opportunity rocks

Getting a second chance at something is just a beautiful thing. The rock and roll gods smiled down upon me once again; Scotty and I scored some tickets to Styx and Boston for Tuesday night. I made sure to snap an obnoxious amount of pictures, trying to make up for the ones I didn't take the weekend before.

Yes, Jonathan was still out of town and yes, he was fine with me having another platonic date with Scotty. Love that man o' mine.

At the Doobies concert, we paid ten bucks a pop and ended up in the sixth row. This time we paid sixty and this was our view.

Right in front of the railing? Are you kidding me? I resigned myself to my fate and attempted to eat the sub-par chicken strips I paid the equivalent of my 401K for. Scotty disappears, hell-bent on taking care of this unfavorable situation. An usher approaches me ten minutes later and says, "Ma'am, we have new seats for you and your husband if you'd follow me."


Wait, husband? I don't even want to know what he did to get these (way, way better) seats at the front of the balcony. Later he told me he pitched a fit at the front desk and said he wanted to know how he was supposed to explain these seats to his old lady. Whatever. I was just grateful, for the second time in as many weeks, that I didn't have to break the law to get a better view of Tommy Shaw and whoever else was left of Styx.


Styx was just incredible. I was wishing I was down front again like I was last time, but that would have set me back almost two hundred bucks. The sound was great and they put on a really polished, seamless show. I got to hear some songs that I already loved like "Come Sail Away" and hear previously unknown ones like "Lorelei" and "Miss America" that are now new favorites.




Is it strange that I think Tommy Shaw is kinda hot? You know, for 54? He is really short, yeah, and his cheeks are kinda poochy like he just had a root canal, but otherwise? Could I have a show of hands, please? No takers? Okay. On to Boston.


Boston's lead singer commited suicide about a year or so ago and now they have this new guy they found on Myspace that was working at a Home Depot. I thought they sounded great (I made sure to get a video of "Amanda") but there was one hurdle I just couldn't get over, even from the balcony.

Dude. What's with the black pants and bright white Nikes? They look like the ones my grandmother wears when she goes for a walk, not the ensemble you put on when you're about to perform with one of the greatest rock bands ever. It drove me nuts the entire evening. They were great otherwise. I didn't think they had the chemistry with each other and the audience that Styx had, but I suppose that is to be expected given the situation. All in all, a fabulous evening with amazing music, crappy food, and a good friend.

And I brought my all-important camera so I can show 80 blurry photos to people who weren't there and couldn't care less. Such as Jonathan, who made it home safe and sound last night. If anyone does want to see the blurry videos I took, they will be on YouTube (username: amandathejeweler) here in the next couple of days.

Journey will be putting on a show here in July...I'm already preparing myself.

the bachelorette

Well, I'm single again. Sort of. Jonathan has been on a tour with a wind ensemble playing different venues around the southeast while I stayed home, being a slave to my career and taking care of our co-dependent cat. His departure last week reminded me of the fact that I'm just not all that clingy or needy when it comes to relationships.

There were no tears the day he left or fear that some unforseen tragedy would occur, just some "I love yous" before we parted in different directions.

Part of me feels sort of guilty for enjoying myself whenever he goes out of town. He usually drives home to visit his folks for a week around Thanksgiving and again during Christmas, so this is not the first time we've been separated. He leaves and I feel like the world is my oyster. I'm not closing down any bars or getting into trouble mind you, I just get to watch my Sopranos reruns in peace instead of having to sit through Man vs Wild and watch Bear Grylls drink his own pee. There are no three-hour negotiations on what we are having for dinner (this usually results in a trip to Sonic or toasted cheese sandwiches), I can have all the Waffle House and Popeye's Chicken my cholesterol can handle. I can troll around on YouTube without having to hand over the laptop so he can check his stock portfolio or the weather on his hunting lease.

It's the little things like this that I enjoy so. But sometimes I think that I am too independent. He tends to make his daily phone call when I am at a friend's house or in the middle of a good movie, so I sort of blow him off. My part of our conversations mainly consists of "yeah", "uh-huh", "work sucks", "love you babe", and "talk to you later". Poor guy, he deserves better. I wonder if he would rather me whine about when he's coming home instead of telling him it's okay to stop and see his folks for a day or two on his way back. It's not that I don't need him or miss having him around, I just ache for peace and quiet whenever I can get it. I'm kind of the same way at work.

The radio is always blaring classic rock or 80's heavy metal in the shop and people think it's so strange that I turn off the music when I'm working alone. In addition to Def Leppard, there is the constant buzz of the ultrasonic cleaners, the hum of the blower at the polishing station, the same 20 questions being asked to me over and over again, and the conversation amongst my employees regarding the episode of Family Guy they all watched last night. I swear if there were no South Park, Robot Chicken, Aquateen Hunger Force, or Family Guy, no one in that shop would have a word to say to each other.

I guess I'm just searching for some inner peace. I am sometimes envious of my single friends, the way they just go through life without having to consult anyone else about what to eat, what to do, or where to go. But ultimately, for someone like me who gets easily bored and lonely, this way of life is really only good for a few days. Usually by the time he gets back, I've worked all my wild oats out of my system and I'm ready to be wife-y again.

However today is not that day. It is Saturday, I am off work, and I shall life my life to the absolute fullest. There will be laundry and dishes washed, but only because I have neither socks to wear nor spoons to eat my Coco Puffs with. There will be cuddle time with baby kitty and the Sopranos episode where Carmela gets fed up with Tony's affairs and kicks him out. Oh, that's a good one. No sitting through Band of Brothers or Deadliest Catch, no trip to Bass Pro Shop.

Love and miss you honey, but you can take your time coming home. ;)

listen to the music

There's an old "Treehouse of Horror" episode of The Simpsons where Homer is trying to fix his toaster and manages to turn it into a time machine. He goes back to the prehistoric era and accidentally kills a mosquito, irreparably altering the outcome of the future.

Right now I'm trying to convince myself that if time travel were possible, minute changes such as these could actually change life as we know it. Had I brought my camera to the concert last night, the whole evening may have turned out just okay as opposed to the UNBELIEVABLY SUPER AWESOME OMG ARE YOU KIDDING ME experience that it ended up being. The same goes for the presence of a certain blanket and the absence of my husband.

A couple of months ago, my friend Scotty and I decided to check out a concert featuring The Doobie Brothers and Chicago on Father's Day. He was a Doobie fan, I was a Chicago fan, and general admission was ten bucks. It was a no-brainer. I was fully prepared to spend several hours sitting in the grass in 100 degree heat surrounded by hundreds of old stoners trying to resurrect 1974 with large amounts of pot.

Now Scotty is a concert expert. He's been sneaking into concerts and um, "upgrading" his seats to much better ones since he was fourteen. I sat on the lawn and wrangled with my moral values regarding this while he scoped out the arena for open seats. The problem, however, was the monstrosity of a quilt that I had brought for us to sit on. Kind of hard to sneak into the seating area when you are hauling what is the equivalent of a twin sized mattress.

But, heh heh heh...

As I folded it up to make it as tight and inconspicuous as any joint those old hippies could roll, we were approached by some guy offering to give us some extra tickets he had. I could have cared less if they were good or not, I was just relieved that I wouldn't be worried about my everlasting soul while sitting in someone else's $35.00 seat.

Dude. They were for the SIXTH ROW!!!!!! No kidding! And the show was incredible. I screamed my head off, jumped around in the aisle like a fool, and sang as loudly as I could for the whole show. Part of me wishes that Jonathan wasn't out of town then, but like Homer learned the hard way, things might have turned out differently. Had I not brought that ridiculous quilt, we probably would have already snatched some marginally better seats only to get bounced back to the lawn 20 minutes into the show. And if Ticketmaster's website hadn't incorrectly stated, "NO CAMERAS OF ANY KIND", I would have brought mine and been walking around, snapping pictures of the goofy pothead guys and the dried-up old cougars that made up about 90% of the audience. And good ole Bob from Louisiana would have given those tickets to someone who would have appreciated them less.

*Sigh*

So I have to fill this post with long, grammatically incorrect sentences and not one picture. I'm actually really upset about seeing such a great show with my buddy and having only my memories as souvenirs, which tragically fade with time. But the whole day was a super cool adventure and an unforgettable experience with no photos is better than missing out on it entirely.

That episode of The Simpsons ends with Homer finding a seemingly normal alternate reality, only people eat like frogs, zipping out their tongues to get their food. He resigns and says that this is "close enough". I suppose I should quit kicking myself for ditching the camera and agree with Homer on this one.

the neverending vacation slideshow continues...

Strangely enough, one of the things we enjoyed most during our trip was visiting a local macadamia nut factory. Who knew? After grazing their free sample area like it was a country buffet, we left with fifty bucks worth of flavored nuts. Fifty dollars. I didn't know we were such mac nut junkies. Oh and the blue car in the picture? A 2008 Dodge Avenger. Not recommended. My lawn mower has more horsepower.

Ok, here's where I'm gonna just give you the reader's digest version of the rest of the trip. My reasoning for this is a) there are literally about 400 more pictures in addition to the ones I've posted and this is seriously becoming a chore and b) most people don't give a rip about looking at other people's vacation pictures. Unless you're my mother and I promise I'll bring my laptop home with me in July. So here goes. i...

saw lots of waterfalls,

hiked until I wanted to die,

ate lots of sub-par food at the resort,

illegally cooked some fish on the beach,

saw some ancient ruins and rock carvings, and

shut my head in the car door (literally).

Well that just saved me about three hours. Oh, and for all those out there who were sorely disappointed that I did not post the gross video of the fish, I posted it on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Just do a search under "amandathejeweler" and it will take you to both fishing videos.