Friends, Free Tickets & Heights

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Sounds like a recipe for disaster, huh? :)

Laura managed to snag about 10 free tickets to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra since she works for a Non-Profit organization and she was nice enough to invite a bunch of us to go along, my grandparents included.

So Joey and I dressed up as fancy as possible, just for fun, and we headed down to the Meyerson to pretend that we were classy on the cheap. (Which I think we mostly pulled off.) It was a Bernstein celebration so all the pieces played were by Bernstein...VERY nice. Of course they saved West Side Story for the very end.

The Meyerson is a really beautiful symphony hall. The wood is gorgeous, the seating is well spaced, the pipe organ is amazing, and the people who attend are (us notwithstanding) rather well-heeled Dallasites who like to go to see and be seen. We're kind of a waste of eyes in that respect, because even if we did see some rich person who wanted to be seen at the symphony we wouldn't have a clue who it was. It's kind of fun to pretend now and then, though.

At intermission Danny and Joey decided that it was imperative for them to go to the top seating tier "to see how high it was". So Laura and I tagged along primarily to keep them in line and secondarily to see how high it truly was up there.

We were the only people in the elevator on the way up. The elevator operator looked at us kind of funny when the boys responded, "We want the top floor" to her question of "Where to?"

The elevator operator deposited us at the top floor and shook her head at us as we exited, the boys buzzing excitedly with questions like "right or left?" and "do you think it'll be really high?" and "I wonder how much seats cost up here."

I'm afraid of heights. Almost paralyzingly so, it's really irritating. So I try to force myself to do scary things regularly, otherwise I'd be one of those loser scardy-cats who does nothing but stay home where it's "safe" and we all know those kinds of people are boring and lame. Far be it from me to be intentionally boring OR lame. (Although I'm sure both happen quite regularly.)

As soon as we entered the highest seating tier, I got overwhelmingly dizzy. "Um....I'm done," I said and started to turn around. Joey grabbed me from behind, stood me up straight and propelled me forward. "You can do it," he said.

We reached the middle and I sat down immediately.

Fortunately Laura brought her point and shoot so we were able to capture the amazing height of the top seating tier in pixels FOREVER.


Joey climbed behind the rows of red-velvet seats and snapped this very nice picture of Danny and Laura, who I'm just about sure you've never seen a single picture of before. Hehehe. In any case, they're quite photogenic.


Then Laura swapped places with Joey and took one of us. Please ote the slightly terrified look on my face. I tried to smile but it was hard since getting the picture taken required standing up out of the chair I had been sitting in lest I somehow lose my balance and fall to my death 6 stories below me. (Unlikely, yes.)



We stood up there and tried to act all suave and sophisticated. Joey identified a soprano sax practicing and several other instruments before someone looked at the time and noticed that we ought to rejoin our party.

Danny and Joey immediately found some stairs and slid down the velvet-lined railings. Laura and I pretended we did not know them.