A Little Dream Fulfilled

My trips schedule has been changed a bit (2 work trips cancelled and replaced by 2 new ones in the coming weeks, 1 personal trip rebooked to a different weekend), so wanted to take advantage of these few extra days at home and not only clean my house (Clementine found a Cheetoh on the floor...I think I've reached a new low) but also let you know that I fulfilled a dream a few weeks ago. I saw Billy Joel in concert.

The hilarity in this is of course I had the tickets ages ago, and when my boss approached me in February about a week-long event I needed to attend in Palm Springs (and what Cleveland girl wouldn't want to go to Palm Springs??) that would conflict with the concert, I felt a bit torn. Not about attending the concert (puh-lease), but about if I should tell him the real reason why I wasn't available to go to Palm Springs. It went something like this:

Boss: Tali, I need you to go to the western regional sales meetings the first week of April. 

Me: Uuuuhhhhhmmmmm......

B: You don't have anything going on that week, do you?

M: Well, I do have something on Tuesday evening.

B: And you can't get out of it?

M: It's tickets to the Billy Joel concert.

B: Isn't there another Billy Joel concert you could go to?

M: Um, no, there isn't another Billy Joel concert I could go to. 

My boss is foreign, and he may not have understood the magnitude and epicness of Billy Joel. And he definitely didn't understand that I consider Billy's to be the greatest male voice of all time. (Yes, I said it.) In any case, he saw the dreamy glint in my eye as I explained I'd waited my whole life to see Billy Joel, told me personal life is more important than work life, and asked someone else to go to Palm Springs.

Billy was amazing, there's no other way to describe it. I loved his voice, the songs, I loved how much the crowd loved him. I loved hearing that Billy himself had been the first concert when the Q first opened 20 years ago. I loved that his talking voice was so New Yorky. It was just a wonderful night. My one complaint was that by the time the finale came (Piano Man), he walked off stage having sung nothing from the Innocent Man album. He's got to come back out here and sing Uptown Girl, I thought. So when he opened the 7-song encore with Uptown Girl, I felt like I had truly gotten everything I'd hoped for. I doubt I could have said the same about Palm Springs.

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