"Saint Paul, Minneapolis, Wherever We Are"

Those were the words spoken by a very disgruntled truck driver as she stomped out of the Xcel center, talking on her cell phone to somebody who clearly was NOT in Saint Paul.

To Recap:

Wow. The whole day went by so fast I hope I can remember it all!

We began the day at Alexis's house where we met up with Kim T and Becky. From there, we headed downtown to engage in a little stalker action. There was a very small crowd gathered on the north side of the building, near the loading docks:


It was cold. DAMN cold. After a couple of hours, we were afraid that Baby Barbie was going to be mistaken for one of Michael Jackson's kids:


So, we went to The Liffey for lunch and a little warmup.

After lunch, we walked down to the Eagle Street entrance, where one of the security guards from the other side of the building had told us to wait. Who knows if he was telling the truth or not, but we didn't really have an option other than to believe him.

We waited.


And waited


And waited


Aaaand... waited








Baby Barbie wants to know where Her Donnie is


Eh, Close but no cigar... That's Donnie Lane, head of the Truck Drivers


So the end of this portion of the story is that we waited all day and nothing happened. There were quite a few disappointed women in Saint Paul that afternoon. Oh well. We knew there was no guarantee! An adventure is an adventure, right?

Alexis and I were supposed to be at Shamrock's around 3 pm to get the party started and greet the WCCO folks, so we hauled it back to her house and changed clothes. We weren't gross by that point, but we weren't exactly feeling fresh after standing outside in the cold wind all day. No time for showers though!

We still managed to look alright though, right? RIGHT?




There, we met up with our party proxy, Amber Preston

(Thanks again, Amber - for being so awesome!)


After a very short time, we had to leave to make it to our 5* festivities on time. As we were getting ready to leave, WCCO showed up to get some pre-party footage. Liz Collin had been in contact with us throughout the day to try to set up an interview time, but we weren't having much luck given our weird schedule.



Here's the thing. You people are AMAZING. We were expecting between 70-100 people to show up. We made 100 VIP Shamrocks/NKOTB lanyards. We ran out!!! Like, before a LOT of you showed up! The turnout was phenomenal... I don't think that anybody was expecting such a crowd - including the bar! Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming to our little shindig and making it a success! I'll post a few photos here, but there are dozens of them in our Flickr set.



















Jason arrived just in the nick of time and drove us down to the X-Cel to meet up with our friends Peggy, Katie and Lisa for the 5* festivities.

Once we were all checked in and were given our ILAA gift bags of a smelly fleece blanket, mug and some other stuff, we enjoyed our crowd free merchandise shopping. Alexis enjoyed it to the tune of one NKOTB track jacket and a program/tour book. I just got the program/tour book.

We were then led downstairs in groups of 10 to the event floor-level bar to snack on wine and veggies. We cheated a little and only had nine in our group... After awhile, Robo came in and gave his famous "be good girls" speech and then they brought our guys in. They waved at us all as they were ushered into the small room off to the side of the bar where the photos would be taken.

We were in the third group (C). When we were let into the room our minds went blurry with excitement. Alexis ran straight to Joe and handed him a full set of magnets and told him that the... really nice imposter from Mohegan Sun was not her. He was like, "I know. She meant no harm. She just didn't have her mind right." I'm paraphrasing.

Meanwhile, I had beelined it for Donnie and chased him into a wall. Okay, maybe not - but I got my Donnie hug! There may have been a little improv acting to get it. When it came time for the picture Alexis was in a Joe-Danny sandwich and I was standing in the middle of the room by myself. It's a good thing my brain was working faster than it should have been, because I noticed that there was a spot on the other side of Joe. Whew. Awkward "solo chick crouching in the middle of the photo" crisis averted.

After the photo we had about 30 more seconds with the guys before Robo started yelling at us to get the hell out. Alexis went up to Jon to apologize for telling him that he looked tired at the MOA and felt stupid for it the rest of the night. She might need to apologize for apologizing the next time she sees him. Happily, he liked our shirts.

After our group was done we went back out into the bar area. Liz Collin called us to see if we could come up yet for our interview, but Xcel and ILAA wouldn't let us leave! After a few minutes Liz waved her magic wand and suddenly a security guard and an Xcel event staffer were leading us up the stairs into the lobby. We must have asked them a hundred times if we were going to be able to come BACK if we followed them. They assured us that, yes, we could come back (although they may have been wishing otherwise... I think we might have been kind of obnoxious).

And then, without more than a minute's warning, we were on TV. Mix a tiny bit of wine with a whole lot of New Kids hugs and the result is this. . It was like we were 13 again but with less screaming. I guess at 31 you just Holla a bunch.

After the interview, we were escorted back to the ILAA party. The photos were done by then, so the guys had already left. They didn't stay to mingle like they had in some other locations. As much as that's a bummer, I'm kind of glad because we would have missed it!

By this point, we figured we should probably go try to find the guys. Drew and Jason had taken Aiden to the show. Apparently the three of them in their matching t-shirts were quite the hit. Jason said he had his picture taken at least fifty times. We found the trio at the Iron Range Grill.

In case you can't read their shirts...
Drew: "I can't pay my mortgage because my wife bought 5* tickets to see NKOTB"
Jason: "My wife loves me more than NKOTB, but she still made me come to this show and wear this shirt"
Aiden: "My mommy paid these two guys to take me to my first NKOTB concert"

We got our cameras from the guys (they were banned at the pre-party - cameras, not guys), and went on our merry ways to find our seats. In a move that would later prove to be kind of dumb, we left our goodie bags from ILAA on our seats and went to go find our friends.

We located our friends Becky, Liz, Kaela, and Mindy in their seats, and bumped into Jason's sister Azure along the way. I think she might have been embarrassed by her sister-in-law's hot pink tights... oh well :)

When we got back to our seats, Alexis's bag was missing. Uh. Hmm... WTF? Yes, maybe we shouldn't have left them unattended, but who would be so bold as to steal one? Luckily for us, our seat neighbors had eagle eyes and knew exactly who the perpetrator was. They even knew where she was sitting! We grabbed a security guard and told him our sad little tale. Double luckily for us, the ILAA bags were labeled with the name of the person who bought the tickets. I gave my ID to the security guard, pointed out the thief, and told him that the bag she had would have my name on it. Triple luckily for us, the security guard investigated and she actually did have Alexis's bag. I would have felt pretty stupid if we were wrong.

So we would like to give a huge shout-out to our seat neighbors. THANK YOU!!!


And a huge bonehead to the person who stole the bag:

(image slightly distorted to protect any dignity she may have left)

The show was fantastic. It was LOUD though. I don't know if it was where we were sitting (5th row!), or if it was just that much louder than the other shows, but OUCH. We could feel our arm hair move with the bass.

Since not enough of you voted on whether or not I should buy a new camera, I haven't yet. Here are a few sub-par photos of this show. Again, you can find more in our Flickr set.









Who, me?






I'm the King of the World!!!








Donnie made Aiden cry




And then, again, it was over.

We had some technical difficulties hooking back up with Drew and Jason... but eventually we all made it back to Shamrock's on the shuttle afterwards.


A few dozen folks decided to stay at Shamrocks for the post-show dance party. Chris the drummer even showed up!




I was so exhausted that I was convinced if I stopped moving, I would fall over. So I just kept moving. Seriously. I don't think I stopped dancing the entire time I was there. Whenever I stood still my feet would start to hurt too much.

Thanks to Goody for cranking the NKOTB tunes for us and letting us dance on the booths!




The clock struck 2, and Alexis and I hobbled back to her house to try to sleep for an hour or two. Our feet were KILLING us. And I even had comfy shoes (boots) on!

Stay tuned for Milwaukee.... the trip that began just two short hours after this events of this post ended!