#MicroblogMondays: Farewell, Yahoo Groups

Figure skating season kicked off with Skate America in Las Vegas this past weekend, the first competition in the Grand Prix series. After watching the ladies & men's finals on TV yesterday, I went online to SkateFans, a Yahoo Group I've belonged to for eons, to check out other fans' comments. 

I hadn't been on any of my Yahoo Groups for quite a while, so I was surprised (and yet not entirely surprised...) by the pop-up message I found, which apparently went public a couple of days ago. Yahoo Groups is (essentially) closing down.  Not entirely -- group members will still be able to contact each other via email -- but seriously, they might as well be. As of Oct. 28th (one week from today), users won't be able to upload any more content to the site, and as of Dec. 14th, all previously posted content -- including Files, Polls, Links, Photos, Folders, Calendar, Database, Attachments, Conversations, Email Updates, Message Digest and Message History -- will be permanently removed.

As I said, I was surprised, but not surprised by this turn of events. Yahoo Groups has been in decline for years, especially since the advent of (cough) Facebook. Many of the groups I once belonged either disbanded, moved to Facebook or another forum or went dormant years ago -- but there were still several that continued to thrive -- despite increasingly unreliable service. More & more frequently over the past few years, I would try to access one or more of my Yahoo Groups, only to encounter technical difficulties, some of which lasted days or even a full week or longer. There was little to do except wait;  there was no apparent mechanism where we could complain or even find out when service might be restored. 

The sad thing is that Yahoo Groups was the place that several groups I belonged to went to, after other forums elsewhere folded. SkateFans began some 20 years ago;  it grew out a listserv I belonged to when I first started going online in the late 1990s (rec.sport.skating.ice.figure) -- although the number/frequency of posts there has declined dramatically over the years. The small, private Yahoo Group that's been my anchor as a childless-not-by-choice woman for 15+ years began in 2003, after we started having technical difficulties with the Childless Living board on iVillage where we'd all originally met around 2001. (The iVillage board closed in 2008, several years before iVillage itself disappeared.)

The D.E. Stevenson author fan group I belong to was on Yahoo Groups for something like 20 years (since about 1998), and still going strong, with 300+ members -- but the frequent interruptions to our discussion schedule there (because of Yahoo Groups' increasing unreliability) were becoming really frustrating.  A year or so ago, a group of members took it upon themselves to research alternatives. Very happily, we were able to transfer the group's entire posting history, as well as photos, files and databases of collected knowledge, to a new home on Groups.io (founded in 2014 by the guy who started ONElist, which eventually became... Yahoo Groups!).  My Yahoo Group of childless-not-by-choice friends also made the move to Groups.io shortly afterward, happily preserving 15 years of searchable posts my friends there & I have written about childless living (and life in general -- it's the closest thing I've had in recent years to a journal/diary, besides my blog).  So far, so good...!  (In case you're interested, here's a Lifehacker article explaining the advantages of moving to Groups.io.)

A SkateFans group member has set up a new group for members on Google Groups. I am not sure what is going to happen to another Yahoo Group I have belonged to for about 20 years (one that's listed in the resources in the sidebar of this blog), Mullerian Anomalies. The number of posts there has declined dramatically over the years, but it's been a fabulous source of information and accumulated wisdom for women like me who have an abnormally shaped uterus.

Change is one thing to cope with, but what really bothers me is thinking of all that accumulated knowledge and history (on my old groups, and others) disappearing into the ether with the click of some anonymous techie's mouse. But I guess it's the way of the Internet -- change and impermanence.  Blogging is still here, happily, but those of us who have been around for a while know it's not like it used to be. These days, many women who might have gone to message boards or blogs or even Facebook groups to find support for infertility & pregnancy loss seem to be flocking to Instagram instead. And is it just my imagination, or is everyone and his or her dog starting a podcast lately? 

Were/are you a Yahoo Groups user?

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.

"If you don't want to have kids, you don't have to want a career instead"

Jody Day of Gateway Women recently shared an article from Vice on social media that had me nodding along as I read it:  "If You Don’t Want to Have Kids, You Don’t Have to Want a Career Instead."

Many people still equate "childless woman" with "career woman" -- if you don't have children, well, you must have a fabulous career instead, right?  You obviously have more time to throw yourself into your job, work long hours and climb the corporate ladder, right?  (Conversely, if you want a high-powered career, are you really going to have the time to devote to a family? -- This either/or thinking was very common years ago, and still persists in some quarters.)

But what if we don't have children, and don't WANT a high-powered career either?

A few excerpts from the article:

Work can be the thing we do in order to enjoy our free time—it doesn’t have to be a lifelong career, and we don’t always need to be pushing to be the boss. Forget having it “all”—why aren’t women allowed to just have “some,” and be happy with it? ...Perhaps we are finally waking up to the idea that we’ve been conned—that in falling into the optimized lifestyle trap, we’re missing out on the life we actually deserve... 

The biggest barrier women face seems to be the idea that we have inherent worth: that we deserve to be alive, deserve to be happy, even if we are doing “nothing.” [ed note: and even if we don't have children]  [Women's empowerment coach Hueina] Su echoed this idea – saying that If you want to de-optimize your life, it’s critical to believe that you are inherently worthy, and to identify what success and happiness means to you. “We must learn to redefine success for ourselves, instead of letting society and other people dictate how we live our lives,” she said

I've written in the past here about my lukewarm feelings toward my job/career (even before I lost it, lol).  I worked to live, I did not live to work... but I sometimes felt kind of guilty... that I SHOULD want more our of my working life. Supervisors would ask me the obligatory review questions about where I saw myself in five years and what job I wanted to do next... I had no good answers. I was happy doing what I was doing. I had no great desire to manage people, and while I was happy to stretch myself to a certain extent (trying speechwriting & drafting executive correspondence & official messages, after years working on the staff newsletter, for example), making the leap to an entirely different department or area of the company did not interest me in the least.

Losing my job -- at a stage in my life where I was able to take early retirement (a reduced pension, but still a pension nevertheless) -- offered me an "out" -- and I took it -- but I still harboured a lot of guilty feelings:  I was way too young to just retire, I still had a lot to offer (if I could convince a potential employer to look past my age...! -- too young to retire, perhaps, but also too old to be hired for another job...). I should be out there working and adding to our retirement savings for at least another 5-10 years (even though a financial planner assured me & dh that we could afford to do this now), because that's what most people my age were still doing. (So far, he's been right, and it's been working out just fine.)

"What do you do with all that time?" people ask me -- and I feel guilty that I don't have any stories about fabulous trips or meaningful volunteer work or even a full social calendar of luncheons & outings with girlfriends to tell them about. (As one retirement planner pointed out in an article I read, even the fabulously rich will not find themselves travelling 365 days a year... you have to find other ways to fill your time.)  I read, I putter around on this blog & on other social media, I listen to podcasts and watch TV.  Once a week or so, we drop by BIL's house (or they come by here, or we head across the city to visit stepMIL, once every few weeks).  We clean the house and do the laundry and run errands and go to the supermarket and to the mall, and we browse at the local mega-bookstore a couple of times a week. We go out for a simple lunch a couple of times a week, and out for dinner on Saturday nights, a habit we established early on in our marriage.

So the days pass, and while I can't always tell you where the time has gone, I can tell you it always goes by too quickly -- and that I'm seldom bored, and generally happy with my jobless, childless life. When people ask dh "what do you do with your time, now that you're retired?"  he now responds "Whatever I want!"  lol  That usually shuts them up. I think I'm going to adopt it too, lol.

I've had a partially written draft in my draft folder for quite a while now along these same lines. It began a couple of years ago when a childless-not-by-choice/loss mom friend (& past/occasional blogger ;)  ) posted an article on Facebook titled "What if All I Want is a Mediocre Life?"  She confessed that she struggled with the guilt of not being more or doing more or wanting more -- with the idea that "I'm enough."

"Maybe it's the fact that I've been beaten to a bloody pulp by life -- maybe that's why I crave a drama-free, quiet, simple existence," she mused.

I could certainly relate to that... and I'm sure a lot of childless-not-by-choice women can too. Infertility & loss (and the fallout from them) have already provided us with plenty enough drama to last a lifetime, and then some...!

The thought that we need to do more, be more, is something that many people struggle with, whether or not they have kids. But the absence of children in our lives makes some of us feel like we need to do something else, something BIG, as "compensation," to fill that hole in our lives, to prove our worth to society.  Why not climb the corporate ladder (or run off to do missionary work in Africa... etc. etc.) -- after all, we can!

But it's one thing to do something "because we can." Is it something we SHOULD do? Is it something that we WANT to do? Is it something that's right for us personally, for our goals and values?

And by the way, who says that it's a "mediocre life" -- mediocre by whose standards?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject!

Here are a couple more great articles on this theme:

• You’re probably searching for a better life—but what if you already have it? 
• Not Leadership Material? Good. The World Needs Followers. (by Susan Cain, author of "Quiet") 
• Making Decisions and Defending Them (This article specifically addresses the issue of childlessness and pressure from others to have children.) 
• You’ll Never Be Famous — And That’s O.K.
• Living an Ordinary Life (The Stirrup Queen's reaction to the story above) 

Can you help?

There is increasing interest in the experiences of infertile and childless women (and men!) as a topic of serious academic study, which is so great & validating to see! :) 

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Lisa, a PhD student at Dalhousie University in Halifax. She is seeking further interviews with other Canadian women who have experienced persistent infertility for her PhD research.  If you'd like to help too, please read about the parameters of her study, and then contact Lisa at the email address below. :) 

*** *** ***

Research Participants Need for a Study Exploring Persistent Infertility in Canada

I am a Sociology PhD student at Dalhousie University. I am interested in speaking with Canadian women who experience persistent infertility. For the purpose of this research, persistent infertility encompasses: a) women who discontinued fertility treatments when they did not work; b) women who cannot access fertility treatments (due to financial restrictions, ineligibility, geographic location, for example); and c) women whose infertility is untreatable (MRKHS, Mullerian anomalies, or acquired conditions, for example). If you identify with one of these groups and are interested in participating in this research study please contact me by email.  lisa.redgrift@dal.ca

Vacation reading :)

I finished four books during the 11 days I was visiting my parents (and started a fifth!).  Here are some thoughts about each of them, in the order that I read them.

I had been meaning to read "The Baby Matrix" by Laura Carroll for some time now. It's been highly recommended by, among others, Jody Day of Gateway Women & Sue Fagalde Lick of Childless by Marriage, who reviewed it here.

"The Baby Matrix" is all about pronatalism -- the pervasive belief that everyone should have children, and that parenthood is a necessary step on the road to becoming an adult, as well as the ultimate way to lead a fulfilling life. Carroll believes pronatalism is NOT a good thing, and the book explains why, taking some commonly held pronatalist assumptions, debunking them and offering alternative ways of thinking.

Like so many other forms of privilege, pronatalism is something that many (most?) people simply don't see because they are so thoroughly immersed in it.  Often, it's only when you find yourself outside the majority, or what's considered the "norm" ( = infertile, childless, grieving a lost pregnancy, or childfree by choice) that you see it and understand just how pervasive it is.  Carroll is childfree by choice and approaches the subject from this perspective, but there is plenty in her analysis that will be familiar to those of us who are involuntarily childless.

I'm not sure I agree with everything Carroll has to say here.  For example, she believes it should become the norm for couples to adopt as a first choice in family building, instead of having biological children.  As many of us who have tried to adopt or even just investigated the subject of adoption know, there aren't as many children out there available for adoption as some people would like to think...  Should parenting education be mandatory? -- I don't disagree that parenting education would be a good thing, but I think making it mandatory and trying to enforce that would be easier said than done...! 

Overall, though, I think Carroll's central argument -- that our thinking around parenthood & reproduction is outmoded and in dire need of an overhaul -- is valid and well presented. Whether or not you agree with some or all of what she has to say -- and whether or not you're a parent (or hoping to be one someday) -- this book deserves a read and some consideration.  It's thought-provoking and eye-opening, as well as thoroughly researched.

Four stars on Goodreads.

*** *** ***

My D.E. Stevenson online group recently began reading and discussing "Kate Hardy" together.  Unfortunately, "Kate Hardy" is one of many DES novels that are currently out of print, but I was able to find a used copy online at a semi-reasonable price.

First published in 1947, and set in that same post-war time period, the title character is a successful author from London, who impulsively purchases "the Dower House" in the village of Old Quinings from local landowner Richard Morven and moves in, hoping to find some peace and quiet to write in. Morven -- separated from his wife -- is an obvious potential love interest -- but then there's also local war hero Walter Stack, recently returned home and trying to readjust to his modest working-class life as a carpenter. Class, social mobility and post-war social upheaval are major themes here, and while some of the attitudes might seem horribly outdated to our modern way of thinking, these were very real issues being confronted in Britain at the time.

Like most of Stevenson's work, "Kate Hardy" is a fast & pleasant read. The one thing I didn't especially like about it was a subplot with a bit of a supernatural/occult element to it. It was kind of jarring and nasty and felt a bit out of place in the gentle world of DES. I think the story could have done without it.

Three stars on Goodreads.

*** *** ***

I first read "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro 10 (!) years ago for Stirrup Queen Mel's Barren B*tches Book Tour. I picked it up again because it's the next selection for my upcoming library book club meeting (which will be the first meeting I've been able to attend since June!), and I'm looking forward to discussing it there.

It's hard to write about this one without giving away key plot points. (Be forewarned if you click over:  my BBBT post about the book -- which discusses it from an ALI viewpoint -- is full of spoilers.) Suffice to say it's about the students at a British boarding school called Hailsham -- in particular, our narrator, Kathy, and her friends Ruth and Tommy -- and what happens to them after they grow up and leave school. Hailsham seems like an ordinary place and the students like ordinary kids.

They're not.

I didn't break down in sobs at the end, as I did the first time I read it, but I did still get tears stinging my eyes. It's pretty powerful, and there's a lot here to chew on.

There's a movie version of the book (released in 2010), with Carey Mulligan as Kathy, Keira Knightley as Ruth and Andrew Garfield as Tommy, but I haven't seen it yet -- have you?

Four stars on Goodreads

*** *** ***

I picked up "Normal People" by Sally Rooney earlier this year, after reading rave reviews online and hearing lots of buzz about it. (Rooney is just 28!! years old!)  "Normal People" is both a romance and coming of age story that chronicles the on-again-off-again relationship between two bright Irish teenagers -- rich but social outcast Marianne and poor but popular Connell (whose mother cleans Marianne's mother's house). Their furtive romance begins when they're both students at the same high school, and continues over a period of several years when they both attend Trinity College in Dublin.

I'll admit this book wasn't quite as knock-my-socks off good as I expected it to be. I didn't feel like I could give it a five-star rating. It was difficult/frustrating for me to watch/read about Connell & Marianne hurting each other over & over again. They keep pushing each other apart, when they so obviously really do love each other. It gets a bit monotonous after a while, in that respect.

But it was still a very good read -- beautifully written, with exquisitely drawn characters that you care about. I could relate to the pair's desire to keep their relationship private, and I loved the ending. I understand the BBC is filming a 12-part television adaptation, due in 2020. It will also be shown on Hulu -- which we don't get here in Canada :( but hopefully it will be shown here too, eventually!

Four stars on Goodreads.

These were books #36, #37, #38 and #39 that I have read in 2019 to date, bringing me to 163% (!) of my 2019 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 24 books.  I have completed my challenge for the year -- currently 15 books beyond my  goal -- and I have surpassed my reading total for 2018 by 12 books.  :)

The rest of my vacation...!

The rest of my trip to visit my family, after the Elton John concert on Oct. 5th, didn't turn out exactly the way anyone expected, to put it mildly...!  Monday & Tuesday we had gorgeous, mild fall weather with temperatures in the range of 15-20C/59-68F, and took advantage of it:  Monday, my sister & I went back into the city to shop at a new-ish outlet mall neither of us had been to yet. Tuesday, we took a quick trip across the border (about 1.5 hours away) to my mother's hometown in Minnesota to have lunch with the one cousin who lives there and another cousin who was visiting, and do some preliminary planning for a family reunion next summer.

Wednesday (a week ago today) was pretty quiet -- our parents were out for most of the day. There were weather warnings & snow in the forecast.  I expected something like we had when I was there last year in October -- a brief blast of snow that coated the backyard patio furniture, but quickly melted again (not unheard of in this part of the country in mid/late October). The further along the week got, though, the more dire the predictions got...!  (I had brought my winter jacket with me -- but no boots!)

It started snowing & blowing on Thursday. My sister's partner/boyfriend was still in the city (about an hour away) and supposed to be coming in time for dinner that day. He made it there -- but told us he passed five cars in the ditch along the way, including a big transport truck/trailer!  It's a good thing he came when he did, because the storm kept getting worse & worse. Really awful. Howling wind, and more and more snow -- the wet, heavy kind.

(Canadian) Thanksgiving was coming up on Monday, and we decided to have our turkey dinner on Friday -- the idea being that then we'd have Saturday & Sunday with all of us around to eat up the leftovers. The storm continued to rage all day, and the lights kept flickering -- but the power stayed on and the turkey got cooked!

We'd JUST finished eating when the power went out, around 7 p.m.  After a while it become evident it was not going to come back on anytime soon -- and we didn't want to open up the fridge or freezer (to keep the food in there cold for as long as possible) -- so we packaged up the leftovers by candlelight & flashlight, & put them out in my parents' attached garage. When it's cold outside, it's like a natural refrigerator out there anyway, and it was certainly colder out there than it was in the house... although it soon started getting pretty cold in there, too!  I was texting with dh & he told me I should turn off my phone to save the battery power & data. Luckily my e-reader was fully charged and it's got a back light, so I bundled up and sat by the candlelit kitchen table & read for a while. I went to bed around 11, wearing my clothes (socks, yoga pants, long-sleeved T-shirt & cardigan) and with an extra blanket to stay warm, but it was pretty cold, and I didn't sleep very well.

When I got up Saturday morning, there was still no power/no heat, and it was colder than ever. (The thermostat isn't digital, but it looked like the temperature inside was about 14-15C/57-59F.)  A lot of people commented we were pretty lucky this was October/Thanksgiving, and not December/Christmas!! It was about -2C/28F outside... cold enough, but things could have been much, much worse!

I turned on my phone to text dh. No service.  Uh oh.  Went to the bathroom, flushed the toilet and... no water! (Just a trickle from the tap.)  Oh dear. Went downstairs & picked up the phone (my parents' landline). Totally dead.

Oh boy.  I've been through power outages before -- but to lose power/heat, water AND phone service -- that was new!!  I knew dh was going to be frantic when he didn't hear from me -- but there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it.  All the highways in & out of town (& throughout most of the province, actually) were closed too. We didn't know it until later, but the premier had declared a state of emergency.

All we could do was wait, & try to stay warm. We brought in the turkey and had turkey sandwiches for brunch (lol).  Thankfully, the snow was starting to subside, and around noon, the water came back (my sister immediately started filling up buckets & water jugs & basins, just in case it went out again). Her partner went outside & started shovelling the wet, heavy snow from the driveway (about a foot & a half, my dad thought) & talking to some of the neighbours. I was very glad that we were there to help my parents out.  (Also glad that I didn't have young children to worry about and to entertain, lol.) 

We played cards all afternoon, wearing our winter jackets & wrapped in blankets, lol.  Our street finally got plowed around 4 p.m., and a few minutes later, a town worker came knocking on the door to see how we were all doing. He told us they couldn't give a definite time when the power might be back on, that it could be another 12-24 hours (!).  He also said there was a boil water advisory in effect, and that we could get bottled water (& coffee, & food, and get warm) at the emergency centre they'd set up. (My parents have a water cooler and had a few jugs in reserve, thankfully.)

After the street got plowed, Dad & my sister's boyfriend went out in the car to see what was going on. The convenience store had power & was open (!) so they went in & managed to grab the last carton of milk and a package of hot dog buns. Then my sister, her boyfriend & I went out for a drive (listening to the radio and charging cellphones & my mother's tablet as we drove around). We drove out to a newer development where we knew the power had been restored to see if we could pick up a wifi signal (sister's boyfriend does work for several of the residents there & had their passwords!) -- but no luck. And then we went to the emergency centre. My sister asked if they had a working phone -- no luck there either, but we were able to get coffee for her boyfriend, and hot water for tea for Mom & me, which made us all happy. Dad wasn't sure how much propane he had left for the barbecue, but he fired it up and warmed up the leftover mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy and cabbage rolls in aluminum foil pie plates, and we had that for dinner with the cold leftover turkey, by candlelight. It was SO nice to have some hot food!!

Around 8, my dad's cellphone suddenly started to ring!! It was PND (Parents' Neighbours' Daughter), mom of the two Little Princesses! She had been storm-stayed for the past two nights at a motel in the town where she works, about 20 miles away, and only got back to her home & family late that afternoon (she told us traffic on the highway between the two towns was down to ONE LANE in BOTH directions)(eeekkkk).  She said they just got their power back and her cellphone started dinging with notifications, so she called to find out if we were all OK. I turned on my cellphone, and sure enough, there was a connection, and the landline dial tone was back, too!  So I immediately called dh, & boy, was he relieved to hear from me. He knew I'd be OK, because he knew I was at home with my family, but naturally he was still worried.

The power finally came back on around 10 (after 27 hours without!)... believe me, we were all holding our breath, hoping it would STAY on, lol. (We'd had a few small hopeful blips during the day, but nothing that stuck more than a minute or two.)  I still slept in my clothes that night, because it was still pretty cold in the house! Things could have been worse... the town where I lived when I was a teenager, about an hour away, was one of the hardest-hit areas of the province, and one of my high school friends was powerless for 54 hours! She said it got down to about 14C/57F in the house, and she lost most of the food in her fridges & freezer.

Sunday was pretty subdued. Everything else was working, but then the cable TV decided to go out (much to my mother's dismay). The grocery store was open and my sister & I went there for a few things. I've been there on Christmas Eve -- this was just as busy as that, probably busier, lol.  They had to throw out EVERYTHING in their freezers, although the reserve freezers in back were OK & they were restocking when we were there.

My flight home was early Monday afternoon. We left plenty of time to get to the airport in the city (a little over an hour away). The roads were fine by then, but we saw lots of tree damage along the way. 

Needless to say, dh was VERY happy to see me -- he told me I'm never going away for that long again, lol.  It was good to see my family, but it's also very good to be back home!

Coming up: Some reviews of the books I read while I was away!

Looking out the front window at the height of the storm on Friday afternoon. 

View of the backyard patio late Friday afternoon.
From left, you can see the patio table, two chairs, hanging basket, clothesline post and barbecue,
all buried under huge mounds of snow.
In the background, the trees HAD some beautiful coloured leaves when I arrived...!  Mostly gone now!
(This is NOT normal for mid-October!!) 

There are mothers all around you

A Facebook find.
It's Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day (in Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Month).
Light a candle tonight at 7 p.m., wherever you are, to create a worldwide wave of light
in remembrance of our babies. 

Saturday night's all right for Elton :)

Stage setup before the concert began.  Elton's piano is in the very lower left-hand corner.
It moved around the stage too!  

I just got back from spending 11 days with my parents (a rare solo trip without dh -- he vows I am never going away that long without him again, lol). I arrived on Friday, October 4th -- and the next day (Saturday, October 5th), my sister (who had this week off work & also spent it at at Mom & Dad's) & I headed back into the city to see Elton John in concert on his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour -- which he says will be his last. My sister has seen him twice before (including once with my mother!!) but I'd never been, and SIL & I were unable to snag a pair of tickets to his Toronto shows later this month. My sister & I went to see Paul McCartney together at the same venue last year, and the chance to see Elton -- another of the musical icons of our youth -- on his farewell tour, still at the top of his game (at age 72!), was just too good to pass up.  Our tickets ($250 each) were just above where we'd been for Paul McCartney.

It was worth the trip and every single penny.  :)  He played for three solid hours -- most of the songs you'd expect to hear and a few you might not have (set list here) -- and changed outfits three times.  :)  (Kind of reminded me of when my mother, grandmother, great-aunt & I went to see Liberace back in the early 1970s, lol.)  The platform his grand piano sat on actually moved around the stage!! so we got a slightly better look at him than we thought we would!  ;)  His band was absolutely fabulous too (some of them have been with him for 40-50 years!), and I had almost as much fun watching his percussionist, Ray Cooper, as I did watching him.

My sister said you never leave until he's played "Your Song" -- which is his traditional last song (also probably my favourite of his, and a runner-up for the first dance song at our wedding). But this time he went from that into "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," which is the theme of the tour & appropriate when you listen to the lyrics. He said 10 years ago he never would have thought he would stop touring -- but that was before he had a family (two young boys), and he wants to spend whatever time he has left with them, watching them grow up. (Everyone applauded at that.) At the end of the last song, he got into this hydraulic lift thing & it went up the side of the screen as he waved, and then a little door opened and he disappeared through it, lol. When we came in at the beginning, the big screen had the "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" cover picture on it... I didn't notice at the end as we were leaving, but my sister said she saw it came to life.... the Elton figure turned and smiled and then walked off down the yellow brick road & disappeared!  Cool. :)

Before the concert began, we met up with an old friend -- the cousin of our best friends from growing up -- as well as her husband & one of her adult sons. Haven't seen her in years & years, but she & I reconnected on Facebook a while back, and when we realized we'd both be at the concert, we arranged to meet up before the show started and chat for a while. Bonus!

You can read the local newspaper's review of Friday night's concert here.

I meant to do a post about the concert for #MicroblogMondays LAST week, but (as often happens when I'm visiting my parents) my time is not my own & the days pass far too quickly when I'm there. More adventures from my trip to come in a future post (and there WERE adventures!) -- also, reviews of all the books I read!

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

Confetti rained down on the audience during "Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting,"
the final number of the concert (before the encore). Really cool to see!
(I got some video footage of it too.)