I dreamed a dream...

In January 2012, I 'met' Les Miserables, the musical.  My first exposure to it came in the form of a trailer on IMDb, an advertisement for the Broadway touring cast.  Why that was on IMDb, I do not know, but I came across it while looking in vain for a movie version of the musical and I watched it all the way through.  Six times.

I was hooked, you see.  Especially that song "Do You Hear the People Sing?"  It played through my head all day after I saw the trailer, and nothing would do but to order the Original Broadway Cast Recording and the concert DVD from the library.  Naive being that I was, I assumed that the 25th Anniversary Concert would be better than the "old one," so I thought I put that edition on hold-- but some library person made a blessed mistake (or else I did) and it was the 10th Anniversary Concert that came instead.  

So I listened to the soundtrack... and then I watched the concert... and if I hadn't been hooked before, I was then.  News of the movie reached my ears soon after, and all year I followed the progress avidly.  I desperately wanted to see the play at some point, but what were the odds of the touring show coming anywhere near me?  Pretty slim.

Until August, that is.  Until August, when I randomly decided to search online and see if the play might be traveling to a near location sometime soon-- doubting that such a thing would happen, of course.  But lo and behold... it was.  "Sometime soon" was January 2013 and a "near location" was Philadelphia (which isn't all that near, haha... and I'm not telling you where I live, by the way) and "insanely excited" was me.

After that, a lot of things happened.  Things such as getting a job (not expressly for the purpose of seeing Les Mis :P), saving up money, purchasing tickets to the show as a Christmas present for my sister, telling friends and swearing them to secrecy, dying to write about it on my blog but knowing I couldn't because my sister reads my blog...

...and, well, it all culminated on Christmas morning when Anne-girl opened a card from me that informed her we were going to see Les Mis.  Live.  On stage.  IN JUST A LITTLE OVER A WEEK.

She burst into tears, by the way.  And I almost did, too.  

And now?  Now we're bouncing around the house singing ONE WEEK MORE! Because on Thursday, January 3rd, almost exactly a year after I was first introduced to one of my favorite stories of all time, my sister and I will see it live on stage in a really-truly theater.

Somebody pinch me, please.