Bon Jovi Rocked Tampa (and me)

OMG!!! What a night! I can't believe how fantastic they were! Ok, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. First off, I wasn't able to sleep. On Friday morning, I awoke at 5:30 am...yes, peeps..and that is WAY too early for anyone especially me. After all, it was my day off...then, since my sis was here visiting from CA, I went shopping. Red picked me up at 4 pm and we went to Carrabba's for some yummy Italian pasta. Got to the venue about 5:30-6:00 and thank goodness we did. The line at the merchandise booth was big! See, it's happened to me before that when you wait til after the show, all the really big sizes are what's left. So, to the right, you see my haul. Red surprised me with the Hello Kitty computer game (!) and then bought me a BJ Blinkie pin!! Isn't she the bestest??
Now, if Red reads this, I hope she won't kill me, but....I don't think at first she was excited to see the guys. I'm not saying she dislikes their music, but she's no fanatic like I am. That sneaky woman has been looking at their webpage, and she knew something I didn't know. At the start of the concert, Jon comes out and plays in the audience! We had great seats (Thanks, Red!!) and Jon was literally 8 rows away from us!! Let the swooning begin! (Did it ever stop?) And, later in the show, he popped up again in the mezzanine level crooning "Bed of Roses". If he had done that on our side, I would have lost my mind.
The local newspapers reviewed the concert, but not as highly as I would have. This was a standing through the entire show, clapping, singing, screaming event. When it was over, we looked like 2 drowned rats from all the sweat! I swear, you would have thought Red and I were the performers! Ha! I did wear the Bon Jovi half sweater that had to be ripped off as soon as the concert started! One side note, I was surprised when Jon made a statement regarding Ritchie and Heather's "situation". In fact, during "Dead or Alive", I thought Ritchie was crying...my bad! It was sweat!!
I felt like that was THE best concert I had ever been to...Jon is a mega performer who can work the crowd into a frenzy. The acoustics were right on, and the big screen they used behind the stage was mindblowing. Red said that it looked so good that one might think they were watching a dvd since the pic quality was excellent. The last word...phenomenal!!!!