Long Day, Capped By Dolores and Friends
22 Nov
The concert on Friday night was fantastic. I was excited for the show and I was not disappointed. The events of the day leading up to the concert were a bit strange, but at the end of the night, a fun time was had.
The day started off by P showing up at our back door. We weren’t sure if she was coming in the morning, so S scrambled out of bed to greet her and her dog, Bud. I followed out of bed shortly after and made my way downstairs. P hadn’t realized that S and I were taking the day off work. I have to admit that I wasn’t too keen on having to deal with Bud all day; what with his incessant need to pee and constant staring.
I let P know which streetcar she should take to get to work and she was on her way right around the time I returned from taking the dogs on a walk. Back inside the house, I checked my e-mail and saw that the girl who’s phone I found had written me back. She thanked me for finding it and getting in touch with her. She said she’d call me that morning to arrange to pick it up.
Mid-morning, my phone rang and it was the girl letting me know she was in a car heading to work. I told her since she was on her way, she should swing by the house to pick it up. She agreed that was a good idea and so I gave her directions. About thirty minutes later, she was at the house and I gave her the blackberry back. She was in her early 20’s , with dark hair and eyeliner and a nose ring. Two minutes after arriving, she was back in her boyfriend’s car and on her way.
Back at my computer, I saw that there was a message in my inbox from my host letting me know that the domain transfer I was working on had finally gone through. With that, I took to transferring the site files to the server. I checked out the URL and found that the pages were showing up with the code. I had a look at the structure and everything looked fine so I contacted technical support to ask for help. It turns out that my host is linux based which didn’t support the .asp files I had set-up. I had to re-save the files as .php and go through each page to change all of the links.
In the midst of all of that, I also discovered that the client’s domain-specific e-mail was no longer working so I went about setting up her e-mail again. I called her to let her know what was going on with the site but ended up leaving a message instead.
While I was in the midst of the web site stuff, Bud was getting on S’s nerves with the constant staring and groaning. Finally, after the fifth trip outside, S got fed up and decided to retreat to the basement. “That’s it! I’ve had it with the staring and I’m not dealing with it,” she said as she collected her computer and made her way downstairs. When I got the web site stuff under control, I too made my way downstairs.
The rest of the day was spent with me in front of the computer working on the site and S reading e-books on her laptop. After lunch, we showered and got ready for our night out. P would be arriving at our place around 5:30 so we planned on going for dinner out in the neighbourhood before heading over to the concert.
After P arrived, we finished getting ready and made our way out. “Let’s try that place over there!” P suggested as she spotted a restaurant across the street. Neither S or I had any interest in the restaurant, but we walked over to it so that P could check out the menu. After having a glance, we decided to continue on to our original destination. But not before P stopped at another restaurant to check out its menu. “How long have you lived here?” P asked S.
S replied that it’d been a year and P began chastising her for not checking out more of the neighbourhood’s restaurants. “I would have checked it out by now,” P chimed.
“Right, because you’re so adventurous in trying things out,” S replied sarcastically. P practically needs to be dragged out of her house to do anything, let alone try anything new.
P was in a particularly antagonistic mood and it was affecting S’s mood, I could tell. The antagonism continued in the restaurant when S brought up P’s bailing on our dinner plans with K on Saturday night. P immediately got her back up and started going on about not wanting to be out four nights in a row and how she wasn’t the one who changed the plans. S didn’t let her get away with it and they bantered back and forth a few more minutes.
Dinner arrived and the subject was dropped as we tucked into our meals. Things continued on a calmer note until I announced dibs on the aisle seat for the concert. We got three tickets, the first one being at the beginning of the aisle. “Oh no!” P started, “I called dibs on it way back.”
“When?!” S snapped back.
“When we got the tickets!” P replied.
“Oh please, that conversation never happened and even if it did, you wouldn’t remember it,” S said. (P has a terrible memory.)
“Look at you defending Liz again,” P teased, annoyingly. “Fine, she can have the aisle seat.”
I could tell S was fuming but she let it go. Not long after, we left the restaurant and made our way home. Along the way, P continued to take shots at S over her “coming to my rescue” again. Just then, she pushed S off of the sidewalk and asked, “how’s your ankle doing?” (S recently tore a ligament in her ankle.)
I know P wanted us to think that she was teasing, but both S and I knew that she was pissed about the aisle seat and the push was her way of lashing out. Luckily, S didn’t hurt herself and we continued on our way.
Getting to the show was easy and we quickly made our way inside. We had missed the opening act but didn’t really care. P ran into a friend of hers in the bathroom who happens to be neighbours with Dolores O’Riordan. The friend said that she would be going backstage after the show. I was mighty jealous when I heard that; I would’ve done anything to meet the band, or get an autograph.
None of us wanted a drink or merchandise, so we made our way to our seats. About ten minutes later, the lights dimmed and the band took to the stage. Thirty seconds after the men in the band picked up their instruments, they started playing and out came Dolores in a shiny black ensemble yelling at the crowd to stand up.
We got on our feet and cheered as Dolores began to sing. When we first got the tickets, we didn’t think they were that great but they ended up being pretty sweet seats. We were about thirteen rows away from the stage and there wasn’t a large distance between the first rows and the stage. Dolores often reached down and held the hands of the people in the first rows.
There was a very energetic (and likely drunk) fan in the front row who made his way onto the stage during the second song. The security guy walked towards him but Dolores made it clear that she was okay. The fan was on stage for a few minutes and then escorted back to his seat by security. He and his friend danced and waved their arms around wildly throughout the night. They were probably drunk or high as kites.
As for the rest of the show, it was fantastic. Dolores had so much energy, she was bouncing around from one side of the stage to the other, she’d often do her famous “twist” and she’d get the audience to sing along with each song. I think I belted along to each song as they did all of their hits, “Linger,” “Zombie,” “Ode to my family,” and of course, “Dreams,” which is what they ended the night with.
We were up on our feet all night as Dolores kept us energized. By the end of the night, my voice was hoarse from singing along. My only regret was that I didn’t have my camera with me. I took some pictures with my phone but they were blurry, at best. I didn’t bring my camera because I thought it wouldn’t be allowed. Meanwhile, our bags weren’t checked and the guy in front of us had a long-range lens on his camera.
After the show, we made our way home where P let us know she’d just be picking up her stuff and heading home. Earlier in the night, she had surprised us by announcing that she had brought her sleepover bag. Just like her showing up at our door in the morning, we had no clue she wanted to stay over. Had we known, we would have dressed the bed. As it turned out, it ended up being an early night so P decided to head home.
With ringing ears and a hoarse voice, I made my way to bed not long after arriving home.
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great read. I would love to follow you on twitter. By the way, did any one hear that some Iranian hacker had busted twitter yesterday.
Beverly