Number one purchase: Prince tickets

If you click over to my "I bought this" page, I've put up some pictures of my Shopping for Happiness purchases for March. Clothes will come and go but by far the best thing I bought was my ticket to the surprise Piano and a Microphone show Prince performed in Toronto on Good Friday, April 25, 2016.  

Before Shopping for Happiness, I wouldn't have gone to this concert. For one thing, I would have assumed we'd never get through to Ticketmaster in time to score seats. Then there was the price: tickets were $125 to $325 each. Yet when my husband said he was going to go for it – and when he actually got through online on his first try – I didn't feel like I needed to say no even though I really wanted to say yes. Psychologically (not just financially), "yes" was an option. (Good thing too, because my husband would have gone with or without me.) 

If Prince hadn't died less than four weeks later, I'd probably have used this space to tell you how unbelievably great the show was and why it was worth whatever it cost to see him. If he hadn't died, I still would have walked away from this project listing "Prince tickets" as one of the best thing I bought all year. And I would have gone to see Prince again whenever he came to town, and brought my kids so they could be in the presence of genius at least once in their lives.

But obviously now I just feel amazingly grateful that I was able to see Prince once, and really sad that he is gone.  (If you haven't had your fill of tributes, check out mine in the May 9 issue of Hello! Canada or read some of the great material in Billboard or The New Yorker, which had such striking cover images.)