WICKED!!!

Have you heard of the musical Wicked? It's been out for a handful of years and I've wanted to see it for quite a while. Well, in lieu of a birthday present, Matt told me that we could get tickets and go in October when it came to Denver. Yes! Well, I slacked a bit on getting tickets, but we went to Denver for the weekend of October 17 & 18 and I had hoped that we could just buy tickets at the box office on the day of the performance. Unfortunately, they were sold out. But our ears (and my hopes) perked up when the ticketing agent said, "Do you know about the ticket lottery?" Apparently, 20 tickets are available for purchase through the lottery system - you put your name in 2.5 hours before the show starts, and 2 hours before curtain, they draw names. If your name is drawn, you can purchase up to 2 tickets in cash. So we put our names in, walked down to the 16th Street mall to find an ATM, and made it back before the drawing. About 45 seconds before the guy drew the first name, I leaned over to Matt and said, "Wouldn't it be so funny if one of our names was drawn first?" Well, guess what? My name was drawn first! After a brief, but loud, celebration, we walked up to the window to purchase our tickets - 2 tickets, 3rd row of the Buell Theater, for $25 a piece. (FYI: that's an AMAZING deal, considering the cheapest regular seat in the theater was $65 per person, and that was on the 2nd balcony.) I was so excited!

The show started at 2:00, so we had a bit of time to kill before coming back to the theater. Since the purpose of the trip was to (hopefully) see Wicked and do some vehicle shopping, we headed over to a Ford dealer in Lakewood, a short 15-minute drive from the theater. Upon arrival, Matt told the salesman our time frame (that we had to leave by 1:30) right away. We looked around, test drove a vehicle, and got a bit more information on the trade-in value of the Taurus. About 1:27, the salesman came back and said that he could give us a more accurate value on the car if we left it at the dealership for a while - which we agreed to do as long as they gave us something else to drive. We ended up with a used Escape, but it needed gas before we left. So we followed the salesman to the nearest gas station to fill up before taking it on our merry way. I'm sure you can see where this is going, but just to make sure, I'll tell you right now that we ran out of gas at the stoplight of the intersection right by the gas station! That has never happened to us before. The salesman brought back a small jug of gas and dumped it in, but then requested that we continue to the gas station so he could fill up the tank a bit more. At this point, I'm watching the clock like a hawk as the minutes are ticking by and our 2:00 theater appointment is nearing. After the guy put more gas in, Matt peeled out of the gas station and drove quickly to the theater. About a mile before, as the clock reads 1:55, Matt turns to get on the interstate very near to the theater and we see a wall of extremely slow-moving cars. Oh no. We're not going to make it, I think. However, my husband, the expert driver he is, took the shoulder (or shoulder-type space) and maneuvered around the cars to the very next exit, which was the one we needed. Score! 1:57. We wove our way downtown, through one-ways and stoplights and got close to the theater to find parking. 1:58. I jumped out at a red light and ran to the theater while Matt went to park the car. 1:59. I literally RAN to the theater only to find out that we were too late. The doors had closed. We wouldn't be able to enter until after the hold-out, about 9-10 minutes after the show started. About 2:03, Matt came bounding down the stairs to the door nearest to our seats. :( After the good fortune of actually getting tickets to the show, we would miss the first 10 minutes. Big bummer. I can't believe how much drama we ran into in the 30 minutes prior to the start of the show! Seriously! Eventually, we got in and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the show. It was amazing, and our seats were wonderful!

Um, I don't think flash photography is allowed in the theater, but I covered up the red light on our camera and turned the flash off in order to get this picture. It's pretty grainy and dark, but who cares!