Guess where I went?

The picture below is your first hint.
K-obviously we're at the Grove in LA.
That was not our destination though.

Recognize those studio lights?
(on a totally separate note, i have NO idea why my dress was poofing out at my belly level. I am certainly NOT pregnant, unless immaculate conception is back in style. Is it sac religious to joke about that? Well, I just did, so I hope it's not.)

Get yourself some chocolate and settle in for the story.
What's a trip to LA for the day if it doesn't have a rockin' tale to go with?

So my friend Shanda (pictured far left above) has a cousin who dances in the new Cirque show, Viva Elvis. They were guest performers last Tues on Dancing With The Stars (which by the way
is where we're at in case you didn't figure that out yet). Shanda had spots for us as VIP's under her cousin's name. We had to be at CBS studios by 12:45 which I knew was WAY early (having been to tapings in the past a la my cousin Lacey) but I still thought it'd be like before ... lots of sitting and waiting, just more of it.

(They were pre-taping the Cirque segment because the dancers had to fly back to Vegas
for 2 evening shows that very night. )

We got there in time. We sat in our seats and started planning how we were going to move up one row to the front when at some point in the day the guys in front of us left.

(We overheard them saying they weren't staying the whole time.)

The pre-taping of the Cirque show was over in 20 minutes. Then we all got KICKED OUT.

What? Excuse me? "Go outside and people in red coats will tell you what to do."

So we find out that we were only VIP's for the pre-taping. Not only that, we'd have to wait in line behind the 400 stand-by people if we wanted to get in for the regular live taping in a couple of hours.

What? How'd we go from VIP to nobody in a mere 20 minutes?

We had sitters for the day and had planned on being there til the moon and the stars shone.
Our day was not going to end before it began.

We started to scheme. Well, I started to scheme. Since I was the only one with connections at this point, the onus was on me. The trouble is, my cousin isn't a regular on the show this season,
I needed to contact someone else inside who could put us back on the VIP list. That was our only way in, according to the little man in the red coat.

(We had no paper tickets, no email tix, nada.)

I hesitantly called my sister hoping she might be able to give me Louis Van Amstel's number.
He's a regular pro this season and he used to be one of my sister's coaches. Also, I was willingly to take the long shot that he remembered me from the evenings we all spent together after the tapings of So You Think You Can Dance.

(when my sister and my cousin Benji competed)

Heidi was a no go. She wasn't in contact with him anymore and didn't think she even had a number for him.

We walked (3 blocks) back to the car and then walked (3 blocks) back to the studio VIP entrance
before I made contact attempt number 2.

Benji Schwimmer.

Considering the fact that we recently had a "family scuffle" I wasn't sure how my request for help would come over. Then again, Heidi was involved in said scuffle and she seemed rather pleasant on the phone, so at this point I figured I didn't have anything to loose (other than my precious pride). I sent a text to Benji, who promptly replied. Yay, we all thought. "Try Lacey," he said. "She's there right now."

(He was not in contact with Louis either.)

This was too funny. Now we were back to getting in on a cousin connection. Lacey did not respond to texts. Benji said she had not responded to him in the last hour and had probably turned off her phone for the remainder of the show.

Time was running out. Soon they would stop allowing guests through the VIP entrance. And that little man in the red coat was on to us.

(He phoned the guest relations person who verified that we were only on the list for the pre-taping, not for the live show. That was after we had him check the live-show list again for ALL 4 of our names, swearing we were told to come back at 3 to get in.)

Oh what a tangled web we weave.

Benji then texts again and says, "Try my dad. He knows EVERYONE there." So I did. Uncle Buddy said to find Stephanie. She is the gal who seats people inside the studio. She has been doing it for years. She was doing it when Heidi and Benji were on SYTYCD and she is still doing it now after Lacey has been on several seasons of DWTS. She knows Buddy well, he knows her well.

Little man in the red coat was no longer manning the VIP entrance. He had sashayed his way somewhere else. I had one of the other gals do the talking from this point on. I was too nervous.
We essentially then shamelessly name-dropped our way past 2 different security check points. Things seemed promising until Little man in a red coat caught up to us and said, "Ladies I have to escort you off the premises." My friend said we were supposed to be there and that we had, "...like 15 connections." Oh, this was getting good. We threw out Stephanie's name, and he said he'd escort us over to where the benches were and it was up to us to find someone who could get Stephanie for us from inside the studio.

I found someone who I told our story to and he said he'd get Stephanie for me. She came out. I waved to her, knowing she probably wouldn't remember me amongst the thousands of people she has seen and seated since the 5 tapings I attended of SYTYCD (back to season 2 people). After I shamelessly dropped Uncle Buddy's name and Lacey's, she said she'd see what she could do. "The boss is here today and he knows the numbers, so I can only maybe get you in at the end of the stand-by group." Ten minutes later she came back out and said, "O.K. sit here and I'll get you in at the front of the stand-by group." We said that'd be great.

Only problem was, Stephanie never came back out to get us. The stand-by group started heading into the studio where, once again, tickets were needed. We sweated it out. We had made it so far. I had lost ALL my pride. Were we really going to get turned away right at the studio door?

Guy in black appeared just then at the door and we told him we were supposed to see Stephanie (giving no other details lest we get her into trouble). He is the guy who told us before that we'd have to wait in line behind the 400 stand-by people if we wanted to get in. He knew we had NO tickets. Part of me thinks he respected the fact that somehow we had made it that far without tickets. He said, in front of the ticket taker, "Then you'll just have to go in and find her." He knew once we were in that door, we were in. No one had a clue at that point whether or not we had tickets 'cause the tix had already been collected at the door.

We walked down the hallway and were seated . . . right in front of the celebriquarium.

When Lacey came out to dance, she saw me and was surprised. She ran up and gave me a big hug and she and Dimitry waved to me. Seated in our row was co-host Brooke Burke's guests. To our left was the band Train, who performed live (2 songs) about 5 feet away from us.

We all marveled at what had transpired. As we walked back to the car for the second time that day, I wondered aloud how that just happened. Then I remembered, "Oh yeah." I said. "I prayed for it."

That my friends is my miracle moment for the week.