SO I am gonna write about my Cleveland weekend old school style, (check out my journals from like 2003 /2004 athat were like millions of words long, prolly only (e:mk) will make it through the whole ting but I like to have it all for when i go back and read them)

So it all started when (e:mk) and (e:jill) got a boy turning 25 the best gift ever, namely tickets to go see , what is likely the most talented musical act of the last 100 years, the New Kids on the Block ( i refuse to refer to them as NKOTB even though that would be much easier to type but i didn't love that phase of them) in Clevelan. So it was like two days befor eand we hadn't' booked a hotel and so i did that thing on hotwire wher eyou don't know which hotel you are booking but just the area and so it is cheaper. SO i got a hotel for liek 60 bucks but i didn't know the name. I was usper nervous. It turned out to be a HOliday Inn and it looked like it was in a super ogod locatio nbut it didn't really have a website which was really nerve wracking. What hotel doesn't have a website?

So anywho the dya comes that we are leaving (Fridya) and I have all these plans to liek go and get a book about Cleveland at the AAA and eat a tasty lunch at Panera before we leave but eve nthough I am the only one of the three of us that doesn't have to work i get nothing done and end up not having time to go to AAA or eat. OH i almost forgot, so this girl at work Vickie promised me a New Kids hat and big pin to wear so I didn't even look through my stuff to see if i had any and i got to pick it up at work on the way to go pick up (e:mk) and SHE FORGOT IT . and so i had no gear. ugh i was angry, angry like whoa. Cuz if i had time i could have wennt though and found my own stuff cuz we all know i don't throw anything out but instead i had no gear and i could have bougth new gear but id on't want new gear, i want old classic gear like you know the good stuff. So then i get to (e:Mk) 's and then we are off to pick up (e:jill) WE go to stop at the ATM and (e:mk) realizes she has lost her debit card. SO not a good sign for the beggingin of the trip so we start to drive back to her house but her husband looks around and doesn't fidn it so we don't bother cuz we are on a time budget. Oh i tihnk i forgot to mentio nthat (e:jill) didn't realize she would have to get oyut of work before 6 to make it to a 8 oclock ocncert in cleveland so she is like sorta sneaking out at four and we have to pick her up like two stores down from the one she works at in the plaza. So we have some time to kill before 4 o'clock cuz even thouigh i was runing too late to get stuff done, i was little early because i didn't get anything doen. So me and (e:mk) went to Wendy's and pcked up some chow. Me and (e:mk) have a weird affinity for wendy's and especially the one near BJ's (the store) in tonawanda that used to have a salad bar.but that isn't the one we went to we went to the one next to Jill's work. So then we go to (e:Jilil)'s plaza and wait and we see her coming. She gets in the car and tells us she might be fired. Her work is kinda crazy and weird and psycho and so they were like too nice about letting her leave and so she was pretty sure she was fired. But it turns out in the end she wasn't so that was good. So the directions from her work to the Q arena in cleveland are seriulsy like go left , drive 200 miles, make a right. It seriuously was three steps , it was crazy easy even for myself. OK i did ask (e:Mk) like every fifty feet what I shooujld be doing cuz i get nervous but the answer was always just keep going straight and don't take the exit.

I had packed some seriuos hot tunes, like Pop HIts of the 90s , The Crossroads soundtrack (that movie is the one tha tmade me and jill firends , it was the first time we hung out alone together and look how well it went from there!@) , some N'sync and of course the New Kids Greatest Hits. So we were savign the New Kids cd til we were closer to get us pumped. Oh it was so weird like the whole way there there was this car that had two bikes on top that looked like a turtle, i mean not really but to us it seemed like a turtle. Turtle , turtle, turtle ( thats a little Master of Disguise plug there). So it was so weird we liek wouldn't see the car for miles AND THEN IT would be behind us and then like miles later we would see it in front of us and stuff , like the whole way it was like that. OH AND DON"T EVEN get me started on the crazy crack whore moneky who was doig nthat whole driving slowly in the fast lane thing but then if i tried to go around her she would speed up, i hated that stupid ho even if she did have a handicap plate. I tihnk that she was prolly faking it cuz she was so annoying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So anywho we get to cleveland and find the arena super fast and then decide we have to time to go to the hotel cuz we got there in a little under 3 hours so we had time. We go and i was so nervous the hotel would not be there , oh by the by my TomTom gets messed up in cleveland and starts like spinning in circles and aciting like i'm driving all carzy which i prolly was driving a little crazy but like not in that way. So i am so nervous the hotel isn't going to be there oh cuz i google earthed it or whatever before we left and there was not really a building there. Anywho, we get there and it is there so that is good. It is 16 dollars to park in theri thing and you use your card to get in and out of the parking ramp. Well i for some reason could not figure out how to get my card in for the life of me but i evntully did but the car that blokcs you from going inwas broken anyway so i oculd have juts drove in.

We get to our room and it was actually pretty nie, oh they asked us if we wanted smoking or non which was wierd. Who does that still?

So we frehsen and (e:mk) puts on her new kids gear (whihc i had none of grr) and we head down to the Quicken Loan Cetner. It was in walking distance whihc was nice and on the way there we realized we should prolly be at least a little tipsy and so we stop at a bar near it and just do a few shots each real quick )which OMG those shots were expensive. but it was an emergency so what could we do. So we get to the arena and I am one of like 30 guys at the whole place . OH AND I FORGOT they siad no cameras so i didn't bring mine cuz i didn't want tem to take it away but then they didn't ever chekc or anytihng so i totally could have brought it grrr! But the memories will always be a live in my mind. So first some person named like COdy Adonis opened and he was ok but no one hceered really til he said are you exciteda bout New Kids. Then Natasha Bedinglfied which was cool cuz me and rachelle kinda have Pociket full of sunshine as our song so it was cool to see it live. SO THEN THE EXCITEMENT STARTS TO BUILD and a few shots and beers later and my excitement is boiling over..................................

AND THEN THERE THEY ARE JOEY, DANNY, DONNIE, JONATHAN, and JORDAN. THEY WERE AMAZING FROM BEGINNING TO END! Like i loved their old stuff and their new stuff and everything. I don't even know what to say about it except they were amazing. they did all the good songs. Oh i know what to say , poor JOnathan (my favorito by far) didn't get any play but i tink maybe he iddn't want any becuase like i know he left the band to raise horses and sells real estate in boston. but like on the big screen they would close up and show each person and then jonathan would get 1/2 second on screen. Danny didn't get a lot of play either but still 10 times as much as Jonathan and Danny is scary anywyas so he shouldn't get tons of play> They each did like something solo, JOrdan and Joey did songs from their solo careers, Donnie did Cover Girl by himself, and Dann;y did a break dance routine, but Jonathan did nothing. OMG at this one part they came down and did some songs on this little stage in th emiddle of the floor so the people on the floor could be right there next to them and touch them and everything. I was jeal of those people. I have never screamed so much in my life as I did at this concert, just constant two hours of screaming. I twas insnael. Like it just made me so happy and good and feel good and just like oh it just perfedctness. It was everythtnig I dreamed it would be. and then some. and then some more. Oh so you thought itw as over and they hadn't done all the songs I expected but they came back out and played Step By Step WHICH WAS AAMAZING . And then it ended......NO IT DIDN'T .....THEY CAME BACK OUT AND DID A ROOF RAISING RENDITION OF HANGIN TOUGH!!!! We just sat in our seats afterwards for a whlie relaxing and takin git all in. It was seriusly draining emotionally, ophysically, vocally, draining in every way.....................................................it was the best night of my life ever possibly.....the weekend continued after this but i will make that another journal cuz i am tired of wriitng right now.

OH i forgot in their arena the pretzels are shaped like Q ecause it is calle dthe Q but like that basically just give you less pretzrel cuz you don't get one of the curves. I think it is a scam and should bwe on 20/20 investigations!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh and i forgot we were like some of the younger people there i think becasue we were like 5 when they were popular the first time,. there were lots of moms and stuff like not with theri kids but thye look like they are moms and were older than us. There were some young people and the girl behind us said she was there czu of her new stuff and she wasn't prolly born when they were out the first time but like i think it was mostly fans from the first time around> Oh and it was totally sold out and pakced !! Itwas so aw4esome!

So we went to see the New Kids (as in New Kids on the Blcok) Concert in Cleveland (we being (e:jill), (e:mk) and myself) and i must say it was the best time of my entire life. It made me feeel so happy and good and eveyrthing and like fiver years old again. the crowd was intense and insane and screaming the whole time (us included, including jill screaming Donnie I'll give you my uterus). It was like just soooo good. They put on prolly the best show any group could ever put on. I seriously loved every second of it!!!! i will write more about the concert and the whole ttrip later as we just got back ( we stayed overnight and did stuff in cleveland today) and i am tired. Unfort I have no pics from the ocncert cuz they would not allow cameras in and my phone is crappy at taking pcitures in the dark. But it is all in my mind foreva.............New KIds I will love you forever!

In less than 24 hours i will be on my way to Cleveland to see New Kids on the BLOCK!!! I CANNOT FREAKIN WAIT!!!!!!!!!

I don't know what is wrong with me. I am always someone who gets pretty nervous about things , like as a kida I used to always throw up the day before and mornign of any big thing cuz i was so nervous it would go so bad or I would do so terrible. But lately i get so nervous over stupid tihngs which is not my style. I get so worked up sure that things are terribly wrong but really they prolly aren't but i juts can't help it. I alwasy seem on edge like i just get really upset and just feel so nervous about tings that prolly i have no reason to feel i don' tknow. It just is driving me crazy that i feel this way cuz it is not my style to be like this. Like i'll just be like that's it the worst tihng every has happened ok not worst tihng every like deaths and destruction just like I don' tknow and I don't have a really good reason to tink that but i just get so sure of it. Grr. And then sometimes i think i want to be right so that i don't seem so crazy for being so nervous but then really i don't want to be right cuz then that means something is bad.

Today me and (e:libertad) went to Griffis Sculpture Park which is near Eliictoville. It is just this massive park with trails and all along the trails there are these awesome sculptures, and then there are open areas that have like bigger huge ones. It is really hard to follow around kinda cuz seriuslyu there are at least 15 spots where the path splits into three differnt paths and it is hard to try and keep track of all the ones you went down already and which ones you didn't. I am sure we didn't see it all. Towards the end we got all the way back down thi sone hill and then saw a sign for a maze sculpture which i really wanted to see so we had to trek all the way back but it was relaly fun. It was kinda rainy like in a misty way so we were pretty wet and muddy when we were done but it was nice cuz it was still warm and also so there were really almost like noone else there. It was kinda crazy to be in this huge like park sanctuary and be alone. There is a five dollar entrance fee per person which is soooo worth it. I think a lot of the time it is an honor system though cuz when we were leaving there was noone ther eto take money just like a mahcine thing. It has sooo many scultpures, over 200 i guess.

My favorites were this one with all these huge people sclutputes around a lake and one was one the ground with like bushes growing over it and ic oudln't deicde if that was part of the look or it fell down. I also like tihs like castle one you could climb up that was like an optical illusion like you couldn't figure out how to get up even though it was just ladders and steps but it seeme dliek you were goidng down instead of up. It was really cool.

ALl in all i really recommend everyone go there, it was super dupa cool. Afterwards we went to the Elciotville brew pub for dinner whihc was not so good. I had a double peppercorn crusted hamburger with mushrooms, roasted red pepper, and blue cheese. It was HUGE, like insane huge bigger than my head. But itwasn't amazing and the homemade chiops thta came with it were not all that. I was not super impressed with th eplace. AND I WAS SO FREAKIN THIRSTY BUT THER WAS NO WAITNRESS TO BE FOUND> i had finished my first iced tea in like two seconds and she seriuosly never came back after our food was there and the stuff i got was kinda salty so i couldn't not enjoy it without a dirnk. I was tyring to slurp my empty glass as loud as possibel to draw ateentino but noone came until we were done and she brought the check. it really ruined it for me. I was dying of tihrst. I don't tihnk i would go back> Eliictoville though is really cute and I guess they are an awesome palce to be for oktoberfest.

and the bills became 4 and 0. All in all a great day!