Yee-Haw!

I ask you: what says Texas more than BBQ and giant metallic armadillos? I can't think of a thing!


Here we are eating BBQ at the Goode Company in Houston...




Chris, Beth and Brian with the giant armadillo next door to the BBQ place.

Greenville to Texas!

Hello from hot and muggy Texas!

Needless to say Brian is pretty miserable in this state but we're here for the next 3 weeks! From Houston to Dallas and then back to Austin in August - should be even MORE fun!

Anywho, I thought I would drop a line since I haven't written in quite some time. I believe Brian last left us off in Boston. Well since then there have been several exciting things.

In Providence the Renoni's hosted an ice cream social for the company and it was a HUGE success! They're still talking about the amazing Bliss ice cream. (They even brought the hot fudge!!)

Our travel day from Providence was just plain horrible. The crew's 6:00AM flight got CANCELLED after we taxied around the runway, discovered a hydrolics problem, and brought us back to the gate. It was a pretty crazy first hour trying to get us all booked on a new flight that got us to Greenville in time for load-in. We finally got 14 of the crew on a flight from Providence to Charlotte that left at 12:50. The other 6 of us got in a cab which took us to Boston's Logan airport where we caught a flight at 1:00pm into Charlotte (after some screwdriver's at the airport bar at 11:00am). We all arrived in Charlotte within 15 minutes of eachother and chartered a bus to drive us to Greenville. There were a number of other crazy incidents that happened that day, including the cast flight having to make an emergency landing in Rochester due to a passenger emergency. They barely made their connecting flight and arrived in Greenville only a little later than originally scheduled. What a day!

Here we are at the airport bar at 11:00am... after having been up for 7 hours already...



While in Greenville, the local news station did a story on load-in and how it all happens. Here's the link... it's a pretty good story!

http://www.wyff4.com/video/16297395/index.html

Also in Greenville I went home for a few days for a high school friend's wedding which I was in. It was an absolute BLAST and I couldn't be happier for them. CONGRATS CHRISSIE AND TRAVIS!!

Monday's travel to Houston could not have gone smoother and now here we are - eating lots of Bar-b-que and Mexican food and sweating our butts off. This coming Monday, our day off, is Memorial Day. Brian and I are thinking of taking a daytrip to Galveston, TX on the Gulf.

Oh! Also, this past Wednesday night we had a company outing to go see the midnight showing of the new Indiana Jones movie. It was really great and lots of fun! Dun da dun DUUUUUUUN! Dun da duuuuuuun! (That was supposed to be the Indiana Jones theme... in case you didn't know...)

Ok. I should go do some work now. Love you all!

Beth

p.s. Brian and I bought a Wii in Providence. It's the most amazing creation ever. The end.

Photo Op!

This is from back in Boston, but it's just plain funny so I had to post it...




Brian decided he should order a full portion of spaghetti at Maggiano's... which is a family style restaurant in case you've never eaten there.

HAHAHAHA!

He's so cute!

Break and Boston

So nice to have a little time off. Flew into Philly on Monday with Beth, and her parents picked us up. We had two days planned full of visiting different potential wedding and reception locations. Our first stop was Winterthur, in Winterthur, DE. We visited with their sales rep for 45 minutes and discussed all of the different features of the location. Beth's parents had visited a week before so they had already seen the books, the place and heard the pitch. After meeting with her for 45 minutes, we took a walk about the 1,000 acres of woodlands and gardens. A truely spectacular place. About 30 minutes into our walk, beth and i had a chance to talk about the pro's and con's of the location and our thoughts on different things. Upon meeting back up with her parents down the path, we asked them to give us 5 reasons to visit any of the other sites. We were sold. So we have date, a location, and so begins the insanity.
Tuesday i flew home to Attleboro, and began my break. Wednesday brought a nice visit to the dentist, Thursday brought jury duty, and Friday a trip up to fenway for a game with Ben and Brett. Good times. Spent saturday visiting the Fo's and then spending some time with friends over at the Nelsons, good to see Amanda, paul, dan, laura and sarah. Being on the road, and away from friends gets really lonely. So any time i can spend with friends is a blessing. Nice to see familiar faces, and share stories, and chat. So all my friends who are reading this, please, any time your thinking bout a trip, come visit us on the road. We would love it.
Well, manny just got ejected from the sox game.... must had said the magic word..... but two pitches later, same pitch, same location, it was called a ball to youk. Just a personal observation but the umpiring, behind the plate and in the field has been horrible this year. Oh well. Good to see j.d. drew having a good season. tek has some power in that bat, and dustin continues to shine as our rookie of the year. Ellsbury is going to be alot of fun to watch over his career, as is lowrie. p.s. how much of a steal has it turned out to be, picking up Sean Casey. A possible early season saver.
Ok, time to go finish packing things up, and get ready to head up to Boston and settle into the park plaza


Over and Out,
Brian

Bus Tours & Bowling in Chicago

So we've been in Chicago for almost a week now. The travel day from St. Paul was pretty crazy, as all of our flights from St. Paul to Chicago got cancelled at about 7:00am Monday morning. We had to scramble around and eventually got a charter bus to DRIVE the cast to Chicago. We left at 12:30pm (instead of 9:30AM when we were supposed to leave for the airport) and got in to Chicago at about 9pm. Everyone was really great about the whole situation and it ended up working out fine. On the bus we even watched Robert Dorfman's home movies he has made from videotaping the tour from the beginning. (Robert plays Underling in the show.) Also, we had a great dinner stop at Cracker Barrell in Madison, Wisconsin! Gotta love road trips! (And now I can say I have been to Wisconsin.)

So this past Thursday morning I went on a bus tour of Chicago with 2 girls from the company. It was the "Devil in the White City" bus tour. It was basically a tour to go along with the book by Erik Larson, about the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the murders of serial killer H. H. Holmes. I am currently reading the book and the tour was really fascinating and helpful. Here are a couple of pictures:


This building is really cool because during the fair they made all of these manmade canals and lagoons that people could travel along in gondolas or boats, so the front entrance to this exhibition building is actually at the top of a flight of stairs which goes down into the water of this lagoon. Now the front entrance is what used to be the back entrance.



Then, on Thursday night, after the show, Georgia had asked me to help plan a bowling night. We bowled at 10Pin Chicago, a really fun bowling lounge with great food (TATER TOTS!), a bar, and big projection screens over the lanes where they play music videos to whatever song is on. We had so much fun!





Then, the staff af the bowling alley asked Georgia to sign a bowling pin for the wall of fame. She signed it "Thank you! We had a ball! From the world's worst bowler, Georgia Engel".

St. Paul in a nutshell...

So St. Paul was quite snowy. It was a pretty nice little city, but we were staying so far away from downtown we didnt hang out down there too much. I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures because I don't know what else to say about St. Paul...

Here I am in front of a restaurant called Noodles & Company - that's right - my dream come true - a restaurant that serves ALL NOODLES!



Brian and I went to the Mall of America on our day off. This is me thinking that this mall is RIDICULOUS! In case you're wondering what i'm standing in front of - that's the LOG FLUME RIDE! That is INSIDE THE MALL! There was also a ferris wheel, a rollercoaster, a climbing wall and a mini-golf course. Along with a ton of other things.





Oh yea - there was a legoland too - this is Brian pretending to be the lego dinosaur.



We took a picture of our homemade dinner we made to go along with the lovely bottle of champagne that Uncle Jimmy gave us in Pittsburgh. Thanks Uncle Jim! It was yuuuuuummy!


(Yes, that is indeed asparagus on those plates - and Brian did eat it voluntarily.)

In downtown St. Paul there are all of these statues of the Peanuts characters, because Charles Schulz was from St. Paul. They're pretty cool. Here we are posing with them.

PARIS!

Ok, so this is really just a tease, but here are a few pictures to whet your appetite...








Basically, we had an AMAAAAAAZING time in Paris! It was so much fun - such a beautiful city. Lots of walking, baguettes, croissants, quiche (the best i've ever had!) and history! Oh, and cheese for Beth!

Thanks to Sue and Steve for letting us stay at their fabulous apartment on Rue du Bac, just a few short blocks from this little trickle of water called the Seine! Which is right in front of the Louvre!

Brian is in the process of posting all of our pictures on an online photo album for you to view, but I guess we took a lot of pictures so it's taking a while.

I guess I should also tell you about our adopted Frenchman, Pierre. Pierre is a miniature garden gnome that we bought when we were exhausted and loopy on our first day of Paris after having been up for about 24 hours straight. He travelled all over Paris with us and will be seen throughout our pictures.




More to come!