What a fantastic day I had. I'm pecking away on a dial-up connection on an old lap which still has Windows 98 and the hotel is charging me 10 cents/minute for the phone, so this will be brief. Here are some pictures. I'll make a much better web page when I get back home later in the week.

http://fanencounters.com

It was so much fun meeting all the Etrainers and I won't even try to mention everyone now as I'm sure I'll leave someone out.

Elliott was fantastic and we got to stand right below the stage. The crowd loved him. I'll let the others fill in with the details.

I got to meet him thanks to cfans getting two meet and greets from a security guard she had befriended earlier in the afternoon. He even let me take a picture of him in my "Only for Elliott" hat. :rotfl:

thanks for the recap!!! I'm so happy for you all...I'm getting ready to look at your pics now


OMG, I love Elliott in your hat!! :rotfl: Isn't he the best????!!! So glad you got a meet and greet :)

It was great to meet you.

Thanks of the recap...and the wonderful pics !!!

Loved that one too! You'll have a special connection to Elliott every time you wear that hat now. Thanks for posting.

It was great to finally meet you!! Had a wonderful time. I absolutely love the hat picture!!! You must send me a larger version. So glad you got to meet Elliott! You'll have to meet him again to give him his present. I almost did the same thing with a gift I had for him.

Good luck to you and John tomorrow. I hope you both got some sleep.

Thanks for the great pics. Mar! So excited you finally got to meet Elliott! Love your hat and it was great to see you in everyone's pics!

I had such a fabulous time yesterday and I'd probably be at this computer all day today if not for a 3-day Scrabble tournament which starts in about 3 hours. Competitive Scrabble is similar to competitive chess, it's very, well, competitive. Ever since I started playing 13 years ago, my goal was to make the top 50 ranked players in North America and, after three very good tournaments in a row, I finally made it this year. Now after already putting 1400 miles on my car since Monday, attending a Brad Paisley
concert on Thursday, and having one of the most fun and exciting days ever on Friday, I'm off to play 19 high-intensity 50-minute games of Scrabble in 3 days. Even if I lose every game and I get bumped out of the expert level for future tournaments, it will have been worth it.

Every thing seemed to happen so fast after meeting up with my fellow Etrainers
yesterday, that some things are just now emerging out of the blur. Rick was a great sport about taking a picture of me with my hat. Cfans and itslate were great partners in helping me launch my website and it was great to hang out with them during the hours before the concert. My friend John is one of the top Scrabble players in the country and I am forever grateful to Carole's son Dan for going on the Scream machine with him and upsetting his equilibrium as I'll be competing with him in this tournament. :rotfl: (Just kidding in case John finally joins the Etrain and reads this.) BeGeNJ gave me a wonderful charm bracelet with an E and a train as two of the charms and I'll post a picture of it when I get back home. Chrissy and Tom and Angell and John (sorry about
not remembering exact spelling and exact screen names as I don't have time to search them out this morning) were all delightful concert companions. And I finally got to meet Chloe and Robyn. Yay. And to top it off, even though I know just about every one of them might have wanted to arm-wrestle me for that meet and greet pass, they graciously agreed that I should should get the pass to meet Elliott with cfans.

Meeting Elliott was like reconnecting with a long-time friend. He hadn't received the disks on my website that I sent him and didn't know about my website but said that he would check it out. He signed my copy of the website disk and, in retrospect, I wish I had given it to him instead of having him sign it and keeping it for myself. He was a great sport about letting me take a picture of him with my silly hat. And then we had to leave.

I wrote this offline to save precious phone time on the hotel phone so I put in line breaks where I thought they should go. If the spacing is messed up, I probably won't
be able to correct it as I'll be in Philadelphia getting slaughtered in Scrabble for having such a great time at Six Flags. I think I chose the right screen name last year because there aren't too many activities that I would so gladly choose over my Scrabble rating.

wonderful recap of your day Mar! Best of luck with the Scrabble Tournament.

YAAAAAY for meeting Elliott & making a lifelong connection with him!! Loved your recap & pics!

GOOD LUCK at your Scrabble Tournament!

Loved reading your recap. Even though I was there, it's always great to get another perspective :). Yeah, claim that number one spot from John too!!! We had it planned lol. :::joking::: Hope he feels better... tell him it was great to have someone else ride the big coasters with us, even though he missed my favorite Nitro.

Mar...I had no idea I was hanging with an American Scrabble Champion yesterday. If I had known I would have gotten YOUR autograph!! Best of luck to you today. It was such a pleasure meeting you yesterday...I think you may have inspired me...I think I just might get my own Elliott hat!!

Mar your online scrapbook is brilliant!! I can't wait to add my own adventure after I see Elliott perform in Orlando.

Aww, thank you. I'm very proud of it, but i never dreamed that it would totally consume me for about 7 weeks. I downloaded the entire site and made some CD's for Elliott but he hadn't received them (I sent them to Monet, his manager) from Monet yet. He said he would check out the site. I hope he likes it.

I went straight from that project to overhauling a data base for a charity for which I'm a volunteer and straight from that project to this fantastic vacation which is almost over. That means by the end of this week, I'll probably be searching for a new project. I've been thinking of how I could restructure the format for the next leg of the tour and I'm very much open to suggestions. I'm close to certain that I will not use the same format as some people who wanted to share their experience did not want to rewrite a post they had already made elsewhere. I'm thinking for the next leg I'll concentrate more of pictures with captions instead of complete summaries.

I welcome any ideas anybody might have for the next leg of the tour.

P.S. I'm having one of my worst Scrabble tournaments ever. I've tied one game, lost two games by one point, and am in either last past or next to last place. It's okay though, because the Scrabble tournament was my diversionary (I"m not even sure that's a word as my brain is rather numb right now) tactic to get to the concert. :rotfl:

Mar you are hardcore...much respect :bow: ... :elliottcap:

One more picture to add to Mar's report. I took this with my camera, so Mar (onlyforelliott) didn't have it yet when she put her pictures up. Here she is with Elliott:

Onlyfor elliott, I am so happy that you got to meet Elliott and are having a great time. Thank you for the updates.
Best of luck with your tournament.
I'll talk to you when you get home.

What a great recap and great day for you! I am so VERY happy you got to meet Elliott. I wish I could of met up with you and finally met face to face maybe another time.
Elliott really knocked you off your game ! lol

Great picture !! love it

Hope you are doing well in the Scrabble--both you and John! Thanks for all the wonderful stuff you do here, there and everywhere! Just wanted to correct that I am AngELL and the angel in the pictures I recognize as Elliott!fan on ETrain-with her husband berniefan...so we don't have an identity-crisis! Thanks!

Angell,
Sorry about that. I know you are Angell with 2 L's. I have no idea why I thought Sherry's given name was Angel.

I am back home now after driving 400 miles on Monday starting at 2 PM and 750 miles today starting at 6 AM. Believe it or not, I am always one of the slowest drivers on the Interstate as I set my cruise right at the speed limit and pass about 2 cars for every 50-100 that pass me.

Now that I'm on a real computer again, I'll check my pictures and work on a better organization for the web page.

Arrgh! You're the one?! Gad woman, at least stay out of the left lane! :rotfl: