So I’m in the great city of Minneapolis. It’s not snowing yet, but I have my hopes.

This is actually the view from my friends office. I could live with that. He says the nice thing about the Minneapolis skyline is you can take it all in in one viewing. It’s a skyline you can fold up and put in your pocket.

On my way out of Chicago to get here, I got on the highway to head out of town. Now the highway that I took to get to my hotel in Chicago was always advertised as “Ohare/Milwaukee” or something like that. In any case, I got on the highway that said “O’hare,” thinking I was doing the right thing. However, I soon realized that I was on O’hare’s little private highway, and I was going directly to the airport.

Here’s a picture I quick snapped off of Ohare’s private highway

I realized too late, and so I got in a left lane, thinking I could do a u-turn or something, but instead, the lane I got into led me directly to the parking garage. So I took a ticket, turned around and exited. Then I pulled into the little toll booth to pay for my parking. However, the lady at the toll booth was a good sport, and didn’t charge me for having the ticket for about 40 seconds. Her facial expression led me to believe that she also had apparently just been told the worst news she’d ever heard.

So despite almost paying $2 to turn around, I made it to Minnesota (or as a store in the Mall of America is called “Minnesot-AH!” I didn’t get it either) and promptly got sick. However, I’m still enjoying myself, despite my sore throat and cough, which I hope will be gone by Saturday when I play my concert. And I’ve already been hit up twice by a guy who says he’s a Katrina victim. Since I’ve seen him around twice now on two different nights with the same shpiel, I’m starting to have my doubts.

In other news, I am currently sitting in one of the coolest coffee shops I’ve ever been to. They have fantastic coffee and an even better selection of beer. How cool is that? Oh, and free internet access. Big plus there too.

Spent most of the day yesterday at the Mall of America, all of which (according to my friend Beth) was apparently created on a dare –

“I’ll bet you can’t make a whole store out of this!”
“Oh yeah?”

We also got to see a Hispanic Dance Group:

which was basically just a very slow strip-show with a lot of wooping and iee-yieee-yieee’s (if that makes sense). Every time the women in the group came out, they were wearing less clothing than before. I was betting they’d be in thongs by the end of it, but we didn’t stay around long enough to find out.

Well, today I switch temporary residences, and will surely have some more stories later. Hopefully this stupid bug I’ve got will be dead by that time.