(38) Cincinnati, Ohio

Sunday, February 1^st: This morning I had brunch with my Dad, Ava, Grandma and Grandpa at Molly Malone’s, which is a Pub/Restaurant where my brother is a line cook. After that, I went back to my Dad’s house where I did my laundry for the small price of shoveling part of his driveway. I’d say it was close to a fair trade. My mom picked me up and we went down to The Coffee Emporium where I worked when I was in high school. My brother and his girlfriend met up with us and I learned all about how he is going to buy a house in Ecuador and move there and how none of us really knew where Ecuador was. He’s not really moving there, but he is planning to go this summer with his girlfriend’s family. My mom took me back to the hotel where I watched the Super Bowl. Around 7:00pm, I went over Skyline Chili with Dave and Margo, who had never had Skyline Chili. I won’t go into an explanation for those who have never had Skyline Chili cause it would take too long, but it was just as good as I remember! After dinner, we went back to the hotel and had tea and Schnecan, which is a buttery, doughy loaf from Graeter’s that Margo had gotten that day. It was a great dessert and something that I’d never had before.

Monday, February 2^nd: I went down to the University of Cincinnati, where I went to college, today and saw some of my professors and staff. It was a lot of fun talking with them and they were all very interested in how the tour has been going. I sat for almost a hour in Michele Kay(the Stage Management Advisor) office talking to her and Sterling (the Technical Director Advisor). It was so nice to see how proud they were of their students doing so well. I was also surprised at how many students were Freshman when I was a Senior and were just now finishing up their degrees. Eric and Margo picked me up, we grabbed some Jimmie John’s and headed back to the hotel. At 3:00pm, we went down to the Aronoff Center for the Arts for load in. In case I haven’t told you personally yet, the Aronoff is where I had my high school graduation, so it’s a little exciting and interesting to be working here. Load in went well for the most part and Eric and I went to Skyline for a quick meal afterwards.

Tuesday, February 3^rd: We had shows at 9:45am(54) and 12:00noon(55). These were our first shows in 11 days but they went off very well. There weren’t any major mess ups and the shows were definitely better than our first ones back from our winter break. The load out went very well and as we pulled out of the loading dock, a picture perfect snow was falling on Cincinnati. The snow was coming down pretty good as we got onto the highway, but fortunately the truck was barreling through the snow. The snow kept falling and the road started to be covered pretty well and was pretty slick. We got word from the vans that they wanted to stop. We ended up stopping just inside Indiana(near Batesville) at a rest stop. There were reports of a huge car and truck accident on the north east side of Indianapolis and the Indiana State Police said the roads south of Indianapolis were snow covered. We decided not to drive all the way to Joliet, IL, but to stop in Indianapolis, Indiana(125 miles, 8320 total miles.) We stayed at an almost brand new Hampton Inn near the airport. Carolyn, Eric, Jonny, Kevin, Lindsay, Margo and I went to dinner at BARcelona Tapas, where we all got two small plates to share with the table. It was good food and nice service.