Last night I went to a concert to see Incubus and Linkin Park with my friend Susan.  Susan is this great friend that I’ve had forever (another friend from the consulting company days) who constantly looks like she just walked out of a Gap ad.  She never has a hair out of place or imperfect makeup unless she decides on a whim that she’s going with zero makeup and a messy ponytail, and then she just looks beautiful and natural and in many ways I hate her deeply.  Ha…  She is smart and one of the funniest people I know with an absolutely deadpan delivery on everything she says and is exactly the kind of person that I call to say things like “hey, want to go see Incubus and Linkin Park with me?”  Because, even though we are not 19 year old boys, she will just say “Sure, I’m free”.  These aren’t unique conversations between us, in the past they have included “hey, want to go to Vegas even though everything is sold out?” and “hey, want to spend a thousand dollars on a kind of weird dating service with me?” and “hey, want to stalk someone, we’ll take my car”, and they definitely go both ways (I’m not telling you who suggested the stalking and who just jumped in her car to race over, stopping only for snacks).

I love that Susan is up for almost anything, and she in turn has pushed me into MANY situations I would never otherwise have found myself in.  So somehow even though we are old (I’m way older…she could probably actually pull it off alone), and even though I was wearing a pink tank top with a cardigan, we found ourselves in the middle row of a bleacher seat last night inhaling more secondhand weed than I thought existed outside of Humboldt county and having quite a nice time.

Incubus was great and then after a short break the main event, Linkin Park, came out.  We are both huge fans, and they were wonderful, but about 45 minutes in to their set Susan and I looked at each other and laughed and then I admitted “they are great.  But, um, they are really…loud”.  The look of relief on her face was hilarious and then she rushed in to say “look, I don’t know what songs you are waiting for, but I am not sitting through an encore, because I am not fighting traffic to get out of this place, and my god, it’s almost 11 and I would definitely be asleep already otherwise…”  I put my hand up to stop her, already completely on the same page, and we fled with cardigans in tow, to zoom out of the parking lot unencumbered and be home safe in bed by midnight.