The Daily Hailey

I knew our trip would be wonderful, but I had no idea just how awesome!!! Sorry if this post gets really long!

We expected the roads to be treacherous so we left home quite a bit earlier than necessary. However, everything south of Saskatoon was clear, so we made it to our hotel in record time. A HUGE apology to my friend who missed the show on account of road conditions. If I had known, I would have called you. I’m so sorry. Our check in time was 4pm but we were let in at 2:30! We had a nice room with a king bed and a huge tv booked. However, we bypassed that pretty quickly and went straight for the pool. It was completely deserted, so we hot tubbed to our hearts content and then headed back to our room to get ready for dinner.We were out of the hotel by about 4:40 and easily made our 5pm reservation.

The Fireside Bistro. If I was one of those people who said OMG about things, I’d say it right here. It was a beautiful restaurant in a residential area of the city. It was dim, candlelit, and quiet. Our server was nice, and patient with us being relatively new at fancy restaurants. I chose the “Black and Bleu Chicken.” This was a very good choice on my part. It had some really nice heat to it, calmed down by blue cheese sauce. But the chicken itself was sooo fall-aparty. Key word there is “party.” Yum! Brady ordered a melt-in-your-mouth steak. We dined well. Brady then surprised me with a beautiful gift!

The months of planning paid off, my love! Brady designed a family ring for me! So often “mom rings” are tacky, but not this one! It is completely stunning. The band and the large swirl represent he and I, the diamond is because who doesn’t love a diamond, and the yellow gold wire is Dekker. The ring is designed so more yellow gold can be added and swirled into the ring with each child we have. It is a gorgeous chunky ring, which is perfect since I’m not a superfan of especially delicate jewelry. After such a delicious supper and a beautiful gift, the upcoming concert was just a bonus.

Of course, not too many good things can happen in a row, right? Hahaha! I won’t be a downer, I promise, but the opening band at the concert was SOOO BAD! Any Anami Vice fans out there? I didn’t think so. By the end, the lead singer was dancing around in suspiciously short sweat shorts (short enough that you were scared to look), “rapping” about taking his shirt off, and suggesting we all remove ours. Fat chance. We all laughed at them. The applause (apple sauce?) was pretty huge when they were done, but not because they were good. Because they were done. High points of Anami Vice were that they threw packs of gum into the audience, and that one of their songs sounded a little like an old Ace of Base song. Always a bonus. The low point, besides the band sucking, was the fart smell. Seriously.

The second band was Down with Webster. Lots of people love them, so while they weren’t my top choice, they put on a much better show and the crowd was really into it! I knew a few of their songs, just from the radio and passing through stores with background music, so I could relate and jump around a little. They threw plastic cups into the audience. Yup, like beer cups, only they were black instead of the basic red, and they had the DWW logo on them. I snagged one of those too but didn’t care about it enough to hold onto it.

And then, they were gone. And then things got awesome! Marianas Trench is my favorite band at the moment, and has been for the last few years. I have seen them twice before, at the exhibition in the summers. They have been great shows, but I have never seen them along their tours. This show was part of their “Face the Music” tour. They had amazing lights, great sound, lots of costumes, and a few things suspended from the ceiling, one of them being the lead singer. Twice. I swooned. More than twice. Big fan. They opened with the first song of their most recent album, which is one of my favorites. From there, they jumped around their three albums, changing clothes and guitars all the while. Even the drummer put on a set of marching band drums and ran around the stage a little while the lead singer played the regular kit. We were pretty impressed by that as well, as he had never drummed at any show we had witnessed. Brady held onto me so I wouldn’t get knocked around too hard, and recorded most of the concert at the same time.

The encore had to be one of my favorite parts. They rolled out a white grand piano for Josh Ramsay to play. He said something about never completely knowing which song he was going to play at this point in the show. He thought about it for a second, seemed to have a revelation of what to play, and then laughed and said he didn’t think he had ever played this song before. Out of nowhere, he started singing “Brick” by Ben Folds Five. He ran that song into one of their old songs called “Skin and Bones” until the rest of the rest of the guys emerged from backstage and performed the last (and best) song from their most recent record, Ever After. Josh disappeared partway through the last song, and when he reappeared, he was raised up high above the stage. And then, something epic happened.

P1010623 from Hailey Born on Vimeo.

Still in the air, he was brought way out into the middle of the crowd, directly above Brady and I. I swear, he was looking straight into our camera! He sang a line or two, did a backflip, and was pulled back to the stage where they finished the song. Seriously, I was shaking! Maybe I sound like a thirteen year old girl swooning over a boy band, but it was truly awesome. I had been silently kicking myself through the show, wishing we had picked a spot in the crowd closer to the side, as there were side stages we hadn’t seen, and the band kept coming out on the sides and interacting with the crowd. This one moment made it completely worth it!

Our camera officially filled its card and batteries died at the same moment, a few seconds after the final chord was played. Best timing ever! It could not have been better.

We drove back to the hotel, completely high on adrenaline, searching desperately for a place open past 10:30pm that would sell us batteries. We overlooked the fact that we couldn’t watch the videos if our batteries were dead. Duh. Thanks to Shoppers Drugmart for being a 24/7 kinda place! We were way too awake and excited until about 2am, when we crashed.

So. Anyone wanna go to the Calgary show tomorrow? Edmonton next Monday? Anyone?!?! I can dream, can’t I?