Beginning of Tour

Sunday was the day of the first show. We'd stayed the night in Joliet, but ended up having to head into Chicago to find Junior a new fedora, and some costume stuff for Kim. We got really lucky and found this awesome hat shop that carried a ton of different hats, and they were cheaper than what Junior usually pays. Mike even ended up going back and getting a hat. It was also just down the road from an AWESOME costume shop. Fantasy Costume has just about everything. There's full costumes, accessories, costumes for rent, wigs, make-up, props, etc etc etc. They even carry foam display heads, which I had been looking into getting, but Kim said she had 3 and I could have/borrow one :) Kim used her birthday money from fans to get a bunch of stuff for tour. We bought so much stuff the girl gave us a discount, and even gave us free hats with their logo on it. There were 5 of us but only 4 hats left, so she let Paulo have the kitty ears he was going to buy for his daughter for free as his “hat.” You can order online and they ship anywhere, so you should definitely check them out!

After our shopping trip we needed to get to the venue for the first show. It was at MoJo's in Joliet where they played with Otep on the last tour. It was a really good crowd for a Sunday night. They played an unreleased song, as well as UFO which I've never seen live before. We also had 13 VIPS!!!!! Many of them were repeat VIPs, and many we'll be seeing at other shows. Allie who followed us around for 6 shows last tour was back, as well as her better half, Jaye this time :) We had the regular VIP party at Denny's because there were so many, but after we had a flan after party in the parking lot. We were seriously there for at least another hour hanging out in the parking lot. VIP Mike was teaching roadie Mike some juggling tricks. We decided that there should be a super hero that shoots flan from his wrist like Spiderman shoots web, except he'd hold his had like an “f” in sign language. We ran around the parking lot “flanning” each other like that. I think a few people have video, and there's even video of people taking the video. You'll have to check the One-Eyed Doll facebook page to see if anyone posts them. It was a super fun night despite going to bed exhausted at 4am.

We stayed at our hotel room again that night since the drive to St. Joseph, MI wasn't that far. On the way, we stopped at the coffee shop and Italian/Greek restaurant/store in Merrillville, IN that we went to 3 times last tour. It was as delicious as we remembered :) We were hoping to stop again on our way to St. Louis, but it was a little bit out of the way, and we were running behind, as usual :(

Second show was even better than the first! Even though One-Eyed Doll had never played in St. Joseph before, I think over half the crowd was OED fans!!! Mardie from last tour (as well as my second show ever years ago), was there, as well as 4 of our VIPs from the night before. This show they played Recipe 4 success and PAO!, both of which I'd never seen live before, as well as UFO again. It's fun being on a different style tour because I get to see different songs and different interaction with the crowd. During one song Kim even gave a shout out to Allie and Jaye! :D We only had the 5 VIPs that night, Brad from the night before and last tour didn't make it :( so we just rode around in the van and listened to a few unreleased songs. It was a good time, as we got back to our hotel room early since we had a long drive the next day. The hotel was actually booked for us by the venue! This never happened last tour and I didn't realize it was a thing! The Super 8 was pretty nice too! Thanks Czars in St. Joseph! Before we settled in for the night we drove around for a bit looking for a little something to eat, when we passed a Meijer. For those of you not from the area, it's like a Wal-Mart but awesomer. I've said/thought so many times since moving to CA that I miss Meijer. They're 24 hours, carry just about everything, you can run there in the middle of the night to pick something up, I know exactly what section to find most things in, it's fairly cheap, and they're everywhere. There's no place open late in my city and no place that carries everything. Plus, I can never seem to find what I want half the time and go to 3 different stores trying to find it. But anyway... we stopped into Meijer, got a variety of food and a few things we needed before heading to our nice hotel room to get a few hours of sleep before our drive.

All the fans there to see One-Eyed Doll

Grainy because I was so far away :(

The awesome rainbow alarm clock at our hotel

Funny side story from the show that night, and yet another reason I'm glad I'm not addicted to my phone. Mike was texting on his phone and accidentally went into the women's restroom because he wasn't paying attention :P