New Year's Eve

My wife trades off with others for days off around the two end of the year holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year was her year to work the days between Christmas and New Year so I hadn't been expecting to go anywhere. But we did. Let me explain.

I readily admit I'm a hard person to buy gifts for. In fact, I mostly request and get gift certificates to satisfy my book buying needs to keep me in books throughout the year. But for anything else, if it is something I already wanted, I probably would have obtained it during the rest of the year. My wife, however, not one to just lay down, wanted to give me a gift and so settled on an experience. She bought me a package experience to visit one of my favorite musical groups of all time, The Nadas. Actually, she didn't buy me anything but printed out the form and said if I was interested, I could buy a package and she would go with me. I was and we did because it fell on a Saturday night when she was off work as normal.

I tell people I went to college with the two founding members of The Nadas. That is the truth though I never knew them personally when we were there and before they dropped out to pursue music full time. I was at one of their initial "concerts" and have gone to dozens of their concerts throughout the years. I've seen them morph from a wanna-be band to a house band at a college bar to being a somewhat known band that travels throughout the Midwest and has been written up in articles in such magazines as Playboy as the best band you've never heard. (I wasn't aware that Playboy had articles but apparently they do.) The last time I saw them was sometime after we were first married and before our oldest was born which is means it was nearly 20 years ago.

The experience was a package deal. For the price we paid, we got a hotel room, supper, a New Year's Eve concert with 6 free drinks and a glass of Champaign as midnight approached. The following day, it also included brunch with the band followed by another short set before we checked out and went home. Since it was happening on a Saturday evening and was halfway across the state, we combined a trip to see my grandmother ahead of that and so left early Saturday morning.

The trip to see my grandmother was a nice one. Modern medicine and my aunt now taking over the dispensing of pills have left my grandmother in a very lucid state and so we had a great conversation. She wanted to go out to lunch at a chain restaurant called Pizza Ranch which is essentially a pizza buffet sort of joint. Being this was the first time we had eaten out in well over a month, I finally was able to continue with Mom's holiday tradition of tipping a waiter/waitress with a $100 bill. In this case I gave it to the young lady who kept picking up our emptied plates from the table. I slipped it to her casually with a Happy Holiday's greeting and she accepted it without hesitation. But then she hesitated and opened it up to look at it again with a confused look on her face. My wife following behind me, told her to enjoy it and you could see the look of happiness cross her face again. I knew we had selected wisely once again to pass on our good fortunate to others. 

We checked into the hotel later that evening and I took a brief power nap as it has been many years since I had actually stayed up until midnight. I had been worried about being the oldest people in the crowd and was shocked to be one of the youngest. The majority of the crowd, (very small since the hotel was blocked off to anyone else except concert goers and the only way to attend the concert was to book a room) comprised mostly of people 20 years my senior. In fact, they didn't know squat about the band but had just booked the experience as something to do on New Year's Eve. There were perhaps a handful of other couples our age who got up during the second set of the evening and spent it right up next to the band dancing and having a great time. A few times during that second set, I felt like that college student who had nursed one beer the entire night so I could afford to listen to their music. To say we had a great time is a gross understatement.

The next morning we had brunch and they got back up to play a third much shorter set. They asked for requests. As most of the younger couples weren't there, apparently still hung over from the night before, it was just us and the crowd of people 20 years our senior who didn't know any of their songs. So out of the six songs they sang, four were requested by my wife. She got a "fourfer" as one of the founding members said. They thanked everyone at the end of the set and we left, checked out and drove home listening to a shuffled mix of their songs courtesy of the music app and all of their albums having already been uploaded on my smartphone for years. 

It was one of the best Christmas gifts I have gotten in years.