Pet Shop Boys Vacation Part 2: Lock In
It’s all coming together, yesterday Mindi’s folks agreed to watch the kid and tickets for the concert go on sale today at 1pm – that’s the point of no return. We have decided to stick to the original plan with the one added concert – actually Mindi decided because my brain suffered a failure after the deluge of too many options.
Of course there are still numerous decisions to be made, things to be done, and information to be obtained. But once the tickets for the concert are bought, much like Vegas in ’06 and ’08, then the rest can begin. In fact once those tickets are bought I can theoretically…
-book the time off work
-book the Vallejo hotel
-book the San Francisco hotel (assuming I can find one I like)
-buy the Six Flags tickets
We’re going to take the car in for some regular maintenance (got to treat Blaster right, he’s my first car) and get her checked out over the weekend – I want to see that report before I book anything in Oregon because if there’s some issue with the car that raises a variety of questions. I’m optimistic of course but you know me, prepare for the worst. Well maybe not absolute worst case – were I to give in to such things I suppose something critical and expensive is found wrong that prohibits us from even driving it home, THAT I see as highly improbable. So eliminating that then I suppose the worst case would be they don’t recommend we take it on long trips, despite Blaster having done just fine over the minibreak, and then I would be faced with 3 options: repair, rent, or fly. That’s a whole other ball of wax that I’m not even going to bother pondering in detail at this point.
But difficult choices could present themselves very shortly. Looking at some of the other dates and locations a VIP ticket to the concert is likely to run anywhere from $115 to $220…so we’re talking $230 to $440 for the pair. That’s pretty insane. But it’s also Pet Shop Boys. Meet & Greet even. Autograph. Seriously, a chance to meet the Pet Shop Boys and get their autograph? How could I put a price on that? Well, I’m just too much of a cheap pragmatist not to. Regular tickets would run anywhere from $35 to $105 or $70 to $210 for the pair.
Where do I draw the line? I mean, it’s freaking Pet Shop Boys. Could I really live with myself knowing I had a chance to meet them and didn’t take it? Am I prepared to live with that kind or regret?
Not bloody likely.
But I need to have a plan. There has to be a bridge too far. Willing to pay any price for something is in violation of at least a dozen Rules of Acquisition.
There does seem to be two price points fairly often…so I could get the cheaper of the Meet & Greet options if there’s two, that’s a relatively easy choice. Okay, I think I can’t let myself spend $200 or more per ticket as that would be certifiably insane. Okay, so that’s my ceiling.
Must be strong.
Of course it doesn’t help that we’re probably seeing them in one of the two cities in which they could probably charge just about any price.
