Elton John and Billy Joel

Wow, what a great weekend. Actually, it was a great week. First let me tell you about Sarah's hurdles meet. Unfortunately, most of her meets are going to be on Thursdays so I will miss them because of the temple. I think I will have to look at the schedule a pick a couple to go to. Anyway, this week they competed against Valley Center. At the gun they were off and a Valley Center girls was ahead of Sarah. As they came into the finish line Sarah was gaining and as they went over the last hurdle they were neck and neck. Unfortunately because Sarah was pushing so hard she lost her rhythm and hit the last hurdle with her trailing knee. Down she went but being the athlete that she is she was immediately on her feet but because of her momentum she went down again. She immediately tried to get up again but down she went a third time. At this point she totally gave up on trying to get to her feet and she literally crawled across the finish line for a second place finish. The amazing thing is that she got 52.0 seconds and her PR is 51.9 seconds. I think it is safe to say that she would have beat her PR and she is convinced that she would have won if she'd only been able to stay on her feet.

Friday night Ben surprised his mother. Sharley had to come out to San Diego for a shower for her friend so Ben decided to come also. He showed up at the door with a rose and then he proceeded to make dinner for all of us. It was great. He made us Chili Relleno's. He learned how to make them on his mission and boy were they good. Yum.

So this weekend was the Elton John / Billy Joel concert that I got Lisa tickets for at Christmas. We decided to make it a weekend and go and visit Brandon and Serene. To make the weekend even better, we found out that this weekend Brandon had his Moot Appellate Court. That is a fancy way of saying that they pretended to defend an appeal in court. We got to watch him and he did a wonderful job. I can really see him in a trial room. We met one of his professors and she told us that all of the professors think Brandon will be a great trial lawyer. I think I agree. I could tell that she really likes him.

So it was time to head for our concert. Because we know LA traffic can be brutal we left two hours early. It wasn't enough. It took us a full hour to go the first twenty miles and it took us over half an hour to go the last two miles. We were a half hour late. Even after we got to the Honda Center I could tell that parking was going to be a long way off so I dropped Lisa off in the middle of the road and she ran between traffic and went to her seat. Don't worry, she was in no danger since traffic was not moving. I finally got parked about a mile away and the parking attendant told me not to worry, they concert was late getting started. We don't know how much we missed but I don't think it was too much. So packing my camera and a pair of binoculars I made my way to the center.

While I was still a long way off I could hear the band playing and it was loud even from where I was. I knew then I was in trouble, I don't like loud music. I finally got to the ticket booth and as they searched my camera case they told me that I couldn't take my camera in. I said "what?!?". They told me that camera's with detachable lenses aren't allowed. I was ticked. I could have had same very spectacular pictures but I guess that is the very reason it wasn't allowed. Darn. I didn't really want to go all the way back to my car so the guy took pity on me and told me where I could check the camera. I then made my way to our seats which were literal as far away from the stage as you could get but boy was it a spectacular view. The isle was the exact dead center of the building and if the stage was above the net on one end of the arena we were the very back row above the opposite net and Lisa was the 11th seat in. We had a great view of the entire building and with the binoculars we could see the people very clearly. Once I was inside of the building the atmosphere of the whole thing kind of took over and the loud music didn't bother me.

I don't know what I was expecting but Elton John is a fat old man and Billy Joel is a fat old bald man. They were both great to listen to however and listening to them took me back many years. I really do like a lot of their songs. Some of my favorites I put in the play list at the beginning of this blog. All in all it was a very fun evening and I think Lisa enjoyed it. I'm sure she would have more fun with someone who is into the music as much as she is but I had fun and it is just good to go out with my wife. I did take some pictures with my treo. You can't see much in them but I hope you can get a bit of an idea of the atmosphere that was present.

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Studies show that your brain function drops off significantly when you are even just a little bit dehydrated.

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