The Secret to Happiness is Owning Purple Shoes

Last month, on Halloween night, I went over to JJ and JA's house for a Halloween party. Like last year, we sat on their front porch and greeted the hundreds of Trick or Treaters that visited. This year they had approximately 509 kids. That's quite a few. One thing that was interesting is that there were a lot fewer teenagers this year. DS, AP, MP and EB were also there. We celebrated by eating lots of goodies, including JA's Thai pumpkin coconut soup and Sicilian cheesecake. It was a chilly night, but JJ had his propane heater to warm us up.

We had some beautiful weather that week and I ate outside as much as I could.

One night, my dad and I ate at Grasshopper, at the corner of 9th and Hillsborough Road, in Durham. It's another new Bakatsias's offering. We had pork and shrimp dumplings to start. Then, I tried a dish with hoisin pork with cabbage and wheat noodles. My dad had soy fake chicken with tofu, pumpkin and ginger. We both thought his dish was the best, but my mom didn't like the leftovers at all. For dessert we had a green apple crisp, which was delicious.


One day, for lunch, I ate outside with my lunch from Twinnie's, in CIEMAS. I thought my fruit tart, for dessert, was rather pretty.

I've determined that the secret to happiness is owning a pair of purple Birkenstocks.

One Saturday morning, I was listening to the radio as I was getting dressed and the DJ on 102.9FM said that everyone would be wearing tie dye that night, because Joan Baez would be playing at the Carolina Theatre, in Durham. I knew that meant that I'd blown in again. I hadn't kept track of her schedule and I would miss yet a 3rd concert. I called the box office throughout the day, even though it said on the website that on the weekends they were only open an hour before each event started. I'd planned to call them at the beginning of that hour to see if they happened to have any seats left. My dad suggested that we might actually want to just go there if we were serious about getting in. I initially thought he was crazy, because I didn't think we had a prayer of getting tickets. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. As we pulled into the parking building, I asked the women taking money if they knew whether or not it was sold out and they didn't know. Once we got out of the van and to the sidewalk, we could see the sign that said clearly: "Joan Baez - Nov 5th - SOLD OUT". Well, that was it.

My dad thought we should keep going and talk to the ticket office. It turns out that they did have a seat for each of us, but we wouldn't be able to sit together. That was fine! While we were waiting, we got to talk a bit to MO, our old friend from bbsing days, who works there. When the usher took us to our seats, she said that of course we could sit together, so we did.
It was a great concert, particularly because she performed everything accoustically and played a lot of her older music. I was very impressed, because I thought that her voice would have detiorated a lot more over the years. As someone pointed out, if you actually know how to sing properly, that's a lot less likely. It was a lot of fun and she sang many of my favorite songs. My parents played me Joan Boaz songs probably even before I was born and I became an avid fan when I was a teenager. I've been wanting to go to a concert ever since.

I didn't take any pictures within the concert hall, because we were right next to a very large, albeit friendly, security guard. They stressed that absolutely no pictures should be taken during the performance. Since the Treo 650 doesn't have a flash, it's not as crazy an idea as it may sound, but the screen would still seem bright for whomever would sit behind me. I did take a really neat picture of the sold out sign with the beautiful yellow Carolina Theatre behind it, but, alas.....