phantom

I broke my blog the other day.  I tried to upgrade my version of WordPress and instead, it wrote over my previous database as a new installation and, in the blink of an eye, I lost almost four years worth of writing.

Thanks to Leanne’s advice and Bluehost’s excellent customer service, my blog was restored by the next day.  I lost a lot of comments on my most recent post, though.  So, if you left a  comment and now it’s gone, that’s why.

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I’m going to Las Vegas tomorrow.  My birthday present from my mother last year was a promise that she would take me to Las Vegas to see The Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian.  Due to life being life, we are just now getting around to taking the trip –a month before my next birthday.  It will be a whirlwind trip.  We’ll be there less than 24 hours.  But we will have fun.

I’ve wanted to see Phantom of the Opera since I was a teenager.  I kept the Phantom soundtrack in the cassette player in my truck when I was in high school.  I was that kind of kid: the kid who marches to her own beat.  I never cared if listening to Broadway soundtracks in the 11th grade was cool.  I liked it so I did it.

I remember turning up the overture because I loved how the blasting pipe organ made my hair stand up on the back of my neck.  I listened to Sarah Brightman as her voice scaled up into octaves I could only dream of reaching and I loved it when my friend Beverly would sing along because she kept up with Sarah Brightman, effortlessly.  I drank up the romanticism in the lyrics of All I Ask of You like it was nectar and yearned for such dramatic emotion in my life.  Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again seemed so poignant and sad to me that I sometimes listened to it just to induce that exquisite, tender melancholy in which feelings seem so heightened and wonderful and awful all at the same time.

I am excited to finally see the show on stage.  That’s for sure.  I never even watched the movie because I was certain I would be disappointed.  For me, a great deal of the excitement lies in the nature of the live performance.

I have more to write but it can wait.  I have some packing to do.

Until then, take care of you.