So last night was Laura in Toronto. And I know that you are all probably sick of hearing about her, but since it’s practically all I’ve been doing for the past week and a half, it’s kind of what’s in my brain, you know?

Anyway, it was wonderful. Not as long as the New York concert, but equally as good in different ways. Especially our seats. She pulled some lucky schmuck up on stage and let him sing almost an entire song with her. It was actually rather endearing. He was singing loudly from the front row, so she motioned him up and sang the beginning of a line and let him finish it. And he was surprisingly good, so she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to the center of stage, sat him down on her stool, gave him the mic and said goodnight to the audience. And the guy actually started finishing the song and the band started playing and she walked back up and finished it with him. Which is pretty awesome for him.

It reminded me of something cool I once saw Bryan Adams do. Yes, “Bryan Adams” and “cool” are allowed in the same sentence. And, you know what? I love “Please Forgive Me.” I sing it loud and proud and feel it right down to my soul. And my shame is only an iota.

So here’s what Bryan Adams did (you’d forgotten that my closeted Bryan Adams love wasn’t the point of this, didn’t you?) He asked for people in the audience who knew how to play guitar, bass, drums, keyboards to raise their hands and then asked if they knew “Summer of ‘69″. Then he filled the entire band with fans. They played and he sang. See, don’t you have a whole new respect for Bryan Adams now?

When we got into our hotel on Thursday, which I kind of had an inkling Laura and her band would be staying at, two of the first people we saw were Laura’s father, who is traveling with her, and the shorty backup singer. Shawna’s all like “Look… look!” And I turn and she’s like “Dad and one backup singer.” And I’m like, “I told you they’d be staying here.” And she’s like, “I know you did, but I didn’t know you were being psychic.” And I’m like, “Yeah, well now you know.”

Anyway, the entire band congregated in the lobby with Laura’s papa shortly after, so we spent the entire night on Thursday sitting in the lobby. I wrote a ditty commemorating the event, but I was too tired to record it to share with you all that night. And at this point, it probably won’t be shared until late this week, which is a little sad, because it had us rolling that night in the hotel. Granted, it was very late by that point, we only got like five hours of sleep the night before, and we had been up a very long time, so it could turn out that it’s just really embarrassing.

Then, Friday we got up and went and sat in the lobby… just in case. No luck. Though I did manage to come up with some music for a relatively uptempo song. This is a miraculous thing for me. Normally, my musical stylings are slow and melancholic. But after rocking the last few weeks away, apparently something got shaken loose.

After the concert, we waited some more and, again, no Laura. But we saw every member of her band and crew several times. And I kind of think they knew, you know, that we were waiting and hoping, because after a while, when they saw us, they all kind of looked at us with little laughing “look at those groupies” smirks.

So that was a bit of a sad turn of events, to be right there in the same hotel and be Laura-less the entire time. The weather was a special kind of craptastic though, so there wasn’t much else we could do anyway. I mean, I suppose we could have worked some, but who likes to do that?

Then this morning on our way out, we saw the bags and the crew waiting in the lower lobby and we made the grown-up decision to get on the road and not wait around again. It was a wise decision, as Mother Earth has been a temperamental bitch all day long and we had to drive through a monsoon to get to Connecticut. Because we decided at the last minute that we did, in fact, need to see Laura on her last US concert date here tomorrow night. We came sans tickets, hoping for those last minute VIP ticket releases, and just scored seventh row center. Sadly, it’s at another casino. Laura’s already tweeted about the venue. She seems to be as thrilled with it as we are, but is considerably more polite than I am.

So, to make a long story even longer, I am stoked about tomorrow, sad that it will all soon be over and wishing that the good luck streak that was this week up until yesterday could last. But, after some of today’s events, including the fact that when we arrived at the hotel we had booked in Connecticut and unloaded in the monsoon, we discovered that they had given our non-smoking room away and only had smoking rooms available, so had to find another hotel and drive another forty miles in the rain, I’m thinking the week of luck has officially come to an end.

Well, it was really good while it lasted.

Oh, and it’s not my dad’s best week. He got thrown from the back of a moving truck at his job on Thursday. He is sixty-two years old, landed on his back, hit his head, and came away with a small broken bone in his back that requires only a back brace. This may explain why everyone on that side of my family tree lives for half an eternity.

So now look at this -

Stormtroopers’ Day Off

- and we’ll all feel better.