Wagner Weekend

Before Lois takes the kids and leaves me for a summer in sunny Venezuela, we are going away together on a tryst this weekend. Racked with indecision as to where we should go, I coyly suggested that we could go hear the Charlotte Orchestra and Oratorio perform Wagner: Outside of the Ring. "After all," I added, "Rodney is singing in it."

Well, she didn't like that idea. The beach or the mountains, perhaps? Jackie Dahl called me into the kitchen at church this past Saturday and asked me to pick a hand.

After I picked one of mine she said, "No, Silly, one of mine!"

I selected the one she had predesignated for the beach. "That does it," she declared! "You two are going to the beach."

I blithely suggested that we would spend most of the time traveling. "We could go to the Biltmore House," I suggested. "We haven't been there since you were pregnant with Hope."

"Maybe," Lois said. The prices I found are a little outside the budget.

"There's always Wagner," I reminded her.

She rolled her eyes.

That night she came to me and said, "If you really want to, we can go hear Wagner."

I reserved my excitement. "Are you sure? I want you to enjoy this weekend, too."

"Sure," she said. "Maybe it won't be too bad."

Woo hoo!!!!!!!!!!!

In looking up the tickets, I also discovered that The Manhattan Transfer (TMT) was paying Charlotte a rare visit in October. Oh, joy!!! Lois explicitly said that she wasn't going, however. I asked the kids and played some recordings of TMT for them. I even sang along with what I sang of theirs in college and played some video footage I have of them cutting up in the studio. No dice. Hope was excited and wanted to dance around like they were doing in the video, but when I got to a blues song, she was not happy about going. Any takers to join me for some TMT in October?

Anyone?