Now onto December 3rd, 2004. My original idea was to have Chris come up on Friday night, and then Saturday we would have time to get some stuff done that I needed to do. We talked Friday night, and he said he would come up first thing Saturday, around 8-9 am. I could live with that. I just wanted to be on the road by noon to hit Frankenmuth and have dinner with Kristen. I told him to call me around 7, just to give me an idea where he was at. No call at 7, so I wait, patiently mind you, until 8. I call his cell, no answer, so I left a message to have him call me when he got the message. More waiting, and I call again, still no answer.
A small sliver of annoyance starts forming in my head.
He calls me, he left the phone in the computer room, didn�t hear the ring, blah blah blah. He didn�t get up and going like he had hoped, so he was trying to get on the road between 9-9:30.
The sliver is has formed by now, but still rather small.
I�m hanging around the house, putzing on the computer, talking with mom, just waiting. I call him around 11 to see where he�s at, HE WAS JUST LEAVING GRAND RAPIDS. I was so pissed. Which I shouldn�t have been, he�s late for EVERYTHING, why should Saturday be any different!! So I�m pissed and annoyed, I figure I have a couple of hours to kill before he gets there, I head over to mom and dad�s, to see Baby Girl. Bro wanted to go to some car show in Birch Run, so they got to watch Baby Girl.
I have to drive by Bro�s house on the way to mom�s, and Bro is home. I stop there, thinking that Frankenmuth is on the way to Birch Run, he could drop me off, and Chris could pick me up there. Well, something�s wrong with Bro�s Explorer, so he�s not going to go, and even if he did, he would have to go out of his way to drop me off. Just being a real asshole.
Chris also asked me to go to Kohl�s and find a couple of shirts for him. He had a $20 dollar coupon that was going to expire that day, and he didn�t want it to go to waste. �Well, since I have the time� I think sarcastically to myself.
Chris finally shows up at� 2:15. So I can pretty much kiss going to Frankenmuth goodbye. I�m still hoping for dinner with Kristen though. Of course, we had to stop at the Nextel store, since his phone wasn�t charging, and then back to Kohl�s so he could spend 2o minutes trying on the shirts I picked out, because he was sure he could fit into an XL instead of an XXL. Well, he was wrong, I was right!! I shouldn�t be to smug, I did get a new pair of shoes out of the ordeal. But that still doesn�t make up for the fact that he was late.
We are on the road by 3:15. We were able to meet Kristen for dinner and Jimmy Johns around 4:45, and back on the road by 5:15. We still have 45 minutes to get to the Joe. Cool, I�m pretty happy by now. We were very lucky in the fact that we were able to park in the Joe�s parking garage, which was really close! We get inside, grab out loot, which I got a baseball hat, 2006 calendar, and a Fire Dancer sticker. Chris got a DMB shirt, which was too small, but what do I know?
There was a opening act, So Alive, and I wasn�t that thrilled about them. The first song was good, but the rest, I was, �Eh.� They played from 7-7:40. The roadies got the stage set up and at 8:30 the lights went off, and the arena erupted with screams and clapping. Dave had barely gotten on the stage, when four groups of people around us lit up the pot.
Funny little side note about my brain. I was thinking, inside venue, non-smoking for sure, that all the smokers were going to be shit out of luck. Apparently they don�t care where they were at, they were going to get stoned.





Back to the concert. It was awesome. I stood most of the time, dancing to the music, singing along with Dave. Which, was what most of the people were doing! He played and played and played. We were treated to extended versions of Two Step, Jimi Thing, What Would You Say, Lover Lay Down, Warehouse, which was awesome in that on the Live at Folsom Field CD, when they first start playing the song, the people would yell, �Whoa� which is what we started doing. Very cool. They also extended Smooth Rider kicked up the bluesy feel of it. Stay (Wasting Time) was roughly 10-12 minutes in length too. My dear friend Brendan made me some DMB CD�s a while ago, and one of the songs he had on there was Charlie Brown Theme. They did that Saturday night! It was so cool! They played for three hours and it was the best three hours I could have spent on Saturday.
Dave tells us goodbye and good night, and they walk off the stage, and everyone starts clapping and screaming again. No by this time, I�m getting a little hoarse, but I scream away, because I wanted to hear �Ants Marching� or �Crash Into Me�. People had their lighters lit, or if the didn�t have a lighter, they opened up their cell phones, so the arena was awash in flames and blue cell phones. It was actually really pretty. I got a little veklept at that moment. Finally, after what seemed like forever, they came back out for an encore! Alas, I didn�t get to hear my two favorite songs by them. Which was the only small disappointment of the whole concert for me.
We left while they were playing, �Old Dirt Hill (Bring That Beat Back)� and as we walked out, it was snowing.




Damn weather never said anything about snowing, and there was 2-3 inches on the ground. Shit. I had told Chris before we went to Detroit, that I really wanted to come home. So we headed out. There were several cars off the road as we were going north, and there was a major accident in the south bound lanes. We�re talking two fire trucks, 6 police cars, an ambulance, and two wreckers.
A couple of times Chris was saying how it wasn�t getting any better, and he couldn�t see the lines on the highway. But he just kept going, and we finally made it home by 3am. He crashed right away, but I stayed up for a bit. When I finally did sleep, the cats woke me at 6, and then I got up again at 9. I shoveled the driveway, and did some stuff on the computer, and tried to fall back asleep again, but mom called. Chris got up around 11 and he mentioned going out for lunch. So I called Zeke, and he came over, we ordered Bennigans and watched the Lions get their asses kicked again. There was one point where I curled up in a blanket, and fell asleep. For how long, I have no idea, but the guys thought it was pretty funny that I was snoring. Chris left around 4 and Zeke stuck around until 7:30. I actually fell asleep again, but Zeke didn�t mind, he was cool with me being a bad hostess!
So the last two posts have been my last week! I know, rather long, but have you ever known me not to be long winded? I do have more to tell you, but that can wait for tomorrow!