Birthday trip, Friday afternoon

I've got on my new shirt, Dan's wearing his Aerosmith tee (which is really a Rock'n'Roller Coaster tee), and we're driving the oh-so-hip Uplander. We take the back way to Music City Centre -- which I discovered last Black Friday because traffic was so horrible we couldn't even get on the strip -- and I'm pretty sure we followed Shawn Haygood into the lot. Found a parking space, which was difficult, and had Dan predicting that the show was sold out and therefore we wouldn't have any fun.

Which is ridiculous. This is the same man who told me yesterday that he enjoys shows more when they're full because the performers feed off the audience. I think Dan just likes to predict gloom and doom when we're at MCC.

We're walking into the theater and there's this guy unloading his truck. I hit Dan and I'm like, "Dude, that's Tim. We email. I think we're buds." Dan gives me his best "whatevah" look.

We go in and Dan tries to convince me to use the cyber cafe and check my email. There's like 20 minutes before the show starts and he's asking me to play on the computer. This is the only time in the world I don't want to do that. We have a laptop, and our hotel had WiFi, I just hadn't brought the laptop. This was my chance to prove to Dan that I could go for 3 days without the internet. Which is silly, because I went for 2 weeks when we went to Disney earlier this summer. But I thought I was proving a point.

Finally, I convince him to go in and sit down in the theater. On the way in, there's an older couple ahead of me. Mr. Haygood (the father of Tim and the rest of the group) is taking tickets. He's extremely nice to that couple, and passes them off to Adam (of catfish fame) to be seated. Then he takes our tickets and tells me that we have to be nice to older people because one day we'll be older ourselves. Hey, if he can be young, so can I. Makes me laugh. He just tells me where to sit, which is in the front row, on the left side. I can find it myself.

As we're sitting there, I dig my camera out of my bag. I'm all about taking photos at shows. Turn on the camera and realize my batteries are dead. Not to worry, I brought extras. By now, the show is starting. I pop in the new batteries, turn on the camera and... yup, these are dead, too.

Is it wrong to admit that I was secretly a bit excited by this? There are times when I feel I spend big chunks of my life looking out through the viewfinder and not actually participating and enjoying. So no batteries for the camera meant I got to actually sit back, relax and enjoy the first half of the show.

Which I did. Enjoy. I'll be silly and admit that I was so excited, I was physically bouncing in my seat. I had to keep one hand on Dan to ground myself.

In preparation for writing this little episode, I went back a year and found my blog post that I wrote after seeing the Haygoods for the first time. (By the way, I didn't even really like the show all that much the first time I saw it. I thought it was OK, but I didn't plan to go see it again.) To quote myself:

That night, we saw The Haygoods, and dang, those boys are total eye candy. Oh, they sang and danced pretty good, too. But really... eye candy.

Which just cracks me up. Because I still think they sing and dance pretty good, but hey... I was doing this eye candy thing a long time ago. In honor of that, I put up Dominic Haygood over there in my sidebar. This guy has abundant charisma. I can't even describe his pull, and photos really don't capture it. You've got to be sitting there, feeling it. I always joke that if the man started a church, I'd be a member in a heartbeat.  I totally buy what he's selling. He's really got that something you just can't describe. So he's over there for the week. And now maybe he'll smile when I'm trying to take his picture. (That photo is from March, btw. It's one of my favorites.)

Is this too long? My word, it is. I've written 11 paragraphs and the show hasn't even started. OK, I'll stop here. Tomorrow, I'll actually review the show. I promise.