Tuesday was an ordinary morning. I got up, got ready for work, and got a call that my sister was at the hospital having her baby.
Well, okay. That last part wasn't so ordinary.
Before heading to the hospital, I decided to go into the office for a few hours to get my work done so I could be free the rest of the day to visit my newborn nephew. In the car on the way to the park & ride that morning, I happened to be have the radio tuned to the station that happened to have members of Death Cab for Cutie on the air, announcing a surprise benefit 
show at a small(ish) venue to take place on Wednesday--the following day! Tickets were going on sale in exactly ten minutes, and I was pulling into at the park & ride with no computer access!
I called Dwayne. He was working on the golf course and didn't have a computer available, either, so I asked him to try to get online to buy us tickets using his phone. (I have a Blackberry. It's great for many, many things, but not for loading blogs--which happened to be the place one had to go for the tickets.) He said he'd try, but he didn't seem very optimistic. I rode the bus to work, and felt a little down and frustrated. We've been wanting to see Death Cab for years, but I am (mostly) opposed to arena/stadium shows. It's hard to get in to see these guys at smaller venues around Seattle. This show would have been perfect for us! If only we would have been able to get the tiiiiiiiickets before it sold out!
Then I got a text from Dwayne saying that he was able to get them and we were going.
And last night, WE DID GO.
It was Death Cab's first time playing live in about two years, so there were a few funny things that happened, making it even more fun. There's a great recap of how it all went down here and the list all the songs they played, if you're interested. We got to hear them for two full hours playing songs from old to new, including several from the forthcoming "Codes and Keys."
When I'm seeing a band whose catalog I am super familiar with, I like to try to predict which songs they'll choose to perform--specifically the first song, the "last" song, and the encore songs. This time, I got the first song right: "The New Year," which was very exciting for me, considering that they have over 80 songs to choose from. During the encore, I very much expected to hear "We Looked Like Giants" (even though I have no idea if they ever play that live), but they ended with two others from Transatlaticism instead: the title track and "Title and Registration." I was little disappointed because "We Looked Like Giants" is kind of my favorite and also one of my least-favorite Death Cab songs. I was very curious how I would feel about it, hearing it live.
In all, it was a great first show for us long-time Death Cab fans to check out. I told Dwayne that we can never see them again, but who knows. Maybe the stars will align the next time they play a surprise show at a club in Seattle and we'll happen to find out about it just in time!
FYI: I wore my boots with three-inch heels as an experiment to see if being 5'7" at a concert instead of 5'4" made a difference in how well I could see the band. Things were swell until a girl who was 5'8" (and who smelled either like super-skunky weed or super-skunky armpits) pushed right in front of me with her boyfriend who was 5'10." Whenever I was able to maneuver my head just so so that her head wasn't blocking everything, I did, in fact, see the band pretty well. However, my toes fell asleep from me being on my feet for 3 hours. I haven't yet decided if it was worth it. If I was going to see a band with a few openers (which is much more typical), I don't think I could tolerate the boots all night if I had to stand the whole time.