Lauren Karch

And I didn't want the last thing I heard to be a spam call or my self-repeating gossip.

And so when I saw a few days later that my favorite band was going to be in Cincinnati, I bought tickets right away.

I did not think about who I was going to take with me.

But then I happened to go to Warehouse 4, my favorite coffee shop, later.

And yeah.

And my friend Stacy was working.

And Stacy is the kind of person who is up for anything.

Plus it was really swamped in there, so it was the perfect time to entrap her with an invitation.

And she agreed to go.

And like, yeah, were we a little old to be at Bogart's under like the no moshing sign?

Yeah.

So were the Mountain Goats, my favorite band from 2005.

Yeah.

And Stacy used to be a youth choir director, so in exchange for me taking her to see a sad dad band, she asked me if I would want to go with her to see a children's production of Cats.

Which, yeah, I don't have time to wait for professionals to put on Cats for me.

And I realized, like, I could knock off a ton of kinds of music if I started going to, like, the free concerts put on by, like, the library and YSO.

So, like, jazz in the park, jazz at the culture center, jazz at the library.

There's a lot of jazz.

I got really into it.

I accompanied my boyfriend who was on his own journey of trying to see every Boston sports team play in the Midwest.