 minutes after calling and we did the whole “family reuniting” thing. Nicole and I were also introduced to Derek before we hopped into the cars and went to…the mall. Seriously. Mind you, we were there to get a bite to eat, but still, it’s amusing that we ended up in a mall. Anyway, lunch was fun, although the California Pizza Kitchen managed to botch our order up multiple times.
After lunch, my sister gave me the keys to her car so Nicole and I could go around and check out the city for a bit before coming to the show. Sydney and my parents were going to go back to Syd’s to pack up a bit. At this point, Nicole mentions that she needs to go to mass at some point that weekend; so we headed to the mall’s Apple store (computer sense tingling) and used their internet connection to find a church.
After mass, Nicole and I decided to go “see” the arch by driving on I-70 into Illinois and then coming back. While this seemed like a good idea t the time, it was actually kind of a dumb thing to do. Mainly because, while driving east bound was fast and easy, construction made the traffic coming back God awful. While it took us only 30 minutes to cross the Mississippi, it took us about an hour or so to come back. D’oh
Thankfully, we got back to Forest Park with about an hour before the show would start. This gave Nicole and me time to just walk around for a bit.
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For those of you who have never been to St. Louis or Forest Park, it’s beautiful. It’s got fountains, and ponds, and flowers, and…well, just go look it up at wikipedia. But yeah, we were able to walk around a bit before the show and I took a whole bunch of pictures.
Then it was time for the show.
It was awesome. I could be biased, but I thought it was awesome. When Sydney first game on stage, I was jumping up and down in my seat. I was apparently telling everyone who asked me that I was there to see her. Clearly, I was proud of Syd. But yeah…it was awesome. Oh, and my sister has great comic timing and presence. She had the entire Muny cracking up with laughter. It was great, and I’m so glad I was there to see it.
After the show, there was a lot of meeting and greeting with the cast by the stage door. My sister introduced Nicole and me to a lot of her friends (the random people I took pictures of). I saw my uncle who was there to see Syd, and it was just kind of really fun moment.
Sunday was a bit more chill, albeit the day started earlier in the morning. Nicole and I checked out of the hotel around 9:15 and got to my sister’s apartment at 9:35 or so. We were meeting everyone to go get breakfast together, before my dad had to go back to Cincinnati and we had to return to Boston. (My sister had one more show that night, so she couldn’t leave till Monday) Breakfast was a little…odd, but we had a good time and it was just good to do breakfast as a family again.
Unfortunatly, all good things must come to an end, and Nicole and I had to get to the airport. We said our good-byes to Dad, and Mom, Sydney and Derek drove us to the airport. We then made our final good-byes and Nicole and I headed back to Boston.
And, oh yeah, time from arrival at the airport to our gate? 25 minutes. Thankfully, Nicole’s need for TCBY resulted in us killing a good hour or so walking from one end of the airport to the other to get to the one operating TCBY. (The airport has over a mile of terminal and where our gate and the open TCBY were are on opposite sides of the place) Otherwise, it was an uneventful trip back.
Wow..that was a long post. But a lot happened in a short period of time. *Shrugs* It was a great weekend, and I’m so glad I did it.
Life and Times
