I attended my third concert down at lil old Mansfield, IN yesterday. It was the big, sold out show of the season, featuring Trace Adkins, with local up & comer, Dana Sewell opening.

It was an enjoyable show. Mark my words that 17-year-old Dana is the next Faith Hill. Amazing vocal talents with looks to match. She was good, despite having to sing along with a CD in place of her band.

Now I’ll tell you what the Trace Adkins show consisted of initially…lots of WT, women old enough to my grandmother yelling “take your shirt off!” and other more alarming statements that fortunately my brain has already repressed. Thank god for small favors. All I remember is at one point turning around with the most petrified look on my face and seeing the lady behind sharing my sense of disgust.

Well, Trace had a little chat with the audience part way through his show which was very entertaining. It was basically a mockery of how small Mansfield was. My attempts at re-telling it will likely fail miserably, but he did ask of the people there, who all was actually from Mansfield. Two people stood up (out of ~2,250) and he just started cracking up. He was like “well, i only saw one house…well, maybe two…so do you all have a mayor or something?” Well, after Trace said, “heck, if I lived here, I’d call myself the mayor”, Snaggle-tooth (only name I know him by), one of the two citizens there, agreed he would start doing that. Yeah, that definitely failed.

Anyway, turns out Trace lived down in Louisiana for about 30 years, and his smalltown HS gym is currently housing some refugees. His mom is one of them cooking meals for them. He continued, “bless their hearts, after all they’ve gone through, they have to endure my mama’s cookin’” heh but seriously, the Red Cross was there hoping to gather donations and Trace was very encouraging. But then, Red Cross lady passed him a note on the stage…*suspense music*

He was like, “Lady, I don’t know how to do that ‘1, 100…do i have 200…’ stuff. How am i supposed to have an auction??” Well, turns out we had an auctioneer in the audience (not that surprising). It seems the lady had suggested he auction off his hat to raise money. I seriously sat in disbelief as the price kept going up, and I’ll be damned if there wasn’t a lady that paid $2,050 for that hat. And if that weren’t enough, Trace volunteered the shirt (National Guard tee that he was given to wear during the show) off his back after that. The prospect of him taking his shirt off spurred a wave of cheers from the female attendees. And off the auctioneer went…$1,000 for a white, sweaty, cut-off that some other lady hoped smelled like him. Turns out that the hat & shirt lady traded items. I found out later in the line in the ladies room that the first lady had just gotten her divorce settlement and that was her funding source. Likely the best way she could have spent it. So yes, all the money raised was awesome for a normally stingy little group of ppl.

ooh I also learned in the line to the loo that this was the first time in the 51…yes, 51…shows that the lady in front of me had been to where he’d actually taken off his shirt. They were all comparing photos they got. Unfortunately, I’m the only one with a kickass photo of him shirtless that can print canvas size :) I think that puts me in a seller’s market. haha.

Overall, it was a pretty great evening back home. It was really nice to be home and relax a bit. I had such a pleasant return trip to Lafayette. I rolled down the windows, cranked up the country, and put one hand on the steering wheel and the other out the window. It was just what I needed…I started getting all kinds of inspiration for a project I’ve been stuck on, and I wish I’d had a way to write it all down. I was in grand spirits when I arrived home, but then it all went to hell…

Begin unrelated rant:

Of course, the first thing I did was flip on the computer. Well, when it booted up, I saw a new icon in my taskbar *confused look*. I soon realize it’s Yahoo! Messenger. So I go straight to Program Files, and find that it was created yesterday around 8pm…while I was at the concert. Look of death gets shot to the new roomie in the next room. I calmly leashed up snippy and took her for a walk…I had to call my mom to vent before I approached her about it. Not only is using my computer without asking rude, but to install a program is just…well, it’s a mortal sin in my book. Ah, but I calmed down and talked to her about it (very friendly like) and she apologized. I remained fine until I saw that Yahoo had added nearly 150 MB of shit to computer, along with changing my homepage, adding a fricken toolbar, AND changing the default search engine to yahoo in my precious Firefox. The toolbar didn’t even uninstall like it said it did, and I found random yahoo shortcuts throughout my computer, so nevertheless, I was just not a happy camper. It was all more upsetting because I was in such a peaceful mood prior to the whole fiasco and I had just spring-cleaned my computer last week. blah.

ooh and she tried saying that’s why she’d called me this morning (my mom answered…I was in bed)...was to ask. Sorry chica…too bad I saw it all got installed last night. Thanks for lying :)

That is all.