Going to See Celine Dion

Chieko is a Celine Dion fan, and since we resisted the $600 to $1,800 tickets to see her in Las Vegas, we decided to go to Celine's concert in Salt Lake at the Energy Solutions Arena next week, the day before Thanksgiving. Actually, Chieko said it would be fun to go. I said, "Uh huh." Then she mentioned it again about 10 times, and I said, "Sure, whatever." When the full-page newspaper ad for the concert appeared on my desk I decided I should try to get tickets. They were to go on sale Saturday morning at 10 o'clock.

I knew enough about Celine Dion to understand that the tickets would go quickly, so I logged onto the Tickemaster website about 9:50 a.m. A message said the tickets weren't available yet. About 9:58 I started hitting the "refresh" button. At exactly 10 a.m. the tickets became available. I hurriedly selected two $125 tickets. "Not available." So I selected "Best available." Two tickets showed up in Section 10, Row 5. Good seats for $125 each. I selected them. On the next screen, I had to enter my email address twice and a password, twice. And I had one minute to do so. I entered the information, but I typoed the email address and had to redo it. Then I got a message that said I already had a Ticketmaster account. So I went to the other computer, looked in my password vault, and found the account info. I went back to the Mac and entered the password. A message said that my minute had expired. Too bad. Go back to the beginning. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Do not sit in Section 10, Row 5.

I started all over and zipped through all the screens, past several error messages (the site was busy), and finally got my tickets. With only a minute on the selection screen and on the credit card page, I didn't look at the details. And when I did, I discovered we had tickets in Section 130, Row 5. This is officially called the Nose Bleed Section. I think the seats are suspended from the Goodyear blimp over Rice Eccles stadium. With powerful binoculars and Celine Dion playing on our iPods, we may get the feeling of actually being in the concert.

But the story doesn't end. Later Saturday night I was looking at the tickets and I noticed that the date said, "Friday, November 21." I thought this must be a typo, since November 21 is on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Then I looked more closely and realized it said, "Friday, November 21, 2008." This concert is next year, in 372 days. I just hope Celine doesn't retire before then, or we don't lose the tickets, or we don't forget we even have tickets.