Dearest Journal

[That No One On The Internet Will Ever Read,]

Date: Saturday, August 30, 2008
Location: Norman, Oklahoma

(1:30pm) We all gathered at Kitty's house today to start the afternoon's activities off. There were five of us to start, and then we dropped by FedEx to pick Terri up. After a rather loooong drive to Norman, we left the Suburban at the Miller's house, piled into the Miller's van, and let them drop us off in front of the OU stadium. Complicated, huh?

My sister and I happened to be the only two in our group signed up to take tickets, the others were braving the crowd as program sellers. So quite without warning or instruction we were abandoned to our own fate. By some skilled map reading, clue deducing and general investigation, we accidentally wound up in the right place. Still alone, but victorious in our detective skills.

(3:15pm) We were issued electronic scanners and a few instructions, though not too many; it appeared to be pretty simple.

(4:30pm) The gates opened and the madness began. Turns out the frustrating little zapper was quite sensitive and had made up its mind to be disagreeable. It took some frantic trial and error to figure it out. :-(

(5:30pm) Half an hour till kickoff and the fans are getting really tired of standing in line --- hands...getting tired --- Sorry people! You know you would all make it so much easier on yourselves if you read the backs of your tickets or even the SIGNS posted everywhere...There is NO bags bigger than 10x10 allowed, your beer CANNOT be taken in, and neither can your fanny pack. What's that!!?! No I will not let you go back to get the tickets from your car and then skip this whole line --- oh oh, fingers --- cramping!!!! --- and just for that selection of words, sir, you are officially on the list of people I hope to eternally avoid!

(6:45pm) Been messing around for half an hour. There won't be many more fans coming in. Now I'm just mooching Full Throttles from the nice fellow with the Employee Supplies Cart and trying to avoid being hit and burned when the sky rains touchdown-firework-corpses.

(7:50pm) The rain is coming now, and it's not messing around any with it's dramatic entrance. Looks like it won't let up soon - they're telling us that we will still be required to stand in the rain by the gates, and that, rest assured, the scanners are waterproof. The game is being put on hold at halftime here due to lightning.

(9:30pm) It's about the beginning of the 4th quarter now, I guess, and we've just been released to go home. We were told we would be required to stay till the end of the game and till all the fans had left the stadium but I guess someone found a little sympathy for us. The storm earlier was totally crazy. We were totally and absolutely drenched, the thunder was shaking the concrete stadium, and the lightning was bright as daytime. We had emergency police and medical personnel madly rushing around tooting sirens and people were pushing to get under the concourse area.

(11:30pm) I don't know exactly how many people stayed after the rain let up, but I certainly wasn't interested in watching the end of that game. We met up with our program selling friends, they finished settling their accounts with the OU people, and then there was the drive home. It feels like this afternoon has been going on for forever. Besides those two hours of actually scanning tickets we didn't have anything to do, so I wonder that I'm so tired...

Just how long is it till the next home game??? :-)