My Favorite Memories from 2019

2019 was a great year, definitely better than I ever would have expected or imagined. Some of my all-time favorite memories from my life so far happened last year. My best day ever happened in 2019, so it's honestly going to be hard to top 2019.

In 2019, I got to meet so many wonderful people. I got to see some amazing shows. I fell in love with the magic of live theater. I got a job that finally makes me feel needed, useful, and appreciated. I got to spend quality time with family for the first time in forever. I got to do new things and have new experiences and so much more. But here are my favorites from 2019:

Being a West Side Story Insider for Lyric Opera of Chicago

I wrote an entire blog post on my experience as a WSS Insider, so I won't go into too much detail about this, but it was truly a wonderful, amazing day and experience. In case you haven't read my blog post about this, I was chosen to attend the final dress rehearsal of Lyric Opera of Chicago's West Side Story and had the opportunity to live tweet the show and go on a backstage tour of the iconic Lyric Opera house at the start of May.

West Side Story has been one of my favorite movie musicals since I first watched it in high school, but I hadn't gotten the opportunity to watch a stage production until last year. Even though my first stage production of WSS was a dress rehearsal in which no one had to do the show full out, there was no evidence the cast wasn't performing at 100% (I saw the show a total of four times, so I'd know by now if someone was underperforming), and it was the best musical production I'd ever seen. Everything about the show was amazing, and what was even better was the opportunity to tweet all about it and then stand on such a big stage and see what it's like for the performers. Also, considering I've now been on Twitter for just about 10 years, being chosen to tweet a musical I love felt so cool, especially because there are very very very few opportunities to tweet in a theater!

My October Favorites

October was an exciting and eventful month for me as I started a new job, celebrated my birthday, and went to my first comic con. So it definitely wasn't hard to discover new things I became really fond of and liked.

And in case you were wondering why I skipped September, it was because October was such a hectic month for me and I didn't have many things to feature from September.

Disney Princess ballerina prints by Megan Withey

Megan Withey is one of the artists I met and discovered while attending ACE Comic Con Midwest last month. She has tons of beautiful watercolor prints, mostly of Disney characters. I especially love her prints of Disney Princesses as ballerinas since I love Disney Princesses and dance. I didn't buy all four of these prints but did get the Belle and Aurora ones. Belle is one of my top three favorite Disney princesses, and I've always loved Aurora's pink dress.

My Best Day Ever with Taron Egerton at ACE Comic Con Midwest

When there are 86,400 seconds in one day, 30-40 seconds doesn't seem very significant. But that didn't matter when I met Taron Egerton at ACE Comic Con Midwest on October 13, 2019.

If you didn't already know, Taron Egerton is my favorite actor. If you don't know who he is, you should and you will (whether you keep reading my blog post or you hear his name come Oscar and awards season). Egerton is a British actor best known for portraying the characters of Eggsy Unwin in the Kingsman movie franchise and Elton John in Rocketman, which was released earlier this year.

I first watched him in Kingsman: The Secret Service in 2015 and was instantly a fan. It took me a while ― I think nearly a year! ― for him to become my favorite, though. But literally the second I heard him in the Sing trailer in 2016, I was sold. I was amazed that the same guy who played street kid turned super spy Eggsy Unwin sang these soulful songs as Johnny in Sing. I basically fell in love with his voice and closely followed his career from then on.

So when I saw a Facebook ad on July 29 for ACE Comic Con Midwest saying Taron Egerton would be there in October, I was so excited and knew I had to go meet him. It's funny because I remember at the time I recently mentioned wishing that someone I wanted to meet would come to a comic con in the Chicago area, and it was going to happen!