Hello from Portland

Happy Sunday lovely Zoners, how are you? 

It's a grey drizzly day here in Portland. I'm listening to JRAD Stanford - wowee!  Loving the Two Souls. 

I took a Zone break as I've had some nasty work deadlines that changed midstream due to political maneuvers at city hall. 

Since I'm procrastinating on other computer work today, thought I'd share a funny story that happened last Tuesday when my friend Samantha gifted me a Molly Tuttle ticket at the Aladdin Theater: 

The Aladdin backstage door is not protected from the sidewalk, and tour buses park on a very narrow street. There's an adjacent old pharmacy w/ parking lot that you can circle through when looking for parking. There's usually a "backstage door dude" hanging outside. 

I dropped off Samantha to get in line while I circled .... and when I circled on the backstage street a third time, there was 1 open street spot behind a Sprinter van and trailer in front of the back door! I parked quickly after asking the door dude about any additional tour buses -- he said the Sprinter belonged to Molly, so I was good to park.  As I was locking my car and about to race since the line had started to move, a car was exiting the pharmacy lot, windows down, and a couple of people inside.  They yelled to me... but the only words I could understand were "Molly Tuttle"... and I couldn't see their faces...so I smiled and waved and made a motion that I was off to the line. 

We were surprised there was an opening act, solo singer / guitarist Cristina Vane from Nashville. Though we had saved seats closer to stage, we were running around during the opener saying hello to friends... towards the end of her set, we were in the dark back row under the balcony when we heard her introduce her final song with "I want to dedicate this song to the woman who STOLE my parking spot!"  (Crowd cheers wildly)  Samantha and I were in tears, laughing hysterically in the back row. 

At first, I wanted to grab the mic and ask her what her definition is of a public parking spot... but then I let it go... then we went to the lobby to visit the merch table before Molly began.... and Cristina suddenly appeared at the table -- so I spun around and walked away, a little fearful that she might've recognized me.  Samantha was ready to tell her that since there was no signage or barricades, not to mention the backstage dude's OK, had she only identified herself as an artist on the lineup, I would have moved... and I would have done that, of course.  So she probably had to walk 3 blocks instead of zero.

First and likely the last time that I'll ever get a song dedication, ha!