The Good Old Internet

Sometime near Christmas, I was wondering what to do for my girlfriend for Christmas. It is so hard sometimes to have gift ideas because neither of us really want anything, and on the rare occasion we do, we just get it.

I wanted to do something special though because I haven’t done well the past few years. She’s been so wonderful through my entire NPE thing, too.

I came up with the idea of looking into potentially going to a concert in Philly. We can take the train. The first couple of bands I looked at had nothing, but then I remembered Dream Theater, a band we both love, was coming out with a new one. I looked at their website, and they had tour dates.

They had a show in Philly at the Met that we could actually make it to with her work. We’d have to stay overnight since there are no trains running back here late enough. I asked a cousin if it would be relatively safe to take the broad street line after it, and she said we’d be fine. I am fine with dealing with the drug addict stuff, but she’s naive to that sort of thing, and I think it would be best if she could stay that way. Preferably I stay away from it too and haven’t been back to Bucks County in over a decade due to that.

It was weird to me with the security stuff, but we haven’t been to a show in 20+ years, so things changed. The Met was a really great place to see Dream Theater play. The last time we saw them was, I think, at Tower Theater in Upper Darby. That was great too.

The show was outstanding. They seem to have only gotten better. LaBrie seemed a bit off at first, but he’s not young anymore. After the first couple of songs, he was on. I did see that they postponed shows after the one we saw because he was sick. I wonder if that was a factor.

The set list was great too. They played some songs from their older albums, which I loved to hear. They also played heavier stuff from their newer ones and a couple of songs from Parasomnia. It was neat to see them in their first North American show for the new CD, which didn’t even get delivered to our house until we were already in Philly. I can’t wait to give the new album a good listen through my headphones. She was on vacation this week, so I didn’t do that. I also need to pick up new foam parts for my headphones. I had the damn things in my Amazon cart months ago, but I can be so cheap occasionally.

It was great to finally get to another show after all of these years. Bonus points for not having to deal with driving, so she could have a drink before and during. The broad street line was fine. Only a couple of homeless people. For once, I didn’t even smell anyone smoking crack or anything else, for that matter, in the concourse.