I will not expound on my weekend at large, because most of it was quite boring (aside from Matty coming home). The highlight was Saturday night when we went to the BareNaked Ladies Holiday Concert. My uncle and aunt had given Matt, Kelly and myself tix for Christmas presents and we got to go with them and my cousins for a very very good show. They played loads of stuff from their holiday album and plenty of the old faves and a new track that has yet to be released. Their paticular brand of witty hijinks and baudy humor were interwoven throughout the show to my great delight. One odd highlight was that we were situated so that we could see a signer signing the concert (including song's lyrics) to someone in the audience. She was really cool to watch and now I know ASL for “credit card” and “light” and a few other things.
Odd must go with BNL concerts, because the lady in front of us certainly fit the category. We can only assume that she cultivated her love of BNL from their song, Shake Your Rump (well I suppose this is less of a song than it is a spontaneous BNL concert rap) because that was all she could do all night long. Not in time with the music. Not seemingly for any specific purpose … just unbridled BNL excitment. I was a little worried she was having a seizure once or twice, but I'm glad she enjoyed the concert so much.
Also in the category of odd highlights were the laughs we got from our parking situation. We waited in line to turn the corner to get to the parking garage for … oh i dunno, 20 minutes say? So then we turn the corner … it's full. Crap! The convention center next door was hosting a holiday party for Ball Aerospace and they had a sign saying parking this way … so we followed the line of annoyed theatre and BNL concert patrons across the sidewalk and into the convention center garage. Up up up on a HUGE spiral driveway to the top of the garage and park, not really knowing if we can park there, but we were desperate to get inside and not be too late. No ticket to take as you enter, rather you have to go to a little machine and pay and stick the ticket on your dashboard. Long queue. So we queue up and just as we do, one of the guys clearing the lot of snow tells us “Ball Aerospace employees don't need to pay for parking.”
“How can you tell who works for Ball Aerospace?” one gentleman asks.
“Well sir,” says the snow removal guy, “It's an honor system.”
“Honor system,” we chuckle as we get into the elevator. Die hard BNL fans have no honor when it means standing in a long queue to pay $8 for parking on a non-covered, non-heated, snow covered roof of the convention center our tax dollars paid to build so we can be late for a BNL concert.
This of course precipitated many good jokes (or maybe you had to be there) about our employment at Ball Aerospace (“We make planes right?” “No rockets.” “No … canning jars.”) and our fake names (“John from marketing.” “Susie from accounting.” “Hilda from HR.”)
So down the elevator, out the door, play chicken with the light rail run like hell in the cold and concert it was. Very sadly, we missed most of the opening act, which usually I am fine with. But in this case, what we saw of the opening act I liked. It was a band called The Levees and my cousin, Ryan, wrote me an email and let me know that Adam Gardner, from one of my fave bands, Guster, is the lead singer. And I missed them!! Quel domage! Well I know what I'll be doing later tonight … obviously downloading some LeeVee music, even though I'm not Jewish.
PS. Check out the new Christmas theme I made. Maybe I should do Hanukkah next?
mmmm…festive