The Randy Bacon Art Gallery has to be one of the coolest spaces I’ve seen. Everyone needs to check it out. It’s where we played last night, and it was incredible. Randy and Shannon Bacon were amazing too. They were so interested in us, and so all about creativity and art and beauty. Randy takes mostly portraits of people, and every single on of them was too beautiful for words.

They talked about how they are huge fans of Rob Bell, and how they just saw him on his “Everything is Spiritual” tour. They saw our “Love Wins” stickers and got a kick out of that too. We just talked with them a little and it was so apparent that when it comes down to it, they are just huge people lovers.

I hope to come back here very soon. I would love to talk with them more, and find out more about their lives.

Also, again, such amazing, incredible hospitality. I am overwhelmed most of the time with gratitude.

In other news, I bought “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie I am really excited to start reading it. Maybe we can be friends soon!

PS – I did 140 pushups yesterday! I can’t quite believe it myself. Maybe my goal of 200 pushups/day by the end of the tour is much too low. Maybe I’ll be doing 1000 pushups a day at the end. haha. We shall see.

We played at the Record Bar tonight. I wanted to write about it because I have to tell everyone to go check out a band called the ACB’s. HOLY CRAP! They are so cool and nerdy. They are straight up geek-rock, and when listening, they reminded me of Hot As Hector, my high school band. Man alive though! I forgot that rock is so much fun, which is weird, because I’m having a blast so far. It just reminded me that when it comes down to it, playing music is so much fun, and it should be kept that way, and anything that gets in the way of that is wrong.

We exchanged their CD with ours, and I’m sure we’ll rock out to it later on when we have some time on the road. I hope it’s not the last time that we play with them. I think in the future it would make such a stellar tour if we played with each other. I think they liked us a lot too.

There were more people at the record bar, and Reid said that the owner absolutely loved us, and thought we were the best band the come through there in 2 years.

I cannot stress enough how humbled I am to be a part of this amazing band, and how well received we are everywhere we go. Nights like these are so encouraging.

In other news, I did another 100 pushups! Woo! I’m so proud of myself. I was on a roll, so I decided to do 50 crunches too, which I think was a terrible idea in hindsight because I was weezing through our entire set with a huge cramp in my left side that I never usually get. Drumming for 45 minutes under searing hot colored lights is a great, sweat-inducing, cardio workout. I didn’t know if I would make it through the entire set to be honest. haha All in all it was a very successful night. I am feeling a bit better too as far as my throat goes.

Tomorrow! Off to Colombia, MO.

Another goal is to become a really good writer. Hopefully my blogging keeps up and helps me accomplish that as well.

Last night, we played cranium with our host family. It was a classic boys vs. girls battle. The girls ended up winning, but we made a serious comeback, and I thought that we had it there for a while.

It just goes to prove that girls are better at cranium, and boys don’t even care that much in the first place, and why do you have to rub it in, girls? I don’t even care! And no, I’m not crying–it was just raining on my face earlier. Besides, I don’t even care that we BARELY lost to you! You probably cheated anyway. In any case, it doesn’t even matter since it’s just a game, and I don’t even care about it since it’s fake. It’s not even a real game. Enough said.

I sure don’t care though.