Tonya says I need to
Tonya says I need to post an Ode to Atlanta entry. So here it is. For all the world (or, you know, the four of you who read this <.g>) to know how utterly psycho my friends and I are. lol. Um... I have a feeling this is going to be a LOOOOONG post. I get wordy. ha ha.
ODE TO ATLANTA
Jessica (my 18-year-old sister) wanted to do something cool with her high school graduation money. She was talking about going to the NSYNC concert in Kansas City (after, of course, we had been to the one in Chicago in June...). But my friend Carolyn (who I had met at Disney) lives in Atlanta, and Carolyn is the biggest NSYNC fan I know. And I hadn't seen her in a while, so Jess and I decided to go to THAT concert, instead.
I had to work, so we had a late flight out Friday night. I forget what time it was, but I do know that we arrived in Atlanta around midnight. Carolyn was there to meet us. She had been sitting in the parking garage at Permiter Mall's Nordstrom all afternoon, because on Saturday morning, Chris Kirkpatrick would be there for his FuMan Skeeto Invasion Tour. Chris is Carolyn's favorite. And I mean her favorite. So she picked Jess and me up at the airport and we went back to the mall, where about 30 people were already in line. But never fear! Carolyn had saved us spots as, like, # 7 and 8 in line or something.
We met some nice people and some kinda crazy people. At about 2 am, Tonya and Allison, two of Carolyn's friends, showed up and ran over to us FRANTICALLY. They had seen Chris in the hotel's bar. That's right, they (and we) had rooms at the very same hotel NSYNC was staying at. So, of course, Carolyn just *had* to go get something from the room. Right then. lol. So we headed for the hotel, having our spots in line saved by sleeping bags. Yeah, it worked.
We got lost on the way to the hotel, but ended up making it eventually. We didn't see Chris. =( We made it back to the mall around 4-ish. Slept for about half an hour, then got up to look pretty for Chris. The people at Nordstrom were SUPER cool, giving us water and stuff. We finally got let in to the store around 10 or so and had to wait in line in THERE some more. This radio guy Woody was being nutty and they were filming the line and projecting it on this huge screen in the parking garage, where about 500 fans were waiting to meet Chris. Woody got Carolyn up to "practice" meeting Chris with this cardboard cutout of him some girl had brought along. Carolyn was embarrassed, we all thought it was hysterical. We each had nametags. Allison's said "I'm with Stupid" with an arrow. Carolyn's said "I'm Stupid." Mine and Jess's weren't as creative. lol.
Anyway, so finally Chris arrived. We got autographs. When I went up there, I was like "Hey, what's up?" and he was like "Not too much, how are you?" and I said "I'm great, how are you?" and he said "I'm great, too!" and he was done signing... so I said "Thank you SO much!" and he winked and told me to have a good day. Pretty generic conversation. When Jess went up, he saw her name tag (mine had been hidden by my hoodie) and asked her where Stupid went. Because Allison and Carolyn had been before us, and he recognized that all the nametag people were together. So, yeah. Carolyn liked that a lot. =)
After that, we got lost on the way back to the hotel. Again. When we got there, there was a line of people waiting for NSYNC to check out. Here's where the crappy timing comes in. Carolyn was supposed to meet this lady at the soundcheck at 2. It was like 1:30. The lady had at least one soundcheck ticket for Carolyn. Well, we were waiting to see the guys check out. Jess REALLY wanted to see JC. We saw Lance and Joey leave (and got some stalker-esque top-of-their-heads pictures, as we were standing in the parking deck looking down at the sidewalk where their buses were parked), and we saw Chris arrive from the mall. We were waiting and waiting for JC. We HAD to go to the soundcheck, because we were already way late, so we did not get to see JC. Or Justin, but we didn't care about him. lol.
Jess and I didn't have soundcheck tickets. We were hoping to maybe find some. Carolyn's friend T came up to us, and she'd gotten two tickets. One for herself and one for Carolyn. We couldn't find the lady Carolyn had been SUPPOSED to meet, so Jessica and I went to the CNN center while everyone else went to the soundcheck. Bummer. Turns out if Carolyn had met the lady, the lady had had TWO extra passes. So if we hadn't been waiting to see JC at the hotel, both Jess and I would have gotten in. Double bummer. We missed JC at the hotel because we left for soundcheck and we missed getting into the soundcheck because we were at the hotel. <.sigh> Sadness.
When Carolyn got out, we went back to the hotel to change and went to the concert. We missed ALL the opening acts. Woops! Oh well. We'd seen them in Chicago, anyway. We had much better seats than in Chicago. In Chicago, we were just about at the back corner of the stadium. Here, we were in the balcony, but we were about halfway between the two stages (so about 1/4 of the way back in the stadium). The concert was AWESOME. Woohoo!! Afterwards we went back to the hotel... NSYNC went to California to film the Teen Choice Awards... and everyone was on their merry way.
So, that's about it. Jess and I flew home Sunday afternoon. We'd had NO sleep all weekend, but it was fun. There, Tonya... Happy? Heehee. Now I need dinner, and I need to STUDY. Eeeeeek!!!! Psych exam in 19 hours.