Washington DC

This post is a bit overdue, but LAST week, we spent the entire week in Washington! This was the fist time we have been in one place for a week since we were in Tucson for New Years. That's just crazy.

When I got the tour schedule last year, I noticed that my mom's birthday fell during this week. I told her cousin's Jim and Carol that I was going to try to convince her and my aunt Susan to come visit for a few days- and they did!

The first few days we were there, Darrel and I spent some time sightseeing. This also means shopping, in my world. In between working, we were able to see the Botanical Gardens, Air and Space Museum, Museum of American Indians, and the Library of Congress. We also walked the whole mall and saw the White House, Washington, Monument, etc. He was able to see a lot more than I was, but I was pretty happy with how much ground I covered. I LOVED the Botanical Gardens, and the Library of Congress was one of my favorites buildings in America. I had no idea what it would look like inside- it was like being in Europe! I had a strong urge to go there after going to Monticello a few weeks ago and visiting Jefferson's house- thousands of his original books from the 1700's and 1800's are in the building, and it's just awesome.

While the sightseeing was great, the best thing about the week was spending time with my extended family, who we really never see except at weddings here and there. They were SO generous! I felt like Carol was my personal driver for the week, going back and forth from her house to our hotel! Below are some pics of everyone, enjoying my mom's (belated) birthday.




Oh... and Georgetown! Wow. Went there four times for lunch, dinner, walking around, and shopping. The bus took me there for $1.00. Not bad! Darrel and I found some really great, old places to eat. And they have every store a girl could dream of! I was good though- I really only bought my mom a gift.

It was a nice, fun week, and it made me want to be able to see the Washington family more often!!

Savannah, GA

I have been slacking a little in my blog writing over the last few weeks because A. we were in D.C. for a whole week, and my mom and aunt came to visit (more on that later) and B. we have been in Florida this week, and I have been trying to spend time outside.

Anyway.... Monday we had a travel day in Savannah. Which means no show- woo hoo! This happens when we have a really long drive to get somewhere, and it's going to take two days. We call them "stop over cities". And Savannah was a good one! Sometimes we get places like Middle Of The Desert Utah with our only food option being a truck stop or Waffle House.

I got some work done early in the day, and met our friends at 4:00 to take a cab to River St. It's an old cobblestone road right on the water, lined with bars, restaurants, and shops. Pretty much the minute we got there, we found a place with $5.00 pitches. So of course the guys said we had to go there, and no where else. It wasn't too bad actually! They had great music, but the bathrooms were nasty, so after a while we switched locations to find nicer ones. Not that you need that information, but it's the sole reason we left. The girls won that battle! We wound up at a bar on the second level of a building with an AWESOME view, and a guy playing James Taylor. Does life get any better?!

Yes, it does! We found this amazing candy store- chocolate covered everything your heart desires. Even Ritz crackers. We all walked out with bags and boxes. I have pretzels and oreos for the next two weeks!

It was just so nice to have a day off in a warm, pretty town- Tuesday we started a week of one nighters in Florida, and life has been kind of crazy ever since!

Sarasota, FL

We arrived in Sarasota this morning! We pulled in, and I immediately remembered being here in 2006. How the HECK could you forget a big purple theatre on the water!? Here is the view from my (really nice) hotel room today- life is good!

Live and Learn

There is one important lesson I have learned over the past two weeks of my life: I should NOT color my hair at home with products from CVS.

I'll start at the beginning for you.

I have started to get gray hairs, at the age of 30. I actually starting getting them at 28. Perfect excuse to get my hair colored the way I choose! For a few years, I have been going to the salon, having my hair colored a bit darker than my medium brown, and getting highlights. Sometimes a caramel color, sometimes with a bit of red- fun stuff. But as of late, it was getting so expensive to keep it up. The highlights look great for about an month, and then blah.

Over the Summer, I decided to go to the salon and have the highlights taken out, and just go to a single very dark brown color.

Forward to the Fall. I (literally) run into this stranger down at the Muni Lot tailgating for a Browns game, and LOVE her hair color. I immediately tell her, and then I find out she is totally drunk, and wants to get into a whole conversation about it. Well, due to her high level of beer intake, she must have told me at least 20 times that it was "L'Oreal Perfect 10 Dark Brown".

Here I am on the road, needing to cover up these grays, so I think back on my drunken conversation with Browns girl, and go to CVS to buy her perfect hair color in a bottle. A friend of mine on tour came to my room and two weeks ago, and we dumped two bottles of it on my hair. I wash it, dry it, and ut oh- the bottom of my hair is practically black, and the roots didn't even take! I was so bummed out. A friend who used to work in a salon said he might be able to fix the roots with another bottle of the stuff, but I was just over it.

I then became paranoid girl. In my mind, everyone was looking at my light roots. At the same time, I also had a large curling iron burn on my neck. I was so paranoid that when a man looked at me and said, "child, what did you do to yourself"? I thought, oh god! Even he noticed my hair! Duh- he was asking about the burn.

Last weekend in Richmond, VA, I went to a salon and the dude told me it was going to be a corrective color, and he charged $50 an hour. Three to four hours, so $200. Yea, right! Long story short, I visited a few salons here in D.C. and found a wonderful older woman who was no frills, and she fixed me for $75.

Moral of my story is that cheaper is not always better. It wound up costing me about $120 to make my hair brown!

Charlottesville, VA

This past week we spent one day and one night in Charlottesville. Believe it or not, I have ALWAYS wanted to go there, because it is where the Dave Matthews Band started. (I'm a huge fan, and have been for about 15 years). But I really didn't know what else there was to do there, so I of course turned to my handy book.

Turns out the Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, is in Charlottesville! With Darrel being the history buff he is, and our friend Craig matching his enthusiasm, we had to check it out. I honestly didn't know too much about Thomas Jefferson before going there, but I learned SO much in those few hours!

We started the day by having lunch at Michie's Tavern, practically on the Monticello property. It was a tavern built in the late 1700's, and the people who work there wear the clothing from that time period. Your only choice when you go in is to get the "homestyle buffet" with fried chicken, pulled pork, biscuits and gravy, beets, mashed potatoes, etc. The doors were so low in there that Darrel actually had to duck to get to the buffet! Another great thing about it was how authentic they kept things- the cups and plates looked like silver/pewter, and the tables and stools looked like they could have been originals.

After lunch, we decided to walk up the mountain (Monticello means "small mountain"). I think it was about a mile or so, but there was a path, and it was a really nice walk. It made you realize how expansive his property really was.

It was $20 to enter the grounds, and take the tour. I had no idea what an inventor he was! Just small things that made life in his house so much easier. He had a dumb waiter pulley system that went from the basement to a side compartment of the dining room fireplace so the slaves could pass wine up for dinner, he had a pulley system on his French doors so that when you opened one, the other one automatically opened, he made clocks, and a ton of other interesting things. We learned about is life, family, and property (including over 100 slaves). We were then able to walk around and check out the family cemetery and the grounds. Darrel and I of course had to take a picture in front of the house, because it is on the nickel!

Charlottesville is not a place you just happen to go to for vacation, but seeing Monticello is absolutely worth it if you happen to be close by!

That night, a few of us went to the bar where Dave Matthews used to bar tend, and met the rest of the band. Heavenly!! :)

Knoxville and Beyond

It was beautiful out when we got to Knoxville on Monday, which put me in the mood to work out, which I never really do. I went down to the gym, and it was like a sauna. No way was I going to exercise in there! So I thought, well, it's nice out, so I'll just go walking outside for a half hour or so.


I took off, crossed a bridge, and saw a sign that said "Riverwalk". Awesome- I can walk down by the water! I go for a bit, and realize something must be wrong- I am not on a river, but rather walking through trashy houses. But I decide to keep going. I come to a yellow sign that shows a winding hill is ahead. Can't be too bad, right? So I walk up, and up, and up. I'm dyin'. I get to the top where there is a water tower, and I see a man in a truck. I also see a sign for the town I am in, which is NOT Knoxville. I ask how I get back to my hotel, and he gives me a weird look. He says I can either go back the way I came, or go down the other side and follow the hospital signs. That should get me back.


I walk/run down the other side of the winding mountain, practically spraining my ankle numerous times, as I run into the rocks on the side of the road to avoid getting pummelled by semi trucks, and avoiding the animals on the road who were not as lucky. I keep going, and going. I finally see a hospital, and I walk onto the campus. I'm tired, and hurting. I go to human resources to ask how to get back to my hotel. She gives me a weird look. I ask what time it is- I'll fill you in on that later.


I follow her directions out of the hospital to get to a path that is supposed to lead me back into Knoxville. I wind up on a horse and cow farm, with a man in a tractor that gives me a funny look. OK buddy, I KNOW I'm not supposed to be here! I finally find a freeway. A lot of good that is going to do me. However, there was by some miracle a pedestrian bridge and path that ran next to it. A bridge that did not take me to my hotel, rather to....


The University of Tennessee. I ask a bus driver how to get to my hotel. "You walkin'???" Yes, I am, and you don't even know Mr. I ask about five more people, and make it back on a main road that is supposed to take me to my hotel. Guess what? It did.


I wanted to die. My body was just shot. I had listened to 38 songs on my iPod. I left at 12:45 and got back at 2:30. I went on the computer to Googlemap the distance I had been lost for, using landmarks I walked past.


10.2 miles.


And thanks to no sunscreen, here is what my chest looked like:



Not the best day ever.

Durham, NC

We spent the weekend in Durham, which definitely had some cute areas. The theatre was brand new (just opened in November), and it was close to a few food options, which is a bonus when you are stuck there for the whole weekend, doing five shows.

There were a few things I wanted to see while we were there. One of them being Duke University. I guess that they have a beautiful chapel, gardens and art museum, and we were only a few miles away. This was my plan for Saturday morning.

Well, that didn't exactly happen. Five of us went to an area of town on Friday night to have a few drinks at George's Garage. There was a group of three women there that recognized our friend from the show, and they were already a few martinis deep. Lets just say these women were not hurting in the financial department, based on their clothing and wedding rings. One of them was a daughter of a major college coach as well. Well they just LOVED our friend and Darrel. They starting buying them beers and shots, as us ladies sat at the other end of the bar. The bartender felt bad for us, so HE bought us a drink! (I told Darrel to just go with it- free drinks!). We then went across the street to another bar with a band, and the women decided that they liked us girls now, and they starting buying ROUNDS for us, as they were crazy dancing. Next thing you know, it's 2:00am, we are at Jimmy John's eating sandwiches, and none of us had spent more than a few dollars.

We now refer to these women as the Real Housewives of Durham.

While this was certainly fun, by far the best part of Durham was seeing my cousins, Jon and Pat. Pat lives about 45 minutes away, so they drove to meet us on Saturday in between our shows for dinner. We were only able to hang out for about an hour, but it was GREAT!!

The Most Popular Purses In America

For the last few months, I have been seeing the same purses in every city. I see thousands of people a week in the lobby, and I see at least two to three of these a day. I of course had to ask who made them. When you take into consideration how many styles of purses there are out there, Dooney and Bourke seems to be doing just fine in this tough economy! The first one is from the zebra collection, and the second is from their giraffe collection So if you have one, you are definitely keen on the most recent trend!

Atlanta, GA

As I was writing the title to this blog, I realized that I already posted about Atlanta when we visited for a week last year. But sorry- you get it again. :)

We were there for the day on Thursday, and I realized that the King Tut exhibit was in town at the Civic Center. Some people in my office were nice enough to set aside six tickets for the exhibit (it is produced from our offices in Cleveland) with the audio tour, AND the 3-D movie! I had seen it once before, in Lauderdale, years ago. But my phone rang for work the whole time I was there, so I was thrilled to see it again and turn OFF my cell phone. We learned so much about ancient Egypt, the Pharaohs, mummification, and of course, Tut himself. It's amazing how the artifacts have stayed in almost perfect shape, for 3,000 years.

After the exhibit, we walked to a nearby restaurant and had appetizers and a few beers. It was nice, sunny, and warm- something we had not been around for too long!

Last time we were in Atlanta, Darrel and I found this little funky French restaurant, called Anis Bistro. I found it through my Continental dining program, and we loved it. It is an old house in a residential neighborhood. We had recommended it to some tour friends, and wound up sitting next to them at dinner. They ordered a bottle of wine for us, we both had salads, I had veal, and Darrel had osso bucco. Little did we know that they had picked up our WHOLE CHECK! Too nice of them.

And did I mention that thanks to Google maps, Darrel and I took public transportation all day?! We were staying on the outskirts of Atlanta, and we figured out cabs would have been about $100 for the whole day. Our cost? $8.00.

Jackson, MS

This week we spent a few days in Jackson, MS. Honestly, not one of my favorite places. But the weather was nice, so Darrel and I took some time to walk around one afternoon.

Jackson is the capitol of Mississippi. That being said, it pretty much means that there is NOTHING to do in the downtown area. All of their government buildings are there, and there are about a million churches. I ate Whataburger two nights in a row, if that tells you anything! Even though there is not much to do, it is a pretty place to walk around- the architecture, parks and landscaping were way better than the snow and cold we have recently been in!

The main reason I did not like Jackson is because I did not feel safe there. Someone had been shot right next to our hotel a few days before we got there, and I was approached by a man while I was loading the bus at night, and I had to scream for Darrel and our friend Ethan to make him turn around and walk the other way. We pretty much just locked ourselves into where ever we were, ate fast food, and watched movies and TV!

Smooth Rider

Our bus has been having a few technical issues in recent weeks, so we had to switch buses on Monday night, just for a week or so. Don't think they gave us a DAVE MATTHEWS BUS! I am in heaven. It rides so well, you don't even feel like you are on a bus. And it has a pop-out, which means that the front lounge slides out to make the inside of the bus bigger. It's like a living room in there! And we have a full fridge and freezer, dimmers on our lights, DVD players in our bunks... life is good this week!

The Fabulous Fox

Today we played The Fox theatre in Detroit. My camera is not good enough to even begin to capture what this theatre is like, but here is a link to one of my touring friends blog to show you photos: http://textingwhiledriving.blogspot.com/2009/03/fox-theatre-detroit-michigan.html.