Really? Are you kidding me?

Happy Birthday, Dad! Wish I could be in Myrtle Beach at the Olive Garden sharing it with you!

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It’s been a stressful week, mostly involving me at the computer answering 8 million e-mails and designing the newsletter and fretting over Black Oak Lodge, or at Morgana’s working on my corset and one of my Italians, or trying to catch up on sleep and failing.

So getting a jury summons today ended up being kind of funny. Especially since I’m supposed to report on my birthday.

I’m kind of afraid to defer it, because the two weeks after that date are open. I don’t have anything else scheduled until late April (two Queensrÿche shows), and then there are Styx shows in May, and workshops and Faerieworlds in July. No doubt something will crop up in June.

I have no problem with serving; I did it a couple of years ago. It’s what makes our system run: a jury of your peers. If I’m ever unfortunate enough to be part of a trial, I want that jury of my peers, so I should do it for someone else.

Besides, you call the night before anyway to see if your group is up the next day, so there’s always the chance I won’t even have to go in on my actual birthday.

I’m really celebrating my birthday all weekend—two Day After Daze (with Todd drumming!) shows at Pancho’s on Friday and Saturday nights, and meerkats! on Sunday. So the actual day is less important. I’ll probably be happy to have the time to sit with my laptop, waiting to see if I’ll be called!

~ ~ ~

Tonight we went to a charity concert to benefit the Las Virgenes Unified School District Student Musicians. Now, I’m all about supporting the arts in schools, but I’ll be honest: The real reason we went is Tommy was performing, as well as Venice, a local band we really like (they opened for Styx in Germany and Switzerland in 2000, which is how we learned of them). Michael McDonald and Christopher Cross were also slated to perform, so we considered fleeing after Tommy’s performance. Thankfully MM and CC mostly performed together, and not very long. Tommy did come out for the final songs with MM (and sang a verse of “Takin’ It to the Street”).

Anyway. Despite messing up the first song, Tommy was amazing as always. He got a standing ovation after “Renegade,” which I didn’t expect to see in this type of crowd, and I heard a guy behind me exclaim, “That guy rocks!” Why, yes he does.

We had cheap nosebleed balcony seats, but that was okay. (Hey, it’s not like Lawrence was there!) We ended up sitting with Fran and Thom and Lisa, and afterwards we went out for food with a small crowd of Styx fan friends. Fun!