Testing My Ability to Commit

My uncle and his family, as well as my mom, stepdad and Sis #1 are coming to visit the weekend after my birthday in July. My uncle wants to see my place and has never been to Atlanta. He's a blast. We have a couple of things planned and I'm sure with him around, we'll be hitting a poker tournament or two.

They've asked for me to plan a few things. I took my mom and them to an improv theater and I guess they enjoyed it as they asked for me to plan the same thing for when my uncle comes down. That'll be Friday night. I can handle that commitment as I won't be ordering the tickets until a couple of weeks before hand.

Then, they wanted to see the Braves vs. the Cardinals at Turner field. We are all big Cardinals fans, so they were willing to go all out on these tickets. I searched, viewed angles from several different seats, called ticketmaster and ordered tickets for 7 of us for the Sunday afternoon game. It was hard to commit to the number of tickets. I didn't know if a friend of mine would be coming out for my birthday, or if anything else will be different at that time. But I ordered the 7 tickets at $45 a piece. That's not so bad.

The big one was a concert. My aunt wants to see Tim McGraw and Faith Hill who happen to be here that Saturday night. Tickets are in the presale stage right now, which means that if you have a password, are a member of their fan club, are willing to pay $30 in addition to each ticket price to join their fan club, or have an American Express card...you can order first, and only up to 4 tickets.

My uncle told me money wasn't an issue and he wanted good seats for my aunt. Ticket prices are $91.25 (not including all the stupid fees ticketmaster charges). I checked for seats under the Amex deal, the seats sucked. I can't imagine what the seats will be like after the presale.

So I checked the seats out this afternoon if we ALL joined the damn fan club. Tickets would end up being $140 a piece. To be honest, as much as I love going to a good concert, I didn’t want to pay this much to see Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. I like them, but $140 was feeling steep.

I checked seats out and they were a lot better than the Amex seats, but still not great. Or at least not what I consider great for $140. But, I had a feeling they were as close as we were going to get. So I called my mom and told her to call her brother and find out if this was okay with him.

Well, once I checked again tonight, we had already gone back a whole section. I certainly wasn't willing to pay that much for even shittier seats.

As a last resort, I checked eBay. Three people were selling tickets. Two sellers had 4 great seats where I'm sure you'd get some Tim McGraw sweat shed on you, for $1000. Sorry charlie, there is no way in hell I'm paying $250 a ticket.

There was one other buyer that had 4 tickets 12 rows from the stage for $175 a piece. Well, it's $30 more than the fan club seats and a hell of a lot better. So I called my uncle and he said to buy them.

So, let's forget the money for a moment. I guess I'll consider it a birthday present to myself. But I am committing to 2 large, fairly expensive events, 4 months in advance. How the hell am I supposed to know what will be going on in 4 months.

So it's done. It hurt clicking that "buy it now". It sounds ridiculous, but I hate planning that far ahead. Especially when money is involved. I'm all about tentative plans and "playing it by ear".

So there is no way around it now. July 20th, I have 6 people ascending upon my home and I will be chauffeuring them around Atlanta to the improv theater, 4 of them to the Faith Hill & Tim McGraw concert, then everyone to the Braves/Cardinals game, along with other Atlanta sites, I'm sure. This shall be interesting.