One for the money...
Warning: Long.
I successfully survived Night One. Did I ever mention that Aarti and I are CRAZY? Ack! Aside from the snowballs that were falling from the sky (I swear, they were WAY too big to be considered flakes), we had a lot of fun. Met some cool people in line, one INSANE 8th grader who claimed she was willing to lose her toes AND ears to frostbite for NSYNC. Right. Lol. We heard in the car ride up that if you're wearing Kiss 103.5 on you somewhere, they may upgrade you to pit (before this goes any farther, we didn't get it...). So we walked around with Kiss 103.5 signs on. Lol. EVERYBODY in the entire PLACE read them. And we followed the Kiss Crew around, asking if they'd given out their tickets yet. They hadn't, they hadn't, they hadn't... then they had. Darn it. To their credit, they gave them to two girls (like, 12-year-olds) who were up in the upper deck, but STILL. We were campaigning! Ah well.
The Not So Boyband performed, but since they didn't open the DOORS until 7:15, we did not make it inside to see them. We stood about 15 inches from Tony Lucca forever, debating as to whether to get his attention, but we didn't. What else? Got some hopefully decent pictures. We were RIGHT underneath the catwalk. So when they stood in the middle of their back-of-the-arena stage, we couldn't see them. And JC hung out on the other side of it most of the time, but I hopefully got some nice pictures of Joey, Chris and Lance.
We were sitting in the first row of our section, right up against the Friends and Family cage-thingy. We made friends with an usher and a security guard, and it turns out the entire fenced-in area was filled with Joey's friends. He was hamming it up for them, singing directly at them for the whole time he was on the catwalk/end stage, so that was cool. I hopefully got some good pictures out of that. Then the KICKER. Ahhh!! One of Joey's friends had a pit ticket. Just one. So he came up to me and Aarti about halfway through and said "One of you come with me. I'll be back for the other one." He was drunk as a skunk. So he took Aarti and tried to get her in the pit. If he'd sent her in and then gone in after her to retrieve the ticket, we'd BOTH have been in the pit. As it was, he tried to go WITH her and the velociraptor at the gate knew he was up to something and wouldn't let EITHER of them in. Darnit!!
Then he proceeded to take my camera, feeling bad that he hadn't gotten us in, to take some up-close pictures. The only problem was that he did it at the end of Gone, when Justin and the guitarist were dueling, and he used the rest of my film (like 3 pictures, but still) on JUSTIN. Grrrrr!!!! If he'd waited TWO minutes, they'd ALL have been out there for Girlfriend. I would have loved up-close pictures of ANYONE but Justin. I don't know why he bugs me, but he does. Oh well. The guy tried to be nice. Lol.
Then the usher we made friends with asked what we were doing after, and we asked him where would be a good place to go out, and he said "Oh there's a party at... no, that's tomorrow night." Then he got this panicked look on his face and said really quickly "but it doesn't have anything to do with them" and motioned to the stage. Riiiiight. He almost let it slip where their afterparty is tonight. Ahh! Not that we'd have gone to crash it... I'm sure it's really expensive, but still. Would have been fun to know.
Okay, this is REALLY long. And I didn't even put in the cute little moments! I'll give ya a couple. Chris and JC were up in our corner of the end stage (for once!) and JC leaned in to tell Chris something (and I was TRYING to get a picture... don't know if I did), and Chris just gave him this look like "Whatever, man" and JC was CRACKING UP at whatever he'd told Chris. Lol. It was cute. And then (I can't even remember what song it was during) they were all kinda standing there, calm-like, and all of a sudden Joey started doing that jerky dance he does at the end of Girlfriend, with his hands up by his shoulders... and they all kind of looked at him and he just started laughing.
One last thing. We were trying to get from the city to Allstate to get Aarti a ticket for tonight (we didn't do that), and we got REALLY lost and asked for directions. Well, Allstate used to be Rosemont Horizon, and then there's Rosemont Theatre down the road. Well, the girl gave us directions to Rosemont Theatre. We thought we might have found NSYNC there. If there hadn't been a lady in the parking lot, we would have gone in and asked directions to Allstate. Lol. But there were five tour buses, labeled 1-5, and a handful of cars, and when we were leaving, this car decorated with shoe polish and pictures and full of girls was pulling in. So perhaps they were practicing there, or something? Who knows.
Okay, this was WAY long. I warned you. I'm so exhausted that it probably makes zero sense. I'll reread it tomorrow and go "what was I trying to say???" Oh well. Lol. Rambling is quite my style these days. Now, to shower and get ready to do this all over again....