You're the meaning in my life

I hope everyone had a happy 4th of July. This year we decided to do something completely different from the normal 4th of July celebration and went and saw fireworks. As I was playing with sparklers, eating cookies with red and blue sprinkles on top and drinking grape soda, I started to wonder if maybe I was too old to be doing such things. Then I wrote my name with the sparkler, and it was awesome so I stopped caring.

Favorite quotes of the night:

Loyd to a guy who lent us his lighter so we could light sparklers while holding a whole bunch of glow bracelets/necklaces he bought from some street vendor: Thank you so much. Can I interest you in a glow stick?

The guy who lent us his lighter for the sparklers: You kids be careful now!

Jace, after I remarked that I couldn't believe the fireworks finale was still going on (it was seriously so long): I know. Now I'm just starting to worry about my tax dollars and where they're going.

The rest of the weekend was pretty trying for me and my family as we are dealing with something pretty big and pretty serious right now. But it was really nice to be able to be with my friends and kick back with some grape soda.

Thursday we went to a concert. It was a couple of new bands. I'm not sure if you guys have heard of them - Huey Lewis and the News and Chicago? Awesome. You run a few risks going to see bands who have been around for 20-30 years.

1. They have so many songs that the chances of you hearing your favorite are pretty slim.
2. They might play new stuff and-let's be honest-I am not here to listen to new stuff.
3. They might play all really old stuff.

In this case, especially with Chicago, this is what happened to us. I never thought I could describe anything involving Chicago by using this word, but I have to do it: disappointing. They were disappointing.

Apparently they weren't aware that there were a lot of people under the age of 50 in the crowd because all they played was their really, really early stuff. That is okay when we're talking "Saturday in the Park", but enough of the jam sessions on the jazz flute and trombone. That's all I'm saying. Here is the list of songs on my Chicago Greatest Hits 1982-1989:

1. Hard to Say I'm Sorry
2. Look Away
3. Stay the Night
4. Will You Still Love Me?
5. Love Me Tomorrow
6. What Kind of Man Would I Be?
7. You're the Inspiration
8. I Don't Wanna Live Without Your Love
9. Hard Habit to Break
10. Along Comes a Woman
11. If She Would Have Been Faithful...
12. We Can Last Forever

Here's the list of songs they played from this cd:
1. Hard to Say I'm Sorry

One effing 80's song. Are you kidding me??? Not even "You're the Inspiration"? What?!? That seems like it should be illegal. If I had balls, I would've given my left one to hear "Will You Still Love Me?" But alas it was not meant to be. Obviously part of the problem was the severe lack of Cetera. I'm just saying his absence did not go unnoticed. There was a point in HL's set (Huey Lewis) where he started introducing a man he looked up to and loved rocking out with, and Danielle and I were actually holding hands and our breath thinking they were going to bring out Peter Cetera. Then it was some stupid guy we didn't know. Dammit. We all thought they should've lowered Cetera onto the stage from a helicopter. It's probably better that didn't happen because I might have actually gone into cardiac arrest. Probably my favorite part of the Chicago set was when Danielle took out her iPod and started listening to their 80's songs.

HL was okay, but he didn't play "Hip to be Square" or "Happy to be Stuck With You". Come on, HL. You can do better than that. Though I appreciate that you played "Back in Time" in your encore. Nice touch. Michael J. Fox rules.

All in all, I'm going to have to give the actual concert 1 star out of 4. But I give Chicago Greatest Hits 1982-1989 4 out of 4 stars and Peter Cetera 8 and a quarter stars.