#life

#life vocals (aka FANDATE)

Hiya, Elise!!! 

Just packing my stuff up here, in preps for heading back down to Cali for FANDATE. (or #life vocals, THE INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE, as we billed it to the fans). Did you know, when I put up the tickets on the site, they sold out in less than half an hour?!?!!! From the chatter in the comments, it sounds like people are heading out from as far away as ENGLAND!!! Can you EVEN IMAGINE?!?!!!

Huh, well, Igor sounds like a piece of work... good idea to send him out to TEXAS, the land of COWBOYS, MOM, and APPLE PIE. Or something like that. I betcha there's a showing of AMERICAN SNIPER happening somewhere about there... or one of the neverending TRANSFORMERS series... if you're looking for some good PATRIOTIC BOMBAST!!! And judging by both her online presence and her performance during SHARKDATE, I'm sure that Simone can HOLD HER OWN with even a misogynistic Russkie! ("I'll have Violet, Lila, and Yesenia", INDEED! Any chance that dueling is part of the MEGADATE activities?!?! We could match him up against our biggest, BADDEST guy and let him have it!!!! (Ben????))

As you can tell, I'm over my FIT OF RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION over #life's behavior over the Heather episode. Looks like our new matches will at least be interesting... although I can't say that they're adding to our likelihood of OVERWHELMING SUCCESS, but at least they should make for GOOD TV. Kinda surprised at Monika -- I'm not much of an RH fan, but I defs know her name from the tabloids!!!

And off, to go out on the road again... I decided to have mercy on Regan and take her and Kylie with me again... it did make it a lot easier having them keeping an eye on the car / our luggage / the hotel room, and somehow with six matches (and a twelve-year-old) under my watchful eye this time, I think I'm going to have even LESS time to call my own than I did last time. (There is also the possibility that one or both of the girls will do the meet & greet at the airport thing while I'm setting up the venue.)

...

So, where do I begin? Let's see, I was just packing up when I wrote to you last, and getting ready to meet my girls at their mom's house so that we could start our REPEAT ROAD TRIP once more... It was pretty late at night; I'd figured out that I wanted to drive overnight -- if we took turns we could catch some rest when it wasn't our turn (we took my aunt's (Regan's mom's) minivan this time so that it wasn't so crowded), and avoid the necessity of staying somewhere overnight. We'd arrive at the venue for FANDATE bright and early and have enough time to get things squared away before the matches started arriving.

(Note that I chose an outdoor arena that's situated in a park with extensive outdoor features, even a zoo for the kid, all the better to encourage sub-groups of the matches to wander about and get to know one another between the times when they needed to coordinate with rehearsals, sound checks, and that sort of thing.)

So off we went that night, with me taking the first driving shift (down to St. George), and then Regan took over and I got a few hours of sleep.

I woke up with Regan shaking my shoulder -- all that travel must be catching up with me! -- and she said, "Good! You're finally awake! Your phone has been ringing off the hook. Who is R2? Is that like R2D2???"

Elise, I kid you not, it was THREE O'CLOCK in the morning. Even allowing for the time difference, WHO CALLS SOMEONE AT THAT TIME OF DAY???!!!?!?

It was R2. It was a little hard to hear her -- she appeared to be calling from a roadside public phone (do those still exist?) and, once I could calm her down enough to understand what she was trying to tell me, I was dismayed.

It seems that one of their neighbors was having a DIFFICULT BIRTH and that R1 had to be there to help deal with it, or something (srsly, Elise, it took me a while to figure out who "Rachael" and "Becky" were bc I think of them as R1 and R2 now). R2 -- "Becky" -- is apparently considered a bit of a klutz among her family members, and has been BANISHED FROM THE SCENE, so she was calling me to see if I will still LET HER COME if she doesn't have her sister in tow!!! (Have you been getting the sense that it was R2 who wanted to do this in the first place? I have been beginning to think so... and that R1 decided to come along as a chaperone of sorts... although, that's coming from Becky's take and might not be entirely accurate. (Wait, THERE'S MORE to this story. BUT ALL IN GOOD TIME.))