I keep getting distracted whenever I sit down to write about the weekend. Joe was sick on Monday and part of Tuesday and then today I had to clean because my nurse is coming for a home visit - gah! Anyways, I think I’m ready now, so here we go!
First of all, the day before the trip did NOT get off to a good start. I had an impromptu appointment with my Dr. because I had thrown up blood the previous morning.. I didn’t think it was a big deal, I felt fine. He decided that I needed to go the ER and get checked out and sent to GI. So, I ge to the ER and they immediately hook me up to all kinds of things, and insert and I.V. - bad memories are coming back to me. They decide to stick a tube down my nose into my stomach to check for blood and that was… highly uncomfortable and horrible. They did some other things to me that you do not want to know about and my Dr. looked like George from Grey’s Anatomy :( This would be a good thing had he not violated me in such a way that makes me frightened of George now. After the test was negative they THEN made me go upstairs to have an Endoscopy (another tube down my throat with a camera on it). At this point I was upset and scared my weekend was going to be ruined… I don’t remember being put to sleep or waking up but it all seemed pretty quick. They didn’t really find anything except a little esophogitis (which occurs when you throw up a lot) - they prescribed some pills and let me go and it was smooth sailing from there. Now, onto the actual trip!
Joe and I got up and left about 9:30AM on Saturday morning and headed to ATL. It was a pretty uneventful trip.. we went straight to the Coca-Cola factory and had a great time there. Took a picture with the Polar Bear, rode the coke “ride” (the seats move), watched old commercials of the past and the best part of course, tasted all the cokes from around the world. No Matter what anyone tells you, the drink called “Beverly” from Italy is TERRIBLE and very difficult to get the taste out of your mouth. Joe and I both decided that classic Coke was THE best thing in that place… you just can’t beat it. We bought a few souvenirs, took some goofy pictures and then headed to find our hotel.
When we got to the hotel we were excited to see that it was not a let down like the Westin! This hotel was way better priced and had much nicer rooms. We had a King suite with a huge flat screen TV and a pull out couch all for under $100. Although, they did end up charging us twice… but they fixed it. Next time we’ll use Westgate instead. Anyways, I had to set up the dialysis machine since I didn’t think I’d feel like doing it after the show at 1AM so that took a bit of time. At about 5:00PM we headed out to the cheesecake factory down the road to have dinner. Neither of us had ever been there before but we had heard great things about it so why not check it out. The place was Valet parking only and that worried me because we didn’t need anymore expenses but it turns out it was free. We ate in the upstairs area overlooking the city - Joe decided to have a hamburger (which the picture of has now become infamous) and I decided on a club sandwich. Both were absolutely delicious! And being that we had never been there before we HAD to taste the cheesecake - we decided on the Snickers one and.. my God, best cheesecake ever. We’ll be going back if we ever come across one again in our travels.
After this is was time to head to the show - it was drizzling a bit and we forgot to bring the umbrella so we stopped by CVS to pick one up just in case. We parked in the deck and jumped on the end of the line and it was time to go in! I love this concept! Get to the show and no waiting, just go inside - it felt great! We found awesome seats with perfect views of the stage and I was amazed at how well everything was going for us on this trip. We are known for our bad luck.
So, the show begins! First act was Aaron Mc-something.. she was good but I didn’t feel a third artist was necessary. Matty came on at about 8:45PM and rocked it in a hilarious way as usual! He put on a great show and interacted with the crowd very well. He talked about how he was going to miss Andrew and that they should make up life size pillow people of them so they can cuddle at night and he can sing “Dark Blue” to him ;) And we all know this made me squee like crazy.. ah, if only it were true. He also basically called all the JM fans emo but in a funny way that I can’t quite explain. Regardless, I was laughing the entire time.
Matt’s setlist (I think):
1: Falling Apart
2: Escape
3: Gone
4: Still
5: Princess
6: Jesse’s Girl
7: To the Beat of Our Noisy Hearts
8: All We Are
9: Detroit Waves
10: Kids in America
11: Come On Get Higher
12: Answering Machine
Then after about 20 minutes, JM came out! Andrew was extremely hyper and all over the place. I tried to call my Jadeline as much as I could because i knew she wanted to be there so badly and I wanted her to feel like she was. At one point, some guy was apparently getting on Andrews nerves and he cussed him out and called him names and made him leave :P That was fun and thus began Joe’s love for Andrew McMahon ;) The set was awesome.. I really don’t know what to say about it. I enjoyed the show very much and it was very therapeutic to scream those words I’ve been singing for months back at him. It was a good, cathartic release and I needed it.
Jack’s Mannequin Setlist:
1. Crashin’
2. The Mixed Tape
3. Drop Out
4. Swim
5. I’m Ready
6. Spinning
7. Bloodshot
8. Hammers and Strings
9. Dark Blue
10. Holiday From Real
11. Caves
12. The Resolution
13. Me and the Moon
14. La La Lie
After the show we headed out to look for buses. We found that Matt’s was parked right in front of the venue.. and Andrews was down behind the venue. WHY!? I could never make that decision… we stuck around Matt’s bus for a little while hoping that Andrew and Matt might swing around the front. But after about 15 minutes Matt’s bus pulled away and an 18 wheeler took its place… people were still standing there. I saw no need to stand and wait by an 18 wheeler so me and Joe headed off to look for Andrew’s bus. Of course, we got lost on the highway and I was freaking out that we were going to miss him but as luck would have it, we pulled up and there was Andrew! Fate.
So we walked over and i waited my turn politely (unlike Joe, who wanted to just barge on in peoples conversations). I initally went over to take a picture with him and was going to tell him about listening to his album in the hospital but got shy and just said “i forgot what i was gonna say” and he took the pic and said to come back if I remembered very sweetly. I went and stood by the fence for what seemed like forever while Joe pressured the hell out of me to just do it - he doesn’t understand :P So after the crowd died down a bit I headed back over there and Andrew was like “you remembered!” and I was like “yea.. i didnt really forget, I’m just working up courage..” and he said “whats up?” and I told him how his music helped me in the hospital to sleep every night and i listed the songs I liked and he asked if I was okay, and we talked about dialysis and kidney transplant and about his stem cell transplant and he gave me a bunch of hugs and hand shakes and said I’m so strong and he hopes I get a kidney and he’ll be praying for me, and that joe can have an xbox or a clarinet when I get a kidney (don’t remember how we ended up talking about Joe wanting these things) :P Joe told andrew that i yelled at him all the time and andrew was like “well thats what you do when you’re sick, it’s allowed!”, so no sympathy from him - darn :P but, he told Joe he was a good person for being there for me.
Then joe told him how he didn’t like his album… good lord, I was covering my face so embarrassed :P and andrew was like “it’s okay sweetie, i like honesty!” and then he told him that seeing him live changed his mind. We talked about some other random things.. I can’t remember it all - I was just so nervous and trying to take in everything he was saying that I ended up forgetting a lot of it. Go figure. Eventually we said goodbye and went back to the hotel happy :) Thank God Joe was there to make me say what I wanted to say - I would have regretted it if I didn’t and I hope it made Andrew feel good as well.
So, the next day we got up and decided we weren’t ready to leave ATL yet. We looked at a few options for what to do in the city and narrowed it down to a tour of CNN or the Cyclorama (Civil War Museum) - the parking at CNN was HORRIBLE and there was a basketball game going on down there so we decided it was better to get out of that part of the city. So, Cyclorama it was! We got there a little early so we decided we’d walk through the park until it opened.. then we came upon this guy who was drawing portraits of people for $10 so we figured, why not? We sat there for a good 45 minutes and got our picture drawn and talked to the artist. It turned out good but it doesn’t quite look like me ;) Looks just like Joe though - but it was a cool experience none the less.
By this time the Cyclorama was open. We headed in and… just let me say this was more Joe’s thing that mine. Not really interesting to me so I won’t go into any details. It was something to do. We took a couple more goofy pictures and then headed to Joe’s intended destination for the entire weekend - the Vortex restaraunt (as seen on Man Vs. Food). Ever since we saw that episode - he has been wanting to go there. The food was pretty good but I prefer the cheesecake factory ;) We tried some chili cheese tator tots and they were VERY tasty. All in All, very bad foods were had this weekend :P
We headed home, still without any glitches in our plans and we deemed it a successful weekend! We arrived back in town at about 6:00PM and were pretty tired and headed to bed early that night. When I got home I realized that I went the whole weekend without getting exhausted like I have been the past few months! I am taking this new shot called EPO and man, it really helps. I’m feeling great lately, I just hope it keeps up!
More pictures from the trip