It's Not Just The Concert

In case you're just joining me this week, Hubby and I went to Chicago this past weekend. The catalyst for the trip was a Jimmy Buffet concert.

If you've never been to a Jimmy Buffet concert, it's not just a concert. If you've ever been to one, you know this already. The concert is only half the fun.

The pre-concert tailgate parties are a cornucopia of entertainment in and of themselves. You don't even need a ticket for this!


As Hubby stated in his post, he got totally wasted at a Jimmy Buffet concert last year. He promised me this time we would walk out like this:


And I wouldn't be dragging him out by one foot because he looked like this:


If I had to drag him out, I would totally be freaking out. Not just because we spent so much money on a weekend in Chicago solely to attend this concert, but because he would have turned into a woman!

We were wandering around the parking lot looking for his co-worker (Hubby also covered this in his post), and we saw some awesome, party-ing Parrotheads.

As well as some a**es:


Then, there were a few who were proud of their deodorant. Or they were just really happy to be there. I don't know. I didn't get that close enough to ask:




Lots of Parrothead paraphernalia:





One of my favorite pieces of paraphernalia is this:


One of Jimmy's (yah, we're on a first name basis) songs is simply called "Fins". When the song comes on, you're supposed to put your arms above your head making a shark fin with your hands. My five year old can name that song in two notes, puts her hands above her head and says, "Fins Up!" Wow, what are we warping her mind with?

This guy really cracked me up:


Looks like an innocent Parrothead, right? Oh, no. He had a fishing pole and was casting out beads. As soon as someone reached for the beads on the ground, he'd reeled them back in.

Perhaps that's why I saw this sticker I saw on the ground (quite near him):


It was time to go in the stadium. I thought I'd have to put away the camera, but Hubby graciously offered to "sneak" it in for me.

How are you going to do that?

He grabbed his crotch.

And I let him do it.

Then, I used it!

Once we were inside the stadium, the beach balls were blown up faster than a woman with PMS can down a bag of chocolate chips.

Yes, that's beach balls at a concert. Jimmy expects it to be a beach party. And who goes to the beach without their balls? Well, us apparently. We didn't have one of our own, but there were plenty to go around.

Since, I had the camera, I took pictures:


Our seats were pretty far away. Even with the zoom extended as far as possible, I couldn't get any kind of detail up on stage. Good thing Hubby had his binoculars with automatic image stabilization.

I put the camera lens in the ocular lens of the binoculars to take these pictures. Sorry they're blurry. We'd had a little bit to drink before hand and there was a lot of crowd movement. Keeping the binoculars AND the camera steady was a tough job.





Silver Lining:

1. It was a great concert.


2. Hubby remembered it this time.


3. I didn't have to kick his butt.

PS - Turns out Hubby didn't have to sneak in the camera. We completely missed the sign that said that cameras under six inches (aka point & shoot) were allowed. *sigh*

I Walked the Line(s)

While in Chicago, Hubby went to the Sears Willis Tower to check out the hours for the Skydeck as well as the price of admission. We needed to know if we needed to finish applying for that second mortgage in order have enough money to finish our trip and trek on home (we've been spending a lot of money).



Right there on the website was:



Buy your tickets ahead of time? Fast Pass? It's not like it's Disneyland!

Oh, yea of little brain (that would be us).

Turns out, Willis Tower is the number one tourist attraction in Chicago. Everybody and their grandmother goes to Willis Tower.

We realized this as we walked through the doors at 10AM and into the first line. That's right, I said FIRST.

We stood in line to ride the elevator DOWN to security.

We stood in line to go through the metal detectors.

We stood in line to get our "Yup, we're totally tourists and need the cheesy green screen photo that NO ONE would ever be able to pull off in real life" to commemorate the occasion.

We stood in yet another line to BUY the tickets.

Nope, we hadn't done that whole online thing. By this point we had noticed the people who had bought the fast pass, which was double the price, skipped right past all the lines (they still had to go through the metal detectors, but didn't have to wait in line to do it), and went directly to the elevators (or so we thought).

In the line waiting for tickets, we observed that you could still buy the fast pass tickets. Why would you want to do that? The next step is the elevators to go up. Hubby decided that whomever bought those tickets was paying regular price plus a stupid tax.

Oh, yea of little brain. . .

OK, we had our tickets. We're getting on the elevator now, right?

Nope. There was yet another line. We didn't know what it was for but we stood in it and watched the fast pass people zip right through. Should have paid the stupid tax.

The line was for a movie about why and how the Sears Tower was built and how it became the Willis Tower. Quite interesting actually, but I was ready for the views AND "The Ledge".

We left the movie theater only to stand in yet another line. We weren't the only ones in the movie theater and we sat in about 2/3 of the way back from the exit doors - the ones that lead to the elevator line!

Woot! Woot!

At 12:30, we were on the elevator - which went from the lower level to the 103rd floor in just about 60 seconds. Too cool!

We took lots of pictures of Chicago.

To the North-ish:




To the East-ish:




To the South-ish:

They force you to move counter clockwise so that "The Ledge" is the last thing you get to see.

"The Ledge" is a 4 X 8 X 8 box that juts out from one side of the tower - it is glass and 1,353 feet from the street. Freaky, but soooooo cool!!!





We had to stand in what we thought was the last line to go back down. You'd think having two elevators that should only take 2 1/2 minutes round trip (minute down, minute up, plus thirty seconds for people to move their a**es), we were in line an awful long time.

Remember that cheesy tourist picture? Yah, we had to stand in line to look at those. We didn't buy them - what a waste of a line.

We made it back to the car (which was only five blocks away) sometime after 2PM.

Silver Lining:

1. The views were amazing and "The Ledge" was a unique experience so it was totally worth the wait.


2. I always pray for patience and God was giving me lots of opportunities to practice. I think I passed with flying colors.

The Training Paid Off

(FYI - This is a guest post from The Hubby)

Last night, Wifey and I completed our pilgrimage trip to Chicago to go see Jimmy Buffett in concert. This was our third time seeing him, or the second-and-a-half time seeing him for me. You see, we showed up about 3½ hours early for the show last time, and we proceeded to party (i.e., drink non-child-approved beverages) heavily for that entire time.

In my infinite wisdom, I decided once we got inside that we STILL hadn’t had enough, and bought us each another monster-sized margarita. That was apparently just enough to put me over the top, and I don’t remember much of the concert after that. On top of that, I managed to lose a $250 pair of Maui Jim sunglasses somewhere in the amphitheatre lawn.

So, having squandered that opportunity to see him, I vowed shortly afterwards that I had to make every effort to see him again. That concert was the first time he’d come to our town in 8 years, and he wasn’t coming there this year. Who knows if or when he’ll come back to our town again (after all, Jimmy Buffett isn’t getting any younger), so I figured I needed to look at surrounding cities.

Chicago’s a few hours away, but it’s doable. We’d gone to see Bill Cosby there a few years ago, so selling Wifey on the idea of going to Chicago for a concert shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. The bigger challenge was selling Wifey on the idea of me buying concert tickets at all – she just wasn’t real keen on the expense this year. She knew this was important to me, though, so I think her response was, “Whatever you decide, dear” (which of course meant I was going to buy the tickets).

I knew after the concert last year that I’d get my butt kicked if I ever got that inebriated at a Buffett concert again, so I’ve been in “training” ever since. Seriously, it seems that just about every kind of social gathering in Pleasantville involves alcohol. At the time of the concert last year, we’d only been living in Pleasantville a few months, but this was now almost a full year and a half later. Some of you might recall the time I tried to bend glass – this was part of the strict training regimen I was committed to follow. (In case you missed that story, click here to read more about it).

The night of the big event had finally arrived. We didn’t get as much time to party beforehand this time – traffic in Chicago was INSANE (even on a Saturday – there’s no way I could live with that all the time). That managed to cut a full hour off of our planned partying time. So, since we didn’t have as much time, I decided that I needed to get caught up in a hurry.

Granted, I didn’t drink as much in quantity this time, but what I lacked in quantity I made up for in speed. In under an hour, I’d managed to put down a little more than half of a gigantic bottle of Cuervo golden margarita. Unfortunately, Wifey was making me share it with her, so that’s when I ran out of liquor.

This was enough liquor for her, though, that she managed to get the brainiac idea of going to try and find one of my co-workers based on the time he arrived. You see, it turned out that he was also going to be attending the same show, and we were supposed to hook up together beforehand. However, I’m not sure if he turned off his phone or if he let the battery die, but I couldn’t get hold of him when we got there. I’d found out earlier in the day about when he was planning to get there, so her plan was to walk around to different areas and find out what time the people in that area arrived.

Now, get a mental picture of this – I’m sure you’ve all been to a big concert or sporting event at some point in your life. Imagine one big parking lot for everyone in attendance – we’re easily talking about several thousand cars. On top of that, there were apparently multiple entrances to the parking lot, so finding an area that parked about the time he was supposed to get there didn’t necessarily mean it was the right area.

We never did find him, but we did manage to see some interesting sights. Wifey did manage to get a number of interesting pictures that I’m sure you’ll get to see in the coming weeks on either this blog or her Picture This blog. I also managed to score a mighty tasty shish-kabob from a fellow parrothead (for those of you who don’t know, that’s the name for fans of Jimmy Buffett).

So enough of my digression into Wifey’s brilliant idea – let’s get back to my story. As the title said, the training paid off. By the time our little expedition was over, it was about time to go in. We got inside successfully, and we even managed to successfully “sneak” a camera in, when it turned out that cameras weren’t even banned in the first place. (I’m sure she’ll tell you more about that story at some point). We both managed to make it through all of the concert, and saw a heck of a good show.

So, in the tradition of this blog, here’s the silver lining:

1. I didn’t get my butt kicked by Wifey for drinking my way through another Buffett concert.


2. Our tenth anniversary is coming up in a couple weeks, so our trip to Chicago was kind of an early celebration of that, and we had a fantastic time (except for the traffic – we’re both SO glad we don’t live there).