It's been about 15 years since I've met anybody famous. When I was about 12, I went with my dad to the Michael Jordan Golf Classic and received many autographs from basketball players, hockey players, football players, and professional golfers. It was intimidating to go up to the famous people and ask for their autographs, but I did it and I think I got a lot of autographs because I was a little kid. Fast forward to last week when Melissa, Ryan, and I went to Mike Doughty's CD release at the Electric Fetus. The in-store performance was really cool. It was just Mike with a mic and guitar. He played some new stuff and played some of his older songs. I'm still not sure if I like his new cd quite yet. I bet it will grow on me and I'm hoping that happens soon because we're going to another show in March. Anyway, after the performance he signed autographs and took pictures with people. Melissa and I stood in line for about 30 minutes before meeting Mike! During that 40 minutes, we were nervous. We joked about what we were going to say, hoping to say something clever that he would remember. I was going to ask him if he was excited for the new season of America's Next Top Model, but then I decided against it, because well, I was nervous to say something like that. As if I'm not a big enough dork already, let's add a stupid none sense comment. Melissa and I went up together to get his autograph and he was totally cool. He said something like, "Hey what's going on." In which I replied, "Nothing." Stupid girl. I'm so not cool. I did say, "We're looking forward to seeing you next month." I got a "right on" or something like that. Melissa was actually way cooler than I was. She had a conversation with him. She had him sign his album jacket by one of his pictures and when she held it out for him, she said, "That's a really good picture of you." Mike replied, "Thanks, I look pensive." Or something like that. And they both had a laugh. WHAT A RUSH. My palms were sweating and everything. Ok, when are they not sweating. But seriously, it was amazing. We were so gitty in the car. I loved it. Ryan was too cool to get an autograph, so he just took a picture of us getting our stuff signed by Mike. Melissa said she felt bad getting an autograph. She said it felt like petting the baby tigers in Las Vegas (you pay $10, pet the baby tigers, get your picture taken) or going to the zoo and trying to poke the animals in the cages. How you can equate MIke to a zoo animal, I'm not sure, but I get her point. I don't agree with her though. He's exploiting himself. As long as he's ok with it, then I'm going to stand in line and get an autograph darn it! Earlier that day, he did an interview with Showcase Minnesota (10am on Kare11), click here for the link.

Two weekends ago, Ryan and I went to St. Cloud for the weekend and spent time swimming, sitting in the hot tub, and hanging out together. It was a nice relaxing weekend. The weekend trip was my birthday present. It was so nice just to get away. We really didn't do anything too exciting. We saw the movie Jumper, which was ok. I'm sure you'll have to see Ryan's blog for a better review than mine! :) We did find this pretty good restaurant on Friday night called Aces. It had a nice dinning room. Being that it was Friday and Lent, they had nice fish options for me to choose from. The tartar sauce was amazing. It was really sweet, like nutmeg or cinnamon. When we asked the waitress what was in the tarter sauce, she just gave us the definition of tarter sauce. She was not helpful. Saturday night we were all excited to go eat at this irish pub called McRudy's. It looked really cool from the outside and we read good things about it. We walked in to an empty bar with the bartender and one other patron. Yes, we were customers number 2 and 3. This was a bar, a dive bar. It smelled like a men's locker room. r We decided we were just going to drink there and then head over to the mexican restaurant for dinner. Turns out McRudy's doesn't serve food on a regular basis anyway, it's just a pub. We ended up having a really good time at the bar. The smell eventually grew on us, or seeped into us and we ended up staying until the free taco bar at 10pm. An irish pub serving mexican food ... go figure. The tacos were ok. We got our fill, our tummies were happy and we were back to the hotel by 11pm. We were partiers!