Sunny Afternoon

You all remember that "I hand over approximately none of my hard earned cash to the Red Sox" speech from the other day? Well, I'm delighted to say that it's no longer technically true:


Such simple objects, but so hard to get hold of. In the end I spent about 5 1/2 hours on redsox.com, going through the laborious process of buying the tickets, which went something like this:

1) Click on the game you want.

2) Welcome to the Boston Red Sox Virtual Waiting Room!

Select Red Sox 2006 Single Game tickets are now on sale.

We are experiencing very high demand. As a result, all requests for seats cannot be served simultaneously. Please be patient, and your browser will be refreshed in:

When we refresh your browser, we will determine your status in the waiting room and if appropriate give you an opportunity to request seats. DO NOT REFRESH THIS WINDOW. We appreciate your patience.

3) Sit staring at the screen for two hours hoping that the Red Sox deem it "appropriate to give you an opportunity to request seats". (Two questions: firstly, can anyone enlighten me as to how they decide to whom it is appropriate to give the opportunities? I was scared they would run a check on me, find out that I rooted for the Yankees once upon a time and then bump me from the VWR. And secondly, could they have made their sentence any more conditional? I think not...).

4) Resist the urge to refresh the damn window every two minutes, trusting that you really are in a virtual queue somewhere, and not the victim of some elaborate practical joke.

5) Bugger off every now and again to go and make coffee / do your laundry / go grocery shopping / read War & Peace.

6) Come back to the PC to discover that one of your VWR windows has turned into an actual redsox.com screen, with actual ticket options.

7) Panic.

8) Select the tickets you want, only to be offered something else in another part of the ballpark.

9) Click 85 times on the "Continue" button, only to be informed that your request cannot be processed right now due to the high volume of traffic ("no shit...!").

10) Then, just as you're considering whether you shouldn't opt for Devil Rays season tickets instead, you're there - the tickets are yours, and you're dancing around the living room, wondering what Fenway looks like in the springtime.

All in all, it was a pretty good birthday :-)