An Evening with Neil...

So remember yesterday when it started to snow really hard and the roads got all slippery and it was basically a huge mess? Remember how most of you were probably staying at home, saying "I will take care of ______ (fill in blank w/applicable task requiring driving) later" to yourselves because you're smart like that? Yes, well...I am not that smart. In fact, I waited just long enough for the roads to get really crappy before I climbed in my car and headed out into the muck...why did I do this, you ask? My willingness came from the knowledge that I had a ticket to see the guy whose music I was listening to practically before I was even born:

Yes, that's right...Neil Diamond. Um, he's a bit older now. A lot older, actually. Anyhoo, we all ("we" being myself, my little sister Kaj, and her friends Tom and Emily) met up at my parents' house so we could carpool to the marvelous event that was the Neil Diamond concert. We had a rought start...when Tom's car got stuck in the snow after backing out of the driveway, us girls got out to push and he tried to kill us by "forgetting" to take the car out of reverse...but once we'd all screamed (simultaneously) and he put it into drive, we managed to free the car of its icy prison, jumped back in while it was still moving (we felt so cool), and hit the road. After picking Kaj's hubby Mike up from work, we headed for the Trax station in Sandy where we were supposed to meet Tom's date Kelly. Our awesome plan was to ride Trax up to downtown and then eat dinner before the show. But when we got to the station, Kelly was nowhere to be found. After missing the first train, Tom called her and learned that she was at the next stop up (who knew there was more than 1 stop in Sandy? Um, obviously not us) so we caught the next train and told her where we were so she could hop on. We pulled up to her stop but the dang doors wouldn't open, so then we had to get off at the next stop after that and wait for another train to come so she could get on that one and blah blah blah. We thought this was a good idea, but for some reason there was a huge delay in between trains and we had to wait outside FOREVER. Our toes were numb, we were starving and we were getting really gumpy. FINALLY we were able to all meet up and away we went to the Energy Solutions Arena. By the time we actually got inside we only had 10 minutes to spare (no time for dinner obviously), but we managed to grab nachos and soda (I don't think I've ever inhaled food so quickly in my entire life) and settled in our seats...which were pretty much behind the stage. We didn't care though, because even though we would be staring at the back of Neil, we were still close enough to see the back of him really well. :-)

The concert started, Neil stepped out onto the stage in his sparkly black shirt and all was right with the world. I was so sad that cameras weren't allowed because that left me with only my cell phone to document the experience. Anyway, here's Neil singing "Love on the Rocks" to us.

If we got tired of looking at the back of him, there was this lovely screen to our left so we could actually see his face...I can't remember what he's singing in this one but it could be "Holly Holy."

At one point Neil (compassionate soul that he is) turned around to those of us sitting behind him and said, "What did they tell you to get you to buy those seats? That they were close to the stage? Those are some really bad seats..." (Kaj I thought they were awesome seats) and then he came and sang to us.

All in all, it was one of the best concerts I've ever been to. My favorite part was when he sang "Forever in Blue Jeans" and "Sweet Caroline" (we even got him to sing an extra chorus of that one) and then of course, his encore when he changed from his sparkly black shirt to a sparkly red one and sang "America" for us. Awwwweeeesssooommmmmme. Yeah, I think there's a very good chance I could die now, and not even be that upset about it. Say what you will about the cheesiness of Neil Diamond, but if I could still put on one hell of a show at his age (the place was packed!), I would think I was pretty amazing too.