Another tough day to get out of bed. My immediate thought was, please, let me sleep just a little longer! This thought quickly vanished from my mind as I remembered that today I was going to Buffalo, and hopefully I was going to meet NSync. But even with that thought I still couldn't get myself out of bed! And then I heard Carin from across the room, Debbie, it's your turn to get up first, I got up first yesterday. Poop! I totally do not want to get out of bed. But I suppose I can't really argue with her logic, afterall it is only fair that I shower first, afterall, she did let me sleep in yesterday after drinking all night. So I got out of bed and headed for the shower.
There is a cool light on a timer in the bathroom so that you can time how long you are in the shower. I set it for ten minutes and was surprised that I made it out of the shower before the light went off. I thought I took super long showers. Maybe ten minutes is a long shower? Either way, I showered and got dressed for the day and ran downstairs for a quick smoke while Carin finished getting ready. We made the last sweep of the room looking for left behind objects and then checked out. Doesn't sound like this day is going to be too interesting does it? Well it does get better, I promise!
Almost immediately after getting in the car, I made the mistake of mentioning
Team Fiasco. Why did I have to open my big fat mouth? Everything was going so well. Curse Team Fiasco and it's wicked wicked ways!! Suddenly we couldn't find our way out of Cleveland, we had to turn around a few times. Things seemed to settle down when we got on I-90 but of course what could really go wrong on 90? The trip seemed to go by amazingly quick, until we got to Buffalo and realized that we had no idea how to get to the arena. The directions Doug had given us from the web, led us to a Marine Midland BANK not the arena! We must have wasted somewhere between half an hour and an hour trying to find our way out of this mess. But finally we saw some tall buildings and decided to head straight for them.
When we got to the arena we were immediately greeted with the sight of the tour busses. Carin was getting pretty excited and I was getting nervous that tickets and meet and greet passes that I thought I had scored for us wouldn't be at the will call window afterall. Carin told me not to worry but I know she was just as worried. And with good reason, cos they weren't there when we finally made it to the will call window. I was so upset. It wasnt' that I was all bummed that we woudln't get to meet NSync, it was that someone could be so mean as to promise that they would be there, and that we had gone to all this trouble to show up and then the tickets weren't there. Besides, I wanted to meet someone famous!!
Well, I decided that the guy had given me his name and I was going to use it. So I told the people at the window that he was supposed to leave them for me and they said they couldn't help me. They refused to call back and see if they could find him and so I decided I would hunt him down on my own. I went back to the place where the tour busses were and flagged down a security guard. I explained to him that I needed to get in touch with this guy and he radioed out to see if he could find him for me and then he walked away. I figured he was trying to blow me off and wasnt' going to help me and now I was getting extremely ticked off. But after waiting what seemed like forever the guard came back and told me that Dave(the guy who was supposed to leave the tickets for me) was coming back here to talk to me. So I waited another eternity and finally this big gut with curly hair came out and talked to us. He said he was with Dave and that there was no meet and greet today. I knew he was lying cos Dave told me in Cleveland that there was one and so I told him so. He told us that there was supposed to be one but they had used all their passes up in Cleveland or something like that and so there wouldn't be one here. It sounded like the biggest crock of bullshit I ever heard but I figured if they didn't want to give me the meet and greet passes they were at least going to give me the tickets! So I mentioned that Dave had also promised me free tickets and since I had driven all the way out here could I please at least get those. He said he would go in and talk to Dave about them and see what he could do....
Again, we waited and waited and waited. It really did seem like we must have waited an entire lifetime but in reality it was probably only about ten minutes. I got impatient and I didn't think that he was going to come back out. When I just couldn't take the waiting any longer I told Carin that the only reason why we got this far was because that security guard in Cleveland was so nice and because she was a woman. I thought that if we were going to get these tickets we were going to have to ask a woman. So I spoke with the one woman security guard there and I explained to her how far we had travelled and that this guy had promised us the tickets and I asked her if she could please help us. She agreed to help us, she went in the building and found Dave herself and came back out with a phone number for us to call. I just thought she was the nicest person, I couldn't believe that she went so far out of her way to help us. Her name was Lynn and I thanked her many times because I just thought she was the nicest person.
So we went back to the car and called Dave on the cell phone and he told us that he had given that other guy the tickets and he must not have been able to find us so he said he would leave tickets for us at the will call window. And I told him that the other guy had said that there wasn't a meet and greet today and that I was pretty bummed about that (cos I drove so far for this show:) and he said that there was a meet and greet but there weren't any passes left but he woudl see what he could. It didn't sound like he was going to be able to get them but I thought that at least we were getting to see a free show and the seats he was going to give us were probably going to be pretty good seats....
So Carin and I went to the will call window and the tickets weren't there yet. But we had just gotten off the phone with him so I didn't really expect them to be there yet. Just as I turned around to leave the window area, there he was! Dave was standing right there and he handed me an envelope and as I took it from him I could feel that it was thicker than just two tickets. I thought for sure those meet and greet passes were in there! I was so excited that I hugged Dave!! He laughed and he seemed to enjoy Carin and I being so excited and then he hugged Carin! It was cool. But Carin didn't know if those meet and greet tickets were in there and it was driving her crazy, so we walked a littleways from the crowd and I opened the envelope and Carin screamed. We had em!
So then we had to figure out where the meet and greet was. But it was such a secret kind of thing that no one would tell us anything about it unless we showed them our passes! Some people told us that it would be at 4:30 and some said 5:15 some said it wouldn't be til 5:30. There was no way I was going to miss this, after all that work. So we decided not to check into the hotel yet and instead we moved the car out of its illegal space and into the garage. We opened the trunk and fixed our hair and put on more deodorant (it was so hot and muggy that day it was unbelievable!). I felt kind of silly putting my deodorant on in the parking garage but at least I smelled all powder fresh!! And then we went in and waited....and waited and waited...
Finally it was time for the meet and greet. It didn't even seem real to me. It was as if I was just going in to talk to any person, after all the work that we had done to get these things, it just seemed so unreal. We got in the room and we ended up in the fourth row, which was pretty decent considering there were about 20 rows and you couldn't stand up during the whole thing. The band came in and stood in the front so we could take pictures. We were allowed to use our flash for these pictures but later when we went up to get our autographs we couldn't. I think I got some decent pictures but they all have people's heads on the bottom of them. But that's ok. So then the audience got to ask some questions, when I say some, I mean about four. And of course the people who asked the questions asked the most retarded questiosn but I couldn't think of anything to ask....I thought of plently as soon as I left...
So after the questions part we got to go up one row at a time and get their autographs. Carin was ahead of me in line and she said hello to Justin, he was the first one at the table. He didn't say anything back to her and it bugged her. But Chris was next and I think he noticed that she was bummed that Justin didn't say hello to her and Chris said hello to her. I told Justin and Chris that I really liked the changes they had made in the music for the live shows. They both said, really? And then I told Chris that I had seen both shows in Cleveland and he wanted to know which I liked better. I wasn't sure and i told him so, he said that he liked the second one better. And I said, oh, well the confetti machine wasn't working the second night. And he didn't know that. And then I was off to Lance, my favorite. I said hello Lance and he smiled at me and said hello back. Then I said hello to Joey and JC. Nothing too exciting happened. But it was neat to watch them sign the autographs because they would be passing the picture on to the next person while they were still signing it. It was like one continous motion. I suppose if you sign so many autographs you get a routine down, it was just kind of neat.
We had to leave right after the autographs and we went to our seats for the show. The show was awesome. I have been in an arena with girls that screamed so loud in my entire life. It was unbelievable. It was to the point that even if I had the urge to scream, it wouldn't have made a difference because the screams were so loud I wouldn't have even been able to hear it myself. I enjoyed the show and then when it was over we booked it to our hotel to see if we could catch them before they left for the night. Someone had told us at the meet and greet that they had already checked out of their hotel but we didnt' think that was right. It just didn't seem to make too much sense.
More to come...I'm tired!!