american idol in concert - a recap

S and I went to the Idol concert last night in Little Rock. This is a big deal for the whole city as Kris Allen is from Conway AR (30 miles outside of Little Rock). The concert was....fine. I mean, the performers are all super-talented, but it's basically a high-production, high-talent cover band. No original sounds here. And our whole family was hatin on Adam Lambert during the season, but he did a really great set last night.

The bigger story for us last night? All the stuff that went wrong before, during and after the concert.

* I parked across the river from the arena, since we were arriving pretty late and I assumed we'd have trouble finding parking, especially for under $10. The plan was to take the trolley for the 1.5 mile or so trek to the arena - it's a $1.50 trip, total for the 2 of us. So we waited for the trolley about 10 minutes. As soon as we boarded the trolley I realized that I had left the damn tickets in the car. So we had to bolt out of the trolley right before it started moving and go back to the car for the tickets. Then, because we were late, we had to hail a cab...5 minutes and $10 later, we were in front of the arena.

* After we got in, we wanted something to drink. I didn't have time to get any $$ from my bank's atm, so I was just going to use the one @ the arena. The person in front of me took forever to get her money and I couldnt figure out why....I requested $50 and the ATM said it gave me the cash, but nothing spit out....so no cash.

* We found a beverage stand that took debit cards. I wanted a beer, but they wouldn't sell me one cause I didn't bring my ID. By the way, i'm 42 years old.

* At intermission, we went back to the snack bar cause S was starving. Little did I know that the window we stood in line for only sold drinks. So we got bottled water which did no good for our hunger. And by the time we bought our water, it was too late to go to the food window. S was so hungry she had trouble enjoying Kris Allen.

* We were tired and starving so we left during the last song (Journey's "Don't Stop Believing") and walked to the trolley stop. It was desolate, so we both assumed they were shut down for the night. Since I had no cash (remember the ATM?) and our taxis don't take plastic, we started walking. Halfway over the river we saw the trolley heading toward its stop. No way to flag down a trolley, so we just groaned in annoyance and kept on walking.

S told me on the way home "Man, that was a bad night". Most of what happened could've been avoided had I been a better planner...bad bad Mommy.