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On Wednesday I got to use my birthday present. This would be the present from my best boy ever, skywalker363, of $75 to TKTS, the discount theatre ticket booth manned by The Theatre Development Fund.

For those of you who don't know, this is how TKTS works. You show up at 3 pm, along with a whole lot of other people who have gotten the same brilliant idea that tonight would be a good night to see a Broadway play. You wait in line, and hope and pray that by the time you get to the ticket window they still have tickets to the shows you want to see. Oh, and you need to have lots of cash. This is one of the last large cash-only enterprises in New York City these days (however, they do sell gift certificates with only a small service charge through their website, so that's a plus). The best discount you can get is half off, but if the seats are good you're still shelling out quite a bit of money. This whole thing works best if you've got a whole day to kill in Manhattan, and don't have pesky things like work in New Jersey happening in your life. (College students on break, have fun).

OK, so that's the how. Let's get to what we saw. I'm not going to bore you with the paranoia that I experience when things start to go wahooni-shaped (the express bus was 15 minutes late, ergo we weren't going to get tickets to anything good - hey it's my brain, leave it alone!). Suffice it to say that I was worried, and even my sock was not helping. At any rate, we had established a hierarchy of shows that we wanted to see. At the top of the list was RENT (yes, people who only really know skywalker363 from high school and freshman year at UPenn, RENT). Even if the boy didn't like the show in it's own right (it's amazing what people will come around to if they give it an honest chance), he would have done this for me as Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp (the original Roger and Mark) are currently playing the roles that they originated and in many ways created. Since the idea of seeing them live and on stage made the 2 of us go "hell yes," this was OUR first choice. Second was Les Miserables, third was Phantom (this is how you know the 2 of us have got it bad for the other - we are willing to reconsider long held prejudices regarding certain musicals), and I think that fourth was Chicago.

To make a long story slightly shorter, (hell, this is my blog, you don't like long rambly posts with too many parenthetical asides and waaay too many commas, go someplace else), we got to the ticket window at around 3:45 pm. We purchased tickets to RENT at 50% off. And I thought the price was just a little high, so I looked at the tickets. The first thing I saw was "orchestra." "Holy shit, we have orchestra seats!" skywalker363 looked at them too, and said "it says row A." Yes, you all read that right, we had floor seats in row A. In most theatres that would mean front row. At the Nederlander, it means the third row. Rows AA and BB are the $20 lottery seats. Our seats were all the way to the right (the last 2 seats of the row), but we could see 97% of the stage (for those of you who are familiar with the set, we couldn't see the edge of the large metal structure that is the Christmas tree and the door to the apartment).

Well, at 4 pm we had tickets, now we just needed to kill a few hours. This is easy in NYC - just walk for a while. We went into the Hershey's and M&M stores in Times Square, and the Toys R Us. That was because skywalker363 insisted that we had to play with the Wii there. Incidentally, never bring a geek in his twenties into that store if you have less than an hour to stare at Star Wars Legos and action figures, toy robots, and video games (I am a geek girl who was deprived of TV based video game systems as a child, and don't get them, or their appeal). We went to Le Marais (EDITOR'S NOTE: I was informed by a_jewfro that I need to learn French - originally that "Le" was a "Les") for dinner. The food was very good (try the lamb ribs appetizer - meat that literally melts in your mouth). skywalker363's cousin was our waiter - things like that only happen in Manhattan and Jerusalem, I'm convinced.

I knit while waiting in line. skywalker363 took a picture, claiming that it was "you [me] in your [my] natural habitat." I took Yarn Harlot style sock pictures of my sock in the line for the show. The pictures will go up on flickr soon, I promise.

What can I say about the show? I went all squee and melty and grinny inside myself. I got misty eyed and teary at all the parts you'd expect. And there was a hand to hold during "Without You," a song that I have always loved for it's sharp poignancy, and which is about to take on a whole new level of meaning for me.

When the show was over, we had more than enough time before the bus to stand by the stage door and wait to see who would come out to sign things. The first to come out was the actor playing Benny, then Maureen and Angel came out. After we had waited a bit, then Adam and Anthony came out. Both of them remarked that they would sign everything, and that people could take as many pictures as they wanted, but they couldn't stop to pose with people. skywalker363 took a few pictures that had both my head and their faces in it, but the ones that we took of just them were much better. I thanked both of them for making this happen for all of us for these past 11 years.

And then we went home. There isn't much more to tell, really. I fell into bed, exhausted from a very long and very emotional day. It was an amazing show, an amazing experience, and just beautiful to see.