Back in my single days, a good guy friend and I used to say to each other that we needed to find a woman to marry who enjoyed going to the symphony. Because if she doesn't like football that's OK; you can always watch football with the guys. But you can't go to the symphony with the guys.

Then I proceeded to fall in love with and marry Shelly.

Shelly is a football fan. She doesn't follow it nearly as closely as I do, but she's been known to show up in a den of guys late at night to catch a BYU game, and it never fails to impress the men present.

But she doesn't like the symphony, and I've been suffering the consequences of that since our relationship began several years ago.

It took the National Symphony Orchestra's Pops Christmas concert this past Thursday to get her to go to the symphony. (To her credit, the concert actually was her idea.) We got all gussied up and got a babysitter and went to the Kennedy Center to hear some live music.

And then we did it again on Friday (sans the gussied up and with the kids) for the annual Merry TubaChristmas concert, which we've decided will be an Astle Christmas Tradition for as long as we live in this area.

I miss listening to live music. Going to two great concerts two evenings in a row this week (plus a performance of the Mormon Choir of Washington ("M-COW") this past Sunday) makes me realize how much better live is than recorded. You really miss a lot when the only music you hear comes out of your iPod, even if it is pumped through the decent stereo speakers we have in our living room.

When 300 tubas play a Christmas carol, you can literally feel the vibrations down in your toes. This wasn't some compressed digital thing going into my earbuds as I tried to block out the noise of the subway. This was pure, unadulterated, attention-focusing, analog, air-pushing MUSIC. And it was glorious. My favorite part was the laughter emanating from the crowd three seconds after the tubas started playing. Everyone (including myself) is shocked at the sound of 300 tubas playing together, because you've never heard anything like it, and it's nothing like what you imagine.

It may be some time before I can get Shelly to accompany me to a REAL symphony concert. (One thing I kept thinking at the end of each of the Christmas songs the symphony played was, "Gosh, that's it? Time to move on to another song?" It's like I expect a group like that to play for at least ten minutes without stopping.) But we're moving in the right direction now. And before long, Ellie will be old enough to take to the symphony as my parents did with me.

At any rate, it had been over five years since the last time I attended a concert by a symphony orchestra. Here's hoping it won't be another five before the next.

* I'm aware that Shelly has written a blog entry on substantially the same topic earlier today, but I haven't read it yet. This is your chance, dear reader, to see two perspectives of the same events.