I recently returned to my old job in London - my old job, but with a twenty-five percent pay raise. It occured to me that, if I was willing to live a bit more frugally for a little while, I could afford to make a downpayment on a house by the end of the year.

Living more frugally was supposed to mean, amongst other things, attending only one Wyrd Sisters concert on each tour through my neighbourhood.

I know, I know. Go ahead and laugh. Everyone else does.

I realize now that the whole 'one concert per tour' idea was a stupid one, but hindsight is twenty-twenty. Anyway...

The Orchestra London Concert came and went, and I persisted in my fantasy that that was it for me on this tour. (I'm tired of being a Wandering Gypsy and I really want that house!) As the Hugh's Room gig drew closer, however, the thought of not being there began to drive me crazy. Finally, the night before the concert, I said to myself, "Who am I kidding? I would rather live off of bread and peanut butter for the next three months than not go to the Wyrd Sisters concert tomorrow night!" So...

Friday afternoon, I picked up a rental car and I headed off to Toronto.

I had asked the rental agency for the smallest car they had with a CD player (I have "Sin and Other Salvations" and "The Ladder" on CD only and I cannot attend a Wyrd Sisters concert unrehearsed!) but, when I arrived at the agency, they didn't have any cars in the lot of the size they had promised me. "No problem," they said, "we'll give you a free upgrade." The guy from the rental place then proceeded to offer me all kinds of crazy vehicles including, at one point, a truck. (I was almost tempted to take the truck, because it was cherry red, but I did need to put gas in the thing, not to mention find a place to park it in Toronto, so I declined.) Eventually, they set me up with this car:

"This is a great car!" the guy from the rental place enthused. "It's got power everything. It's even got power pedals."

(I had to ask him what 'power pedals' were because I'd never even heard of them before, much less used them!)

I eventually figured out enough of the car's power buttons to drive the thing and made my way up to Toronto.

The venue was packed, unfortunately had no room to dance, and I had to wait 45 minutes to get a seat - but it was a great seat once I finally did get it - all of 30 seconds before the band was announced.

The Hugh's Room gig was a great show.
The whole band was so hot - they were a cut above, even by Wyrd Sisters' standards!

They did all of my favourite Wyrd songs (In fact, they performed so many numbers tonight that I had my doubts if they were ever going to stop.) AND They sang "Regret" (A Kiva song which I love.) AND Oliver Shroer played with them (I had been missing Richard Moody's viola in the Wyrd mix, but Oliver's fiddle fit the bill nicely.) AND Marilyn Lerner joined the Wyrds for a couple of songs AND I met the Wyrd's drummer Julene AND I finally got to meet Kiva!

So, all in all, a wonderful experience all around and worth every penny I spent on this crazy car

and then some!

I'm so glad that I went! (My life rocks!)

Many many thanks to Kim, Nancy, Kiva, Julene, Sunny, Oli and Marilyn for blessing me with such a fabulous evening!

This web page was cobbled together by Laura.