Woke up around 8:00 AM the next morning (so October 29th) with a bad hangover that I promised myself I would receive. I shower and get ready for work. I grab my laptop to use at work so I can purchase the pre-sale tickets for 3-11 Day and possibly get some more info on hotels and flights for Vegas. I go into the kitchen and throw back some advil before cruising to work.
The day is long and tedious, most likely intensified due to the fact that I'm waiting for 3:00 to roll around, as that's when the tickets go on sale. I keep busy for the most part and do actually manage to get some more info on hotels. I shoot a call over to my Mom to see if she's got any advice on booking hotels in Vegas, as she and Tool are the only ones in my family who have gone, and Tool's at work today so I can't call him. She tells me that when her and her friends went, they stayed in the MGM Grand Hotel right on the strip, so to possibly check that one out. She also tells me that one of our good family friends visits Vegas on a regular basis throughout the year and she could find out from him some of the best places to stay. I thank her for her hospitality and get back to checking shit out. I don't get very far, as customers keep coming in and taking away from my Vegas trip planning time. To quote Randal from Kevin Smith's Clerks, "This job would be great if it wasn't for the fuckin' customers."
3:00 finally comes and I totally bail on making a drink for a customer. Fuck them, these tickets are more important at this point, and if I wait even a second too long, there's a possibility they will be sold out. The original pre-sale was actually Wednesday morning, but because so many people tried to get tickets at the exact same time, the whole system crashed and only the sky-box tickets were sold, so they rescheduled the pre-sale for today at 3:00. So it's obvious that everyone and their mother is trying to get these tickets and I don't want to be fucked in the pooper.
I jump on my computer and go to the site to make the big purchase. Much to my surprise, next to the ticket description, it says, "tickets available soon". What the fuck? It's 3:03 now. Why the hell can't I get my tickets? I start thinking that maybe the system is going a little slow and it might not kick in at 3:00 exactly. Maybe it will be 3:10 or something. I just keep checking back about every 2 minutes to make sure.
This process of checking back every few minutes continues for almost an entire hour. It's coming up on 4:00 PM and the tickets are still unavailable. Now I'm just fuckin' baffled... and pissed. Meanwhile, there is so much shit to be done at work that I have been putting off for the last 7 hours. I feel like I should probably do something, but I can't take the risk of getting caught up in a project at work and missing out on the pre-sale. I mean, sure, the ACTUAL tickets go on sale on Saturday at 10:00 AM, but I still don't wanna risk it. I wanna try my hand at the earliest set of tickets I can score. So fuck work right now. I'll explain to Edd my debacle when he gets here at 5:00.
Now, it doesn't hit me until about 4:30. I am so fuckin' fed up with this pre-sale bullshit that I decide to check the 311 website just to make sure I have the date and time correct. "Thursday, October 29th @ 3:00 PM." Yep. I got the date and time correct. So what the fuck? Then I notice something I should have noticed from the beginning. It clearly says 3:00 PACIFIC TIME!!!! Son of a bitch!!!! There's a 2 fuckin' hour difference. No wonder they aren't on sale yet. They won't go on sale until 5:00 PM. I hang my head in post-retarded shame, but am also somewhat glad that I found out what was happening.
I spend the next half hour trying to clean up the gigantic mess at work so that maybe it won't look too horrible by the time the next shift comes in. I do manage to get the place looking somewhat presentable, but it's still pretty fucked up. Edd comes in about fifteen minutes early and I apologize for the place looking like absolute shit. He tells me it's all good, so I bomb in the back to cash out my drawer so I can hit up my computer in time for the 5:00 pre-sale. I've never counted that fucker down quicker in my life. It may have been off, but I didn't fucking care at this point. Sometimes, sacrifices must be made... especially when dealing with 3-11 Day in Vegas.
I clock out for the day and set my computer up at one of the empty tables. It's 4:59 PM. I get to the site and wait literally count the seconds until the clock hits 5:00 PM. I hit the "Get Tickets" button and am transferred right to the order page. Now this part comes as somewhat of a surprise to me. Apparently, if you buy through the pre-sale, there is a 2-ticket limit for general admission and a 4-ticket limit for seats. We have 5 people going altogether. I opt to do the 2 general admission tickets, because if I get the seats, the 5th person will most likely not get a seat next to us when they go to buy their own ticket. I place the order and am transferred to the checkout page. The tickets, with fees, are $74 a piece!!! I nearly shit my pants when I see this, until I remember that it's fuckin' 3-11 Day, and it will be so worth it once I'm there to witness it. I enter my credit card information and then call Justin to let him know of the status.
Justin tells me that he's reserving the 2nd ticket that I bought and everyone else can just get theirs on Saturday morning. I don't protest, as it was the two of us that originally made the confirmed plans to attend. I hang up with Justin and call Phil to tell him that he has to make sure to get tickets at 12:00 PM SHARP on Saturday morning. Turns out he's still at my house and hasn't gone home yet all day, so I tell him I'll just fill him in on the details when I get home. I pack up my laptop and head out.
I get home and tell Phil about the ticket purchasing limit. I tell him that it is absolutely imperative that he, Rob, and Jerry are sitting at their computers at 11:58, ready to buy the tickets at noon on the fuckin' dot. I can't stress to him enough how fast these tickets will sell out, but there gets to be a point where I can't say it anymore. Just for collateral, I shoot a text to Jerry and Rob to let them know, as I can't totally put my trust in Phil to relay the message. Phil and I then opt to go visit Justin at work and grab some food to further discuss the plans.
Dinner goes well, probably because I treated myself to a steak and had a few Jack and Cokes. We bullshit about how we want the trip to go down. Justin waits on our table and periodically jumps in the conversation. We pay the good man, make plans to all meet up when Justin gets off, and bomb out of the restaurant. We make a pit-stop at the liquor store to score a case of beer.
Phil and I chill out in front of the t.v. for an hour or so waiting for Justin to get to my place. He finally arrives around 10:00, so we catch the new episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and then it's time to sit down and really plan this bastard out. We grab some beers and sit down at the table and vow that we aren't leaving until we have at least a good grasp on which hotel we are staying at.
This is when shit starts to go sour. We start looking for hotels and none of us really want to pay top-dollar for a room we're realistically only going to be using to sleep in a few hours a night. Now, Justin and I know that we're probably going to end up spending close to $100 a piece for a 3-night stay, and we accept that. Phil, on the other hand, is so utterly convinced that he's still going to be broke in 5 months that no price is good enough for him. We find a room that would cost all of us $93. Phil asks if we can go lower. We then find one that would be $86. Phil still needs to go lower. We finally find our lowest rate yet at a hotel with only a two-star rating. $72 for each person. The hotel is most likely a piece of shit, but because Phil is being such a cheap bastard, we're willing to bite the bullet and make the sacrifice. And then he says it, "umm... it's better, but is there anything cheaper than that?"
By this time, I'm growing very impatient. I somewhat snap at him and tell him that the only way we're going to find a dirt-cheap hotel is if we stay on the outskirts of the Vegas strip, which is a place we DO NOT want to be, as it's kind of known as the slums of Vegas, if you catch my drift. Phil keeps persisting that we find something cheaper and I keep arguing that a room on the strip for $86 is a fairly good fucking deal and he needs to stop anticipating being broke damn near a half year from now. He still is worried about his financial situation, so he suggests we call his friend, Dan, because apparently he stayed at a hotel for a grand total of $90 on the strip.
Now, for those who don't know Dan, he's kind of a dumb ass. The motherfucker thinks his shit don't stink and thinks he has the answer to everything, yet his answers are never logical and they are always much more complicated. His mind is extremely discombobulated, as is Phil's, so when the two of them start talking to each other, you can imagine how much is NOT accomplished. I already know that this phone call is going to go straight to hell, and potentially piss me off even more than I already am.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment