luckiest1

Can't say an Alaskan cruise really appeals to me but only because I prefer a warm destination. The Carribean cruise we took as a family last year was amazing! I would do another cruise in a heartbeat, if I won the lottery. LOL.

Yep, I could live this way. I had to go into work briefly on Thursday to reboot my machines, because I was having trouble remoting in to them, but otherwise, I've been off for a full week, plus weekends. Back to the grind next week, minus the New Year's holiday, of course!

If you haven't already done so, grab Hallelujah from the CV vault.......it's awesome! Or if you don't have a key, here are some sendspace links: Hallelujah Hallelujah with banter No fan should be without this song. Gives me chills every time. Also, SueRue posted this lovely montage to All Year Long. It's worth a watch. Fear, I hope you are feeling better! I had a great Christmas with friends and family yesterday, although I have to tell you I have no desire to go back into my kitchen! I think I spent 3 solid days in there, baking, more baking, and then cooking the big meal. But there are lots of left overs which is always a good thing in this house. Today is going to be my totally selfish, lazy day, as the kids are heading up to their Dad's and my Mom is heading home to beat the snow we are expecting later this afternoon.

liney23, great recap, so glad you got to go to the show. Couchie, it sucks that it didn't work out for you, but glad to hear you got a bonus anyways! I've spent the last two days doing Christmas baking, and dealing with dogs & cats. My mom is heading out for the holidays tomorrow, and I hope to get some cooking done so that there isn't as much to do on the 25th. We had a bit of snow the other day, and things are icy out there, but at this point the roads are clear. We are expecting more snow on the 26th from what I hear. I am so glad winter waited until my concerts were over and done with to hit. Happy holidays everyone! We may be a small board but we are still going strong. Was so nice to see some of you at the tour. I hope there is another one in the not too distant future.

We are having wet snow right now, but it's sticking, at least on the grass. If the temps can stay at freezing or below, maybe it will stick until Christmas. I can't believe I want snow. It's so unlike me. But I am so sick of rain and mud and wiping paws! I didn't stay up for the concert last night, it's too late for me with the difference in time zone. Tonight's will be even later. But I look forward to reading recaps and, God willing, clack.

Hee, thanks for the photobucket link. I didn't get around to digging the program out of my clackkeeper last night. What, doesn't everyone have a clackkeeper under their bed? :o Pet peeve, when I type a simple smiley face that used to work and it doesn't anymore. Old habits die hard, I don't like looking through images.

OMG don't miss this one! Clay tells the story of the photoshoot in Aspen for the JNT tour program. It's funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAqYTx6tREI

Catching up this morning....life has been hectic since I got back from St. Charles. Dogs, dogs and more dogs! A quick trip to the vet yesterday for one of them (nothing serious, thank goodness!) and trying to catch up on housework and groceries and laundry and write my tardy Christmas cards. Still have most of my Christmas shopping to do. I was disappointed in the results of The Voice last night, but nothing new there. I loved the duet with Peter Frampton & Terry though. That is one of my favourite songs of all time. And Terry actually sounded good on it. Here is some clack from the Colorado concert last night. Sounds like there was a bit of a clackdown until Clay told them they could get their cameras out (similar to Shippensburg!) From Hope at CV: I can't believe the tour is almost over already! But lots of time over the holidays to download and relive the memories. <3

Currently I'm listening to the crystal clear cell stream from Milwaukee, but I jotted the rest of my St. Charles recap down on the ride home today. I apologize if it's jumbled or has typos...the car ride through Michigan was quite bumpy! Continued from earlier........ There were 6 of us for dinner - me, my daughter, cindilu2, Claymatron, disneykid, & her husband. We knew the doors opened at 7 but let's just say we weren't in a great rush to get back. We figured it'd be a zoo, but we were kind of concerned about parking. We had a great dinner at the Olive Garden, and Claymatron regaled us with the details of her m&g, before we found a parking spot in front of a local business that was closed for the evening. We passed Clay's bus in one of the other lots, and wondered if he was still in there. It's neat how a couple of sections of it seem to pop out...wonder if those are the sleeping areas? Anyways, we got inside the Arcada and it was like a family reunion. The elderly staff didn't seem to care if you had a ticket in hand, or what your ticket actually might have said. A far cry from the online ticketing system that said that if you printed your ticket a second time, the first print wouldn't work. Work with what? Nothing was scanned. We went looking for our row 3 seats, only to find that they had no rows in front of them, but they did have a humungus Wurlitzer type organ blocking the view of the stage. The usher assured us that it would sink into the floor at show time. And then we would effectively be first row! ARe you kidding me? That was totally unexpected! And lo and behold, seat mates were ldyjocelyn & her husband. Who knew? Our section was made up of an assortment of old dining room chairs marked with hand written numbers. The theatre was decorated with Christmas lights, but it was kind of strange with the Italian style decor. Dean Martin was singing about the moon in June and a big pizza pie and it was just all so comical. An ancient man came and sat at the organ and started playing indecipherable music about 2 feet in front of our faces. This went on for far too long and I remember saying I hoped Clay wasn't beating up a coke machine or something back stage, because they started making announcements that there were technical difficulities delaying the start of the show. The MC guy was very friendly, but he was full of shit too. No way this theatre was state of the art or had housed so many televised specials recently. I mean, I think it's great if you want to take a historic building and revamp it and upgrade it and make it state of the art, but this one wasn't anything like that. It was an old theatre than should probably have been condemned. Finally they lowered the organ into the floor, but the old man was still in it! And then another old man came over and told him to stop playing, time to close up. So the organ playing man nimbly leapt out of the pit in the floor, and they covered it all up with some black boards that had "no step" lettered on them. I wondered if Clay might say something about them during the show but he didn't. If he had been able to step on them he would have been close enough for us to touch. After quite a bit more of Dean martin's music, they finally lowered the lights and Clay walked out on stage, making his funny faces and playing up the schtick before AIW. When he went off to get the tape recorder, he exiting our side, but came back on the other side, making a big show of pushing the curtain out of the way to get back to centre stage. He was so close I could see the make up on his face, and his throat thrumming with the notes he was singing. I can't even imagine being in the real first row, you would be at eye level with his shoes and looking up his nose. I don't think there was a better seat in the house than ours this time around. But maybe I'm just biased. Clay let us know immediately that his monitors weren't working. He kept putting his mike down to them to get the feedback, in hopes that maybe it would wake someone up backstage to fix it. He called it the Fisher Price theatre and said that if we saw him drop the mike and run, we should get the hell out of there. He kept catching Ben's eye and the two of them were cracking up. He made countless references to the building and made it pretty clear how bad it was, but then he would put an exaggerated grin on and say "it's Christmas!" and crack up again. He singled ldyjocelyn's husband out early on, which we figured he would, and it was quite disconcerting since I was about 2 inches to his right, having Clay's scrutiny in our direction. I was terrified he might ask me something because I doubt I would have been able to find my voice to answer him, but thankfully he never did. I was in 7th heaven all night watching his feet, his hands, his throat, his sparkly eyes...omg, just being so close after so many tours of being in the mid-section of the venue was a delight. His voice was stellar but the sound system left something to be desired. He made lemonade the whole night, turning the interesting surroundings and glitches into comedic fodder. The bit about the chain on the stairs had the tears running down my face, it was so funny. He asked big burly security man, who was standing there all night doing nothing, what it was supposed to protect him from, ants? Ha ha ha, thank goodness there were no crazy fans trying to storm the stage because Clay would have been toast. God, when I think back to tours of yesteryear.....and then the sound system became possessed and wouldn't stop humming and I thought clay was going to lose it for a few minutes. He mouthed "fuck" in once sentence, tried to speak without a mic but was overpowered by the buzzing, and finally walked off the stage and unplugged the damned mic himself, before his tour manager came and handed him another one that actuallly worked. He was really heartfelt when he started talking about the senseless shootings in Conneticut, and you could see his hands subtly shaking and the tears in his eyes as he started singing MGUCl after the minute of silence. I loved that he intentionally changed the lyrics to "a human soul" to fit the occasion. And then he brought the show back up again with some humourous banter before launching into DSIAFCD. I was hoping he'd come back over to us to sing the glory note and he positioned himself perfectly in between the two feedback speakers so I could see his feet just in time. Wheeeee! So powerful, he drags it right from his toes, he does. And then he went off stage and we made a lot of noise until he came back through the centre of the curtain, hesitated a minute, and chose to go to the opposite side for the encore. But I was thrilled for my daughter & Claymatron, who were sitting in 5th row and got a perfect view for the whole song. He didn't go up the aisle because apparently it was blocked, so he stood there and then walked to the left exit. My daughter took video with her iPhone that is pretty good so I will get that uploaded to the vault or youtube. She goes by crimsonice. After the concert we went back to the hotel and sat in the lounge with disneykid and her husband and relived our experience. He had attended the Clay & Ruben tour a couple of years ago, so this wasn't his first experience. We laughed our asses off thinking back on the banter and the venue and read a bit of what people were posting online, before heading off to bed. And then this morning were were laughing & crying at some of the red reports that really captured the essence of the theatre last night. I am so glad that there were so many clack gatherers in attendance, and that there were no worries about cameras. This is one for the history books! It was so bad and yet Clay made it so good. Oh, and i forgot to mention the toy drive! We bought toys at Target prior to the show and the man accepting them was so overwhelmed with the generosity of Clay's fans, he said he wished they could have him back every night. There were huge piles of toys in the entrance way. Ha ha I don't think Clay will ever return to that venue. Even if they would take him back after all his well deserved comments from the stage! I look forward to what he might say about it tonight in Milwaukee. Hope the cell cert is clearer there! Sadly, we are already on the road home, as I type this into notepad on cindilu2's little netbook. We had 2 fantastic concert experiences this time around, and as much as I wish they wouldn't have cancelled Detroit (especially for those fans who couldn't get to another one) perhaps it wasn't meant to be. It would have been tough for Clay to put on a jovial show that day. Although I have no doubt he would have managed, because he's just that awesome. I love him.

Wow, talk about one extreme to the other. Shippensburg was the ultimate classy venue, plaques to commemorate everything donated by members of the public, gorgeous acoustics, mainly local audience. Last nights venue was a dive. We arrived in time to drop Claymatron off for her m&g about 4:45. There was no real parking lot. We illegally parked in a lot across the street, and hoped it was late enough on a Saturday that we wouldn't be ticketed. The Arcada theatre is an antiquated building, apparently built in 1926. There was a man pulling a trolley piled with dirty, dusty old pieces of...something. The girl in the box office was in and out, joking with the guy about taking it down the stairs, and he said something to us about if we heard a crash come rescue him. It was apparently elevator equipment. You couldn't have paid me enough to ride any elevator in that place! Anyways, once the m&gers went in, we hung around the hallway waiting. We could see Ben and the orchestra rehearsing through the open door. I am not kidding when I say there was absolutely no security anywhere. Anyone could have wandered on in. But I didn't, and eventually someone thought to shut the door before Clay started rehearsing. We heard parts of Emmanuel clear as a bell. Then we realized the sound was even better in the stairwell that lead up to the balcony. That was wide open and available to anyone to climb. So I did. I peeked over the back barrier and caught a glimpse of Clay singing TFN in a blue hoodie and sweat pants. But then he stopped and I scooted back down the stairs because I didn't want to get in trouble. Not by the non existent security, but by Clay or one of his team. So we sat on the stairs and used the Starbucks wifi until Claymatron came out. More later, time to hit the road home!

Sitting at the Arcada waiting for Claymatron to come out of her m&g. Clay is warming up with Emmanuel and The First Noel. Loud and clear. I may have peeked. Blue hoodie and sweat pants.

Off to St. Charles, see y'all there! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

He is on The Voice and he made it through to the finals last night. I guess with iTunes, it's not such a surprise now who stays and who goes. Feel bad for Trevin but he didn't have the best week, that's for sure. Nicholas deserved to go through this time. I haven't even started shopping. I don't have much to buy anyways, I joked with my daughter today that we should all just pass around a $50 bill since we just seem to give each other money anyways. I do usually fill stockings still and try to put at least one small thing under the tree for everyone though. It's not the same with no little kids... maybe one of these years there will be some again!

I love him, I hope he knows the fans are not blaming him.

This was posted on the Clayboard: It just annoys me that people might get the impression that Detroit wasn't selling well, when in fact it was selling quite well as compared to other venues. Why wouldn't they have booked him into a more appropriately sized venue? Argh. I feel bad for the fans & Clay. That said, in 9 years and 60+ concerts/galas/Broadway shows, this is the first time this has happened to me personally. So I guess I'm still pretty lucky. I can't wait for St. Charles on Saturday!

Well that fucking sucks. Talk about a roller coaster ride. We had a group of 15 for Detroit, and I was calling for dinner reservations yesterday. We had all gone together purchased a ticket for one of our group who has been having rough times and hasn't been to a concert in a while. Why does it have to be Detroit? It's the only one freaking remotely close for those of us in South-Western Ontario. The great white fucking north. Sorry for the rant. I am fortunate enough to still have a ticket to St. Charles (a 6 hour drive), but others aren't. {{{all affected}}}

Thanks guys, sorry it took me so long to write, usually I write it immediately but I hadn't taken a laptop this time around, and to type it out on my iPhone would be killer! LOL. I had to go back and edit it already, though, because reading it through again I realized that I was so much in the Aiken fog, I listed my seat was on the left side when it was really on the right. LMAO!

We arrived home last night around 6 p.m. The drive leaving Shippensburg was very rainy and unpleasant, but we drove out of that pretty quickly and the roads through the mountains were clear and pleasant. However once we crossed the border into Canada, the rain came pelting down again, and even turned icy a bit. To say the final 2 - 3 hours were unpleasant is an understatement. But listening to Clay Christmas music from tours past helped us through. All in all, I am glad we took the US 15 route instead of the US 219 route that mapquest/Googlemaps insists on giving us. It took us about 8.5 hours of driving, plus stops, each way. If that seems a bit over the top (and did to us on the way there), it was worth every second. We left home about 6 a.m. Saturday morning, had lunch in Williamsport (which was kinda cool, reminiscing about the JNaT 2006 playing with the wood banter), and arrived at the Shippen Place Hotel in Shippensburg at about 4:30 p.m. We ran into cha cha trusty in the lobby! The place was sold out, and I'm sure it was probably 90% Clay fans. We freshened up and then came back downstairs with the intention of heading over to Walmart for some light shopping. We walked off the elevator and some ladies in the lobby said "if you're not Claymates, we don't know what!". LOL! They were on various boards and had travelled 2 or 3 hours each to get there from different states. We didn't know them but that doesn't even matter with Clay fans, does it? I love the atmosphere of a Clay concert! Anyways, Walmart was great, since we always find different things in the US than we have back home in Canada. For me, I buy my Starbuck's Tazo tea products every trip, because they are 50% of the price. Then we hit the Big K (since all K-Marts in Canada closed years ago) and then we headed over to the venue at 6 p.m. because FromClaygary needed a ticket. It was on the University grounds, but it was really hard to locate, and waaaaaay down this road that wound around all sorts of buildings. Good thing we didn't attempt to walk there....the lady at the hotel had said it was only a short walk. To the gates maybe! Once that was accomplished (and various photos taken of the sign advertising Clay Aiken) we went back to the hotel to get ready. We never had dinner because the hotel restaurant was full (of Claymates no doubt) and we were all too giddy to eat much anyways. Claymatron had her first front row seat and said she figured she'd puke with excitement anyways. Hee, wouldn't that make for some interesting banter....not. So we headed back to the venue again and saw a few familiar faces in the lobby, which was packed. We chatted with Karen Eh & her mom & aunt until they allowed us down to our seats. We were in 5th row towards the right side, but the view was spectacular. No pit, but a nice graded venue and ample room. They had decorated the stage with large Christmas presents on our side of the curtain. It filled in quite nicely on the main floor, and we remarked that it was probably the least amount of familiar faces we'd ever seen at a concert. It really felt like a NJU audience. We saw Faye come in with Frances and another person, and we saw Scarlett arrive (with almost as much fan fare, hee). I hadn't watched a whole lot of clack, but I knew the set list and had listened to a few cellcerts. Still, the opening to AIW with the tape player was hilarious. The faces he makes! cindilu2 was concerned at first, thinking something really was wrong, until she realized it was just schtick, and he had us all laughing. And then he started singing and we were all blown away. There were a few rough patches, enough to make us grab on to each other and cross our fingers, but of course he nailed it and almost blew the roof off with the final note. The overwhelming feeling I got during the show was that he was loving it, he was enjoying himself up there, and he was selling himself to a lot of people who he knew had never seen him before. It was much less of a show "for us" than the Tried & True tour was. This was a show designed to wow, and it certainly did. I think he really, really wants to keep doing this, and I am sure he will. I am not worried anymore that this might be the last tour. This man was born to be on stage. He glows, and he is so funny and comfortable in his own skin now. God, I was blown away by the power of his voice and the control he has over it. In one song, he can go soft and delicate, and then the next line practically take the roof off. At one point he raved about the acoustics in the venue, and dropped the mike and sang a line or two of MCWL just to demonstrate how his voice could carry right to the back. Which it did. I'd love to hear him sing a whole song that way. A couple of times I had to force myself to keep my eyes open. No, not because I was bored. OMG, who could be bored with that man on stage and those gorgeous sounds coming out of his mouth? I am just such an audiofile, and his voice is just such a perfect instrument, I sometimes want to close my eyes to focus even more on it. But of course, that would be sacriledge! I can't even describe how great of a concert it was. Every time you think there is no way he could possibly raise the bar higher, and every time he manages to do it. Had I not known I had tickets to two more shows, I would have been devastated when he started into DSIAFCD because it was almost over. But thankfully, I do have tickets, and come ice storm or blizzard, I'll get to both of them. It was kind of ironic that it became a bit of the Faye show, given that certain members of our group aren't her biggest fans. Hee. But it was also kind of cool that it took the banter in different directions, and gave us a gorgeous example of how well Clay can harmonize. The girl Faye had picked to go up on stage and sing Silver Bells was very, very good, but Clay just amazes me with his ability to figure a harmony out so quickly. He sang the first line of the melody to get her started, then went down to harmonize with her, then decided to go up and sing the high part instead. It was so cool! And the freaking toilet banter was hilarious. He was so tickled with that, I just love to see him so happy up there. I had perma grin all night and still do even this morning, although I've had little sleep and my stomach is tied in knots because of not eating properly on the road. Oh well, the things we do for Clay Aiken, eh? I loved the overall package. Heh, the show people, the show! The stories lead perfectly into the songs. I had a bit of a hard time understanding Faye's story, but it was the quality of the recording more than her accent. I heard later that it might have been recorded over the phone, and that explains it. But his banter about the pig tail later was hilarious! Because they were my thoughts exactly. Who the hell wraps up a pig tail? LOL! I look forward to downloading the clack and reliving every minute of this show. His voice was fantastic. A few cracks but he reigned them in every time. And I really hope someone was kind enough to get a full body shot during DSIAFCD. The man sings with his feet too, people! I love the way he gets his whole body into it. That was the best rendition of DSIAFCD I've ever heard him sing. And then he came out on our side for the encore, and sat on the edge of the stage right in front of us. I hadn't spoiled myself at all for this song, not even audio, so it was totally new to me. I couldn't tell you the first thing thing about it though, because I think I was in the Aiken fog. He walked up our aisle, but no one touched him. God he just commands the audience these days. He is so in his element. When we were leaving, even the ushers were commenting to us on how amazing he is. There were some local couples standing outside, and we heard them say "he has a very loyal following". So we chatted with them a little bit, let them know where we were from, etc. And then we all jumped in the car because we were freaking starving, and headed over to a 24 hour diner across the road from our hotel. It quickly got busy with other Clay fans coming in, including fellow Ontarian canfly172, and justclay12, amongst others whose names I don't remember. It was fun to be able to decompress and relive and eeeeee and squeeeeee for a while. Then we fell into bed and got up early to begin the trek home and do it all over again next weekend!

EEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee!!!1! Sitting here with Claymatron waiting for cindilu2 to pick us up. Then we will pick up FromClaygary on the way, and we are off to Shippensburg! Love the pictures, KarenEh. Still don't understand what happened to the beautiful hair from the beginning of the tour...but I'm not picky.

{{{couchie}}} that sucks

Happy December! I doubt I've said that in the past 5 years....one week until my first concert! Safe travels jmh123!

Fear, thanks so much for the recap. I listened in on the cellcert and I am so glad that he performed well in NC! And it was so nice to hear Quiana. I'd love to know why she isn't touring with him this year. It just seems so wrong. shortyjill, I know I got an email from the Olympia Entertainment Online Club that promotes different venues, and Clay's Detroit concert was included. So maybe that is helping? In any case, glad to hear that there appear to be some seats selling. I know there are 15 of us coming from here! But we all bought our tickets the day they went on sale. ldyjocelyn, thanks, I was beginning to wonder.... Happy Birthday Clay!

The thing is..........those "reparative" therapy people were lying. It was total bullshit what they were saying. I personally know kids whose parents (usually through some church or other) tried to push them into this type of thing. It's never the child's choice, and it if appears to be, it's because the child has been so brainwashed that they think they are bad, or wrong or broken, and need to be fixed. What needs to be fixed is parents or any adult in a position of authority over kids who spews this crap, this hatred. I am so proud of Clay for taking a stance. He made his point loud and clear and for him to say that he wouldn't take "the pill" now, 10 years later, speaks volumes to me about where he is in his life and his journey. He is amazing. ETA: Yikes, did I kill the board?

*waves to lurking DisneyKid*

Yeah, I read between the lines to mean "it's none of you business!" Remember that little boy from A.C.? I need to find that clack. It was so cute! Last night, I ended up watching the entire Williamsport concert from 2006. Our boy may do basically the same schtick, but he has definitely changed. He is much looser now, more risque for sure, and just more comfortable in his own skin, IMO. I saw a big difference. That said, it was a great concert, he wore his glasses (wheeee!), he had great hair, he was in stellar voice, and the "Col Legno" banter was hilarious. "I'm not sayin' you're wrong, Doris!" LMAO. Williamsport, PA was Dec. 9, 2006. Shippensburg, PA is Dec. 8, 2012. If I could get there 6 years ago, I can get there now. Come hell or high water or snowstorm. Right?