What are the Odds?

You may remember that I was able to take Hannah to see Hannah Montana in concert in Tampa back in November. It was a great last outing with just the two of us before we went back to Ukraine for Kristina. I knew that a live concert would be unfathomable for Kristina, but Hannah and I spoke about how fun it would have been to have her with us.

Back in Decemeber, Miley Cyrus (aka Hannah Montana) announced she was extending her tour and including two shows in Orlando in late January. I knew it was a long shot, but I was going to try to get tickets for the three of us. On the morning of their release, I was on the TicketMaster website with my finger perched on the key to request tickets. Unforunately, the show was sold out in a matter of minutes and I never got my request through. As the concert date approached, I checked CraigsList and eBay frequently hoping to find reasonably priced tickets. No luck. The tickets were reselling for the most rediculous prices. Kristina asked this past weekend if we could go and I explained that there was no way.

Monday morning, I was sitting at my desk reflecting on that conversation. I did one last check of eBay and Craigslist and still didn't find anything. I decided to call the Orlando Ticket Master box office, but it was 5 minutes before they opened. As I hung up on the recorded messages, I remembered a friend telling me how she had gotten tickets the morning of a show once. I steeled myself against the idea of actually getting tickets to avoid the disappointment that inevitably laid at the end of the conversation with the box office. I watched the minutes tick by on the clock in my room and decided it couldn't hurt to try. This time I got a representative and inquired after tickets for that night's show. A long sigh came across the line, "That show has been long sold out, but I can check." The click of her keyboard was audible through the phone and then, "Hmmmmm. Actually, there are a few tickets. They must have just been released." "Wait, I don't think I understood you. Did you say there are tickets?" "Yes, but let me see where they're located. They may be singles and not together," she cautioned. "Hmmmm. Well, they actually really good seats, one row off the floor." Obviously, I took the tickets. The fact that we were able to get all of them for less than the cost of what one scalper's ticket in the top balcony section was selling for, made the deal that much sweeter. I printed the tickets and couldn't wait to get home to tell the girls. Want to see what that revelation looked like?




The concert was great, even the second time around. We were so close to the stage, it was unbelievable. Everlife opened the concert. They're a girl group, three Christian sisters, and they were actually very good. Miley's dad Billy Ray Cyrus had flown to Orlando for the concert and he came out near the end and performed some songs with her. So what did Kristina think of the whole concert experience? I'd already decided that she's a hummingbird trapped in a little girl's body. Imagine that at a rock concert and you get 3 straight hours of this:



and a little of this:



At the end of a very loud evening, I was relieved to know that home was just a 20 minute drive up I-4 rather than the nearly two hour trek Hannah and I had when we had seen the concert in Tampa. We made our way through the ocean of fans pouring out of the arena and headed towards the parking garage to join the endless line of cars already snaking around the building's perimeter. I directed the children up the stairs and onto the level we had parked the car. We walked to the end of the lot when Hannah made the observation, "Mom, where's our car?" I spun around to check the level number and we were in the right place. We walked back down to the next level where a group of police officers was gathered. "Um, excuse me," I interrupted, "My car is missing." "If its a Dodge Durango, then we're trying to find it now. We think it was illegally towed," he replied. I was only slightly comforted by the fact that it hadn't been stolen. My plans to be home and in bed before 10:30 were quickly slipping away. A security guard noticed that I was wearing my school ID and offered to let us wait in the School Board Complex next door until everything was sorted out.

It was nearing midnight before the officer explained that if we wanted to get home, we'd probably have to pay the tow guy and work out the details at a later time. The tow company had taken the car waaayyyy out by the airport to an impound lot. By the time we made it there, it was after midnight and the driver had left to go get another car! We waited twenty minutes for him to return and when he came back, there was no reasoning with the man. He demanded $125 in cash to release my car. Let me tell you, I was not happy about walking up to an ATM machine at that hour. The ATM only dispenses $20 bills, so when I returned and handed him $140 he smiled and said, "Sorry, I don't have change." "So you'll just take $120 then, right?" Robert pressed. He wasn't budging. "There's a 7-11 down the road and you can probably get change there," he persisted. It was cold, it was late, and the evening needed to end. We paid him his ransom money and got the car. The evening didn't exactly end like I imagined, but its never dull around here!