martinzoo

Well, it’s Tuesday, August 19th………….. And we’ve been back since REALLY late on Saturday night……..try 1:45 am. Ok, technically that’s Sunday morning, but you knew what I meant. We had a rough car ride back from Florida, so we spent ALL of Sunday vegetating. Is there such a thing as “ship lag”? Well, if there isn’t, there should be. Because we all felt it. In fact, when I went to bed on Saturday night (Sunday morning), I could swear that the bed was slightly rocking me to sleep, just like on the ship. I loved it.

Yesterday was Monday, and we spent all morning and afternoon getting Jabem ready to go back to college. His other room mates moved in at the beginning of August, but Jabem had to wait until yesterday because of the cruise. Awww! Poor baby! We were supposed to move all his stuff in to the house on the 3rd of August, but when we got ready to go, we were informed by the landlord that the house wasn’t ready yet. What the heck? The boys paid for ALL of August. Why is it not ready? When we went to check it out, it was a royal mess! There were lots of broken railings, doors, floors, appliances. Good grief, I’m scared. Anyway, we got all his stuff packed up yesterday, arrived in the city of Richmond with furniture, clothes, all-valuable computer, and many personal items to turn this crazy all-guy five bedroom house into a home for Jabem and his room mates. And guess what we discovered when we got there? NO ELECTRICITY! The power company couldn’t turn on the electricity because the landlord had the keys to the back yard, where the meter gets read. So these boys had been struggling to coordinate between landlord, Realtor, and power company since the beginning of August! I only ask ONE question……. Where are these boys parents? I would never let my child live in the middle of the city with NO electricity, windows WIDE open, and the freakin’ doors are still broken! Two of the room mates live hundreds of miles from here, so they had no choice but to stay in these primitive conditions. So I told them all that they should gather their stuff and come back to our place last night, which they did. And today my dh is going to raise a little hell on the telephone! Pardon my french!

After we left the boys’ house we went to see my favorite rocker, Bruce Springsteen, at the Richmond Coliseum. We had unbelievable seats, and I was so psyched to be so close and see my fave. There was NOT ONE single person between my seat and the stage (except stage roadies)! That’s how good my seats were. We were a little behind him, as you can see from the pictures, but he came over to our side of the stage several times. And he even nodded at me. Yes he did! Everybody else was doing the fist-pumping move in the air to the beat of his music, but when he came over to us, I was the only one who gave him a real wave…. a very energetic wave…. yes it was….. but that’s why he noticed. And then ….. he nodded…………. Sigh!

And it WAS really cool, but the Coliseum had to screw us over somehow, and they did it with the sound. My man was muddy all night. The bass on the drums was so over amped that I felt my heart booming along with it. The lyrics were so hard to discern, even if you knew most of the songs. And I’m telling you that the Boss was really in the house last night. He worked that crowd like a master! He brought three kids out of the audience to hug and sing along with him. He gave high fives and palm slaps to just about everyone on the front row, and he took signs from audience members who had suggestions for the next songs. Bruce even trusted the audience with his life and crowd surfed a bit! Jealous? Oh yes! I would have loved to have been right there when he lay on those audience members hands…….. Wow! We heard lots of his oldies, but goodies, and all his new stuff too. He had an eight song encore (who else does that!?). And even brought up another local legend from the audience to sing along with him, Robbin Thompson.

Here are my favorite pictures from the night. Shhhhhhhh! Don’t tell! We weren’t supposed to take pictures. And from my vantage point I was in double danger. Especially when the local cops decided to camp out right by our seats to watch the show themselves.

This was towards the end of the show when we were all idolizing him……… sigh! I borrowed this picture from our newspaper’s website.

This was my view from my seat. Dh and I figured he was about 25-30 feet away.

I love this picture. Look at the standard Bruce grimace on his face. Such fierceness!!

Great night!

Now, I’ll get started on my cruise posts. They are gonna take a while because the cruise was just that awesome and I want to do it justice. So, it may take a few days to get my posts finished. But it will be worth it. Because in the end, you can say that you came right along with us. Ok?