Stick Shift Pro

Today was a full day of playing tourist...but this time in St. Louis instead of LA. I've actually gotten really good at it the past few weeks. You know, I'm well-practiced in taking obnoxious photographs, bugging other people to take pictures of me, complaining while waiting in line, eating large quantities of "local" food and sending mental death threats to the other tourists I see wearing competing college's shirts. But today, there was a small change in pace because I was with my family. This morning we got out of my Aunt's hair so she could get some work done (she practices appellate law from home) by going out site-seeing. First we went to the Anhauser-Busch brewery tour. St. Louis is where it was started and is still the headquarters for the company. It was really cool to tour the facility and see how the beer is made. It's quite the process! It takes a month just to make one small bottle of beer. At the end you get free beer so you can try some different flavors. My favorites were Bud Light Lime and Shocktop and my least favorite was the Ale. Then again, I knew that already. I did however take an adorable picture of me looking like an alcoholic surrounded by 8 glasses of beer. :)
After that we took a river cruise along the Mississippi river and listened to a really slow, depressing, monotone Park Ranger (yes, the Park Ranger was giving us a water cruise...possible reason for the terrible guide?) tell us all the exciting things there are to learn about the muddy river. I spent most of the time trying to come up with as many songs as possible that had to do with river cruises or St. Louis. Feel free to comment if you can come up with any and we'll see how I did. We spent a little while going through the St. Louis arch exhibit and checking out the massiveness of the arch. Then we headed back to the house and read for the afternoon. Coolest thing of the day was my cousin David taught me how to drive stick shift!! He graciously let me use his car to learn on and I think I've got it pretty well down. I'm still rocky shifting from N to 1st but I drove the fam to Steak N Shake and back tonight without stalling out so I consider that a success. Tomorrow he's taking me out on the highway so warn any loved ones you have in the area. :) The night ended as most do in the Proctor house, with a rousing game of cards. My uncle and I love Mormon Bridge so we played that for a while before all heading off to bed. My hours are really screwed up because everyone else is from a later time zone and I'm from an earlier one. Guess I'll have to be a geezer for the weekend and go to bed around 8pm my time. HA! Laaaaame! Okay, time for me to at least pretend to go to bed since my sister is trying to sleep with all the lights on in the room. She really is a geezer when it comes to bedtimes. Then again, she makes more money in a year waking up early than I'll make in a lifetime so I really can't say anything. I'll probably need to live on her couch eventually so it's all smiles and hugs for my favorite sissy!