~Thursday~ I drove to work today, as I wanted to be able to run to the post office during the day to meet the deadline of getting my NC Flexible Health Care Spending Account reimbursement submission post-marked today, as required.
After one final check with my dentist’s office, I had to remove a significant—$189.00—entry, as it was covered entirely by my insurance company. (I wasn’t sure if I had paid that out-of-pocket or not.) This took me down to a total of $604.48 of claimable reimbursements, about which I’m not happy, as I had estimated $1000 worth of expenditures this year. Girl’s not fond of losing $395.52. Hell, girl’s not fond of losing $10.52. But I digress…
I cut my estimate for this year in half, which I’ll easily make with my two prescriptions and for what I paid out-of-pocket in January for my colonoscopy. And who knows, I may get some more medical expenses if etiquette-challenged dancers keep showing up at Flex the rest of the year. But I bitterly digress…
I had two work meetings today, one from 10:45-Noon in a building across campus, and one in my building from 1:30-2:30. Since I had my car today, I drove to the one at the Avent Ferry Technology Center, and I pulled into the parking lot at the same time two of my colleagues did, and one of them said shortly after that, “I knew you had a car, but that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you actually driving one.”
My 1:30-2:30 meeting was with those same two colleagues, it was about the google.ncsu.edu website, and it was pretty productive, which is exactly what I’d expect working with those two people.
After that meeting, Jen and I rode over to the post office at Cameron Village, where she mailed a package related to THE REDDIT EXCHANGE, and I mailed my flexible health care spending account stuff.
Robert arrived right at 5:30 as planned, and we headed down the road to the Ruckus Pizza in Mission Valley Shopping Center, where we each had their Stromboli (sausage, mushroom, and pepperoni) and a drink. We weren’t quite ready to order when we walked in, though, but the two guys that had come in just behind us said they were, so we let them go ahead of us. Mistake.
They really weren’t sure what they wanted, or at least one of them wasn’t. The guy who seemingly did know what he wanted to order, did so, and then the other one started hemming and hawing. He finally settled on one of their pizzas. Then the guy asked him what he wanted to drink and he responded, “What do you have on draught, which he pronounced “drawt” instead of “draft.”
The guy behind the counter responded, “On draft, we have…” and when he got to about the tenth one on the list, the other guy said, “Oh, change my PBR to a…” (I can’t remember what it was as it was a beer I’m not familiar with, and I don’t drink beer anyway. But let’s not make it about me, even if it is my blog.)
When they started their ordering, we were the only people behind these bozos. By then, the line was out the door, about which these two were totally oblivious.
“And you sir?” the guy taking the order said looking back to the other guy.
“Uh, could you repeat the choices, please?” and he waited for the guy to go through the entire list again, and then chose one.
That finally done, one of them handed his credit card to pay, and the other one started to object and then the other one said, “But I owed you for…” and I thought, “Ladies!?! Can we just please finish this transaction and let the other people in the universe whom I know you don’t know exist, but do, order?”
Then, lest we think the fat lady had sung, while the cashier was ringing up their order, looking back at the guy making the pizzas, the one said to the cashier, “Could you please make sure he uses a new knife when he starts making my pizza?”
I seriously had to stifle a scream.
In an effort to show off how prepared we were—WITH ALL THAT TIME WE HAD TO BE—I stepped up and said, “Two Strombolis, and two drinks—one Coke and one Diet Coke, please.”
Done with it.
Robert and I met Joe over at Flex to park, and the three of us rode over to Memorial Auditorium (a.k.a. The Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts), where we met our friend Glenn, who had ordered our Idina Menzel with the North Carolina Symphony concert tickets.
I’d have to say that this was one of the best concerts I’ve ever attended, and by the end of it, I was totally taken with Idina. (Not that I wasn’t a huge fan beforehand.) These are some of the things that made it so great to me:
- Her magnificent voice, of course
- Her informality and playfulness with the symphony
- Her gratitude, a couple of examples being:
- She stopped a couple of times in the middle of a number to have a quick repartee with the audience, and that huge orchestra just picked back up where they were, and after the second or third time of that in the same song, she said, “May I just say how incredibly generous and talented this orchestra is?”
- At one point, she said, “You know, I was walking in this evening and I saw all of you coming and I thought, ‘Wow. It’s raining out. We’re in the middle of a recession. And all these people paid a lot of money to come see me tonight. And I’m so grateful. Thank you for being here.'”
- She talked about flying here from the west coast and sitting with a man who told her about “challenge coins,” one of which he gave her, and she had with her on stage—tucked into her bra, no less, so she wouldn’t lose it. “It just occurred to me, I hope that isn’t offensive. I just put it there, because I knew it wouldn’t be bothered with there.” After explaining what they were, a man in—or near—the front row came up and handed her his, and you could tell she was incredibly touched. “I feel so connected here right now,” she said.
- She said about that same guy on the plane, that he had mentioned his daughter was getting married in a few weeks, and he was trying to decide on which song they should play for the “Father-and-Daughter” dance, and the one he ended up deciding on was the exact one that she (Idina) had danced to with her father at her wedding. She apologized for not being able to say what the song was , as she didn’t want to spoil the surprise of his decision, and then she said, looking out into the audience, “I hope he’s out there. I invited him to come tonight.”
- She sang a song she wrote, called Gorgeous, about which she said, “I wrote this for all my gay friends out there,” and added, “But straight people, you can make it yours, too.”
- When she sang one of her highly anticipated songs, For Good from Wicked, she put the microphone down, walked up to the very edge of center stage and belted it out a capella. It was absolutely amazing how, all of a sudden, like that, you could hear a pin drop in that place, and the intimacy factor shot up infinitely. “Wow,” that’s all I could think, as that’s one of my all-time favorite songs, which was evidenced by the tracks of my tears when it was over. Wicked good.
- As expected, Defying Gravity was (one of) her encore(s), and it was as amazing as when I first heard it on Broadway.
I’d like to thank my friend, Glenn, for mentioning this to me and asking if I’d be interested in going. Otherwise, I most likely wouldn’t have heard about it, and I’d’ve missed a concert that I’ll now treasure for a long, long time. Thanks, my friend!