Oh. El. Pee.

So here it is, though slightly delayed due to illness and internet issues, your sock rocking blog. Brace yourselves. I will try to express the pure ecstasy and adrenaline of it all for you, however I'm sure that no matter what adjectives I use to describe the occurrences of May 8th, 2006 I will not be able to come close to reliving such a day. This day cannot be expressed in words, it must be experienced. Having experienced such a day recently, I will try to include you in my elation. Now that I've built it up so high, here we go.

For years I have been a fan of Our Lady Peace. They were my first real concert, which was at the Air Canada Centre in 2000. I was in the tenth grade. They were amazing, of course, and every concert proceeding has been compared to the latter. I saw them again at the Somersault festival in Barrie, and they were the highlight of the day. After said concert they settled themselves firmly in their spot as my number one favourite band of all time throughout high school. Entering University, they lost their spot at number one (being replaced by Radiohead) but remained firmly (and always will) in my top five.

Now getting to the point.

On May 8th, 2006 my mother called me at 10am revealing to me that she had come across four OLP tickets for that very night at Centre in the Square in Kitchener. She had purchased these tickets that very day, and they had not sold earlier because of some kind of visual obstruction. We didn't really care, and with no expectations we headed to see them later that day. It turns out these seats were on the second floor in the box closest to the stage. We could even peek backstage from where we were sitting, we were that close. We had the whole box to ourselves, and the visual obstruction? It was a light. A skinny little light and nothing more, we could all see the stage perfectly. This was the first of three surprises that would make this night so great.

Surprise number two? Neverending White Lights was one of the openers. Now, to those of you who don't know this band, they are not in fact a band. It is a songwriter and producer who writes all the songs and plays all the instruments on the album. He gets different vocalists to collaborate in the writing process and sing each song, thereby each song has a different vocal sound. I just recently starting getting into them and was very pleasantly surprised (to say the least) to discover they were opening. They were fantastic! Get out to a concert soon if you can, they're going to start getting huge. Their video "The Grace" was just nominated for an MMVA.

Now for the final and ultimate surprise that made this night so unforgettable. My friends and I were rocking the place. I mean we were dancing, singing and just generally flailing around like starstruck idiots for the first half of Our Lady Peace's set. It was pretty calm in the rest of the place, and Raine (i.e. the love of my life) kept waving at us and pointing in our general direction. Yes, I know. Every fan thinks he's pointing directly at them, but I can prove it. See below for the picture progression...

1) Raine looks into my eyes as if to say, "just you wait, Emily. I'm gonna rock your socks off." You can also tell how excited he is to see me because his belt is undone.

2) Raine coming up to our box. At this point all I can do is scream "What is he doing?!?!?! What is he doing?!?!?!" He is coming up to profess his love to me.

3) Raine serenading me in our box. No special camera tricks here, people! This is full-on, real Maida action.

4) Again, Raine in our box. I have a million pictures like this. We got a little excited with the camera to say the least.

5) Raine (sadly) exiting our box. I don't have a picture of it, but before he left he gave me his number and told me not to tell his wife.

So there you have it. As I'm sure you are suffering from high amounts of jealously, I have no need to go on. I will leave you to wallow. Ta.