i'm home

The whole journey went to plan this time - hooray
I had a really really good time. I'm never going to remember everything I wanted to say, but let's see ...
Saturday ....
The day meet up was fun. Everyone fell in love with Louis the frog. Claire set a new world record for waffle eating. The talking monopoly was fun. Dom drove Nikki's mum crazy by standing up for hours!
The evening meet up was also much fun. Kruno and Miro weren't the last people to arrive

and were only 15 minutes late! Somehow Kruno weaved some magic and got all of us a table (well, 2 tables) at the Hard Rock cafe with only a 15 minute wait (I'm still not sure quite how he managed that). Dinner was great, though somehow the other table had finished by the time we got our food. Nikki displayed a new "I'm bored" smiley face - and how she didn't poke her eyes out I still don't know. Afterwards we went on a nice walking tour of Toronto eventually ending up in a place called Velvet Underground on Queen Street. It was pretty empty when we arrived but once word got out that we were there it filled up pretty quickly - even Rich and Shelley turned up

Much drinking and dancing and merrymaking was had by most of those present - the boys particularly enjoyed the late night tv!
So ... on to Sunday. concert day!
We were planning to get there at noon until Sab called us to say she'd just spoken to Jonathon and there were already 30 people in line. So Nikki took her quickest shower ever and we practically ran to Massey Hall, got there about 11:15 and started the long cold wait. More and more CMers came to join us and we had lots of fun. We also met Smooke, Joey and Jonny. All those of you who saw us but didn't say "hi" are in big trouble - especially Jim!! As people have already said the ticket distribution was a total farce. They were giving out tickets starting from row J, but since the rows in each section had an odd number of seats and all the VIP tickets were given out in pairs, people just getting one ticket got a random seat amonst the VIPs - so Jen and one of Lori's friends each got a seat in row B while the rest of us were way back in L and M. I feel really sorry for Jonny though - getting there at 9 and being 2nd in the queue should have got him better than the 10th row. Anyway, after it was fooood time. Jen bought me a bubble tea - which was yummy apart from the tapioca bits - it would have taken me all day to chew them all! Then some waiting around outside freezing our bits off (we weren't stalking, honest!) before we went in for the show. Lori's friend was kind enough to swap seats with me so I ended up in the 2nd row. I was hoping I could sit with Jen, but she was right over the other side - still, I could see her rocking her little heart out

The crowd at the front was appalling. It seemed to be VIPs towards the centre of me adn normal fans the other side, but I was still the only person standing in the front 6 or 7 rows at least when OLP first came out. Other than Jen and Joey I could only see one other person singing along to everything, I had 2 women in front of me who kept talking, and another few people I could see didn't sing along to anything ever. The worst thing were the two people in the front row centre seats the opposite side to me who spent the entire show slouched in their chairs looking even more bored than Nikki in the club! How they think this is going to make for a good DVD/live recorded show I do not know. However ... the show was amazing. The sound was excellent and the setlist gave a good range of songs (including Waited and Car Crash

) The highlight had to be Raine's visit to Joey on the balcony though. Then after the show it was fun hanging out in the diner across the street with everyone. Meeting Joel for the first time was great too - he's a really lovely guy and I think made Froggy's year, I imagine he still can't believe it! One of my highlights of the evening was "Hi Shelley, I'm Reza and I have a penis"
I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of it at the moment. Photos will follow later for sure.
I just want to thank the following people for making sure I had such a great time:
Sabby first and foremost for convincing me to come and giving me her spare ticket, Melissa, Nikki, Nikki's mom, Claire, Blair, Dom, Kruno, Miro, Stu, Lori, Lori's friend for swapping seats with me, Rich, Shelley, Jonny, Smooke and Gillian, Joey and Jamie, Nam, Jen, Teedus, Rusty, Reza, Michael (or is it Mike? goleafsgo), Stace, all of OLP especially Steve and Joel
*prays she hasn't forgotten anyone*