I guess iieeeluvtori must be depressed...

With Vanessa’s birthday approaching fast, I wanted to get her something special. She isn’t fond of shopping and very rarely is there something she wants or needs. Something having to do with the theatre is usually a good bet, so I started down that track, but without much luck. At some point I saw that Tori Amos was planning at Royce Hall at UCLA in April. Perfect! Now all I had to do was get tickets. Once I got over the sticker shock and realized I was going to have to spend over $100 per ticket I started getting serious. It’s not that $200 (for both us) is a lot. I’m sure many of you have paid much more than that for a concert. I have only been to 2 real concerts and there are only 2 or 3 bands I would be willing to pay that much money to see. Tori Amos isn’t one of those for me, but I know it definitely is for Vanessa.

After looking at some ticket brokers I quickly realized they were overpriced by $20 or more per ticket from what I could get private party. I checked out Craigslist, but there wasn’t much. Some guy wants $750 for 2 tickets on the right side of the stage. No thanks. Everyone else was using the site to beg for tickets. Ebay seemed to be the best way to go. There were about 20 postings and there was a good selection of seats/prices. The negatives: 1) The two auctions I was watching ended Saturday morning, so I would have to watch and bid while Vanessa was in the house. 2) The one I really wanted ended 15 minutes after the other one, so if I didn’t get my first choice, I was SOL. 3) There is no guarantee I would get anything if some crazy bidder was willing to go crazy (foreshadowing).

The last thing I wanted to do is give Vanessa a birthday card saying "IOU Tori tickets". That would suck. So, Saturday morning Vanessa tells me my cell phone alarm is going off saying “Reminder: Ebay 9:30 am”. I didn’t even try to explain that one. Who knows what she started guessing at that point. She had to go to the store, so I had the house to myself. I watched the 1st auction to see what happened in the last couple of minutes. I have never won anything, or gone after something aggressively on Ebay before, but I had some ideas I had heard from others. Sure enough the price on the first auction spiked about 20% in the last minute with 3 different bids.

Now I was ready. I was hitting the “refresh button” every 10 seconds or so with 8 minutes left. Until the phone rang. It was Vanessa. She needed help carrying groceries. I couldn’t help her and I couldn’t tell her why, so when she guessed I was in the bathroom, I just went along with it. With about 3 minutes left there was some activity between the current high bidder and the person who just lost the 1st auction. The price went up about $30. With 2 minutes left my pulse started racing. I decided to bid extra high, since Ebay will automatically bid low for you (over the high price) and then bump your bid up as needed. So with 45 seconds until the close, I decided not to take a chance and bid $90 more than anyone else and counted to 15 before confirming. Imagine my shock with 16 seconds left in the auction when I was notified my $90 wasn’t enough!!! WHAT???

I panicked and bumped it up an extra $20. With literally 1 second left in the auction I won and outbid someone named iieeeluvtori. Wow! My bid was confirmed at 10:36:14 and the auction ended at 10:36:15. Whew!

I controlled my excitement, wandered downstairs and greeted Vanessa. Later that night she was ecstatic when she opened her card and saw a small note:

Monday – 4/25
Royce Hall
5th Row Center Stage