D'Izzy Words

Christmas
I spent the 23rd-30th of December with my sister out of state. ( Christmas )

Cancer
The evening of Christmas Day my mom called me, asking to see how our trip went. Christmas isn't significant to her so having bad news on that day isn't as shocking. The call was normal and everything was like "How was your trip? The flight?"

Then my mom told me about her mother. Apparently my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer all the way back in June or July. And I didn't find out until December!!! That's half a year! ( Grandma )

Christian church wedding
In December 2010 I received an invitation to a wedding for one of my host sisters. (My college pairs each international student with a host family. It's up to each person and family how close they remain during the four years.) My host family consists of the parents, two older daughters and four younger sons. My host family is highly involved in their church and held the ceremony and reception in their church. They were very kind and made room for Matt during the reception. It was my first experience going to a Christian wedding!

( Wedding )

Yeah, three C's right there... If I remember I'll post up some pictures!

I'm watching Robyn performing on SNL Season 37, Episode 9. (Katy Perry hosted.) I saw Robyn live summer 2010. :D

When the tickets were released in July I bought two for Matt and myself though I didn't even know if I was still going to be in Chicago for her December 10th concert. I planned on gifting them to someone else if that happened, or putting them up for sale.

Two weeks ago I emailed the other research assistant for my study to ask if we could switch weekend days for the past weekend. I usually work Saturdays and sessions end at 1pm. Tori usually has a Meet & Greet from 2pm to 5pm prior to her concerts. I wanted to sleep in and have time to get ready to wait outside. The other R.A. said okay, but then let me know she couldn't because her schedule changed. I think because of finals.

So I go to the lab Saturday morning and upon looking up Undented's Twitter found out that there wouldn't be a M&G. :-( But I went straight to downtown Chicago nonetheless by myself. ( Before the concert )

We had a quick dinner at the Halsted St. Diner then went to Macy's. Bridgett and Michael met us there and we got a little lost trying to find men's leather gloves. 3rd floor - not in outerwear, redirected to the 2nd floor and got told it was on the first floor. I got Matt a Christmas gift of some rather nice leather gloves. He has a pair for his sweaty outdoor work like shoveling snow so these will be his driving gloves. I think he could have needed them that day in the morning when he drove me to the lab! After we spent some time in the Chicago Theatre lobby, we went to our separate seats.

I got a text from my former international advisor from Beloit College. This int'l advisor is a big fan of Tori Amos as well, and drove us to my first Tori Amos concert in 2007, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Tori's US tour this year was rather brief; she held no concerts in Milwaukee or Detroit like in the past. We hung out briefly while Matt and I kept her company in the souvenir line. I gave her money to buy a T-shirt for me. She wanted the scarf. We went back to our seats for the opening act, the Norweigan artist Thomas Dybdahl. He was okay but I didn't like him as much as Tori Amos's previous two opening acts.

I bought my boyfriend and I seats in a Mezzanine box. It was pretty spiffy. Lots of leg space, which is nice for his 6’5” frame. There are 6 or so people per box. Before the opening act a server (?) came in and asked if we wanted drinks. I didn’t know they did that. I already had my cranberry vodka elsewise I would’ve asked for something, ‘spensive as the drinks are. Matt and I were in box D, seats 1 and 2 so we were against the railing which was rather sweet. Something I hate about being on the floor is that near the end of concerts most people stand up and being the shortie I am, I cannot see over people's ends and that ruins my pleasure of the music. Also, in the boxes, there were a few annoying neighbors but definitely nothing as annoying as past Chicago Theatre times.

The Fab Four, the quartet, were pretty awesome. Tori Amos opened with Shattering Sea. Her setlist from Undented:

( Set list )

On the Undented link there's also some videos of her performance from Chicago. I liked Suede and China from the first half but the second half I found more dynamic and familiar. I was teared up from her cover of The Cure's "Love Song." Ever since I heard a recording of her performing it several years ago in Dallas I've been in love with it. Cruel was also fantastic. And Siren. I thought some songs would be lacking without drums or something, but the cello did fantastically as the backbone. Her own performance lasted two hours which was great since her previous performance lasted 1.5 hours. I love that she ended with Big Wheel. She ended that way two years ago, too. :)

Matt rushed us out of the theatre because he thought getting out of the parking lot would be horrible. The lobby was very crowded. We had to wait for the 2nd time the elevator came down. But parking lot itself was actually quite empty. He felt a bit bad about rushing us all for nothing and that he remembered that I had wanted to spend some time hanging out at a bar afterwards and just hanging out. Oh, well.

Sunday I slept most of the day away. That was kind of nice. :D Sunday night I got a little obsessive and made 3 playlists on my iTunes, one for Milwaukee 2007's setlist, Chicago 2009's setlist and Saturday night's setlist. :D