Minnesota Wild vs. Calgary Flames

Tomorrow night the Minnesota Wild take on the Calgary Flames at the Xcel Energy Center in the last Minnesota Wild regular season home game of the season. It's a game that could determine the winner of the Northwest Division, and I have to say that this game seems to be the biggest game of the year - it's even a hotter ticket than when Sidney Crosby came to town with the Pittsburgh Penguins. It's also "Fan Celebration Night" according to my official Minnesota Wild calendar, so maybe that's playing into it, as well. I'm not really sure what a "Fan Appreciation Night" consists of, there really haven't been any super good giveaways at the games this year, so my guess is that there will be some kind of fan tribute video that will be played during one of the intermission breaks featuring season ticket holders at the games throughout the season, and maybe some sort of "superfan" that they'll honor on the ice, and they'll conclude all of this by saying, "To the team of 18,000, the greatest NHL hockey fans in the world!" or something similar. But probably no giveaway.

I'm all about the free giveaway, by the way. I think most girls are. I have a hard time resisting making a purchase when there is a free gift with purchase, and it's such a gimic because really, do I need another {adorable} Clinique cosmetics bag that's probably just going to end up with the drawer full I already have at home? Probably not, but it's just so cute, plus you get free samples! People try to work the freebie aspect when they come into Ticket King St. Paul. We have some really cool memorabilia here - some we've had at Ticket King for a while, some is stuff that I brought in from my house. So when some guys come in here, they think they should be getting some free memorabilia because they've spent x amount on tickets. I just titter away, I never really know how to respond to that request. So, jumping to another topic...that being - what's going on this weekend!

April 3rd: Minnesota Wild vs. Calgary Flames
April 3rd: Minnesota Twins vs. Anaheim Angels
April 3rd-5th: Jersey Boys
April 4th-5th: Doodlebops
April 4th-6th: Minnesota Twins vs. Kansas City Royals
April 5th-6th: High School Musical
Apriil 6th: Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Memphis Grizzlies

Snow Day?

It's the last day of March, and it seems that mother nature has a little April Fool's joke a day early for us Minnesotans: 4-8 inches of snow. This is so strange! It's the Minnesota Twins home opener today at the HHH Metrodome, and we're getting a snow storm. Surprisingly, or not, I guess, we've been pretty crazy busy today. When it comes to the Minnesota Twins, as with any sport, the home opener is one of the hottest games of the year. Everyone's a fan at the beginning of the season.

Traditionally, Minnesota fans in general are pretty bandwagon-y. They're only interested in seeing their teams when they're playing well. Which, well, it's just got to be expected. In reality, no one wants to go to a game to see their team lose. Hopefully the Minnesota Twins can have a better season this year, maybe even make it to the playoffs again! Hey, a girl can hope, even if we don't have Johan Santana. On the plus side, we do have Francisco Liriano back on the roster after recovering from his Tommy John surgery. My cousin actually had the same surgery about a month after Liriano did, performed by the same doctor, and he's supposed to be able to play again this spring, as well.

I keep getting distracted by the snow. It looks kind of pretty I guess. No, it really doesn't. It's blowing sideways. Which means slow drivers and a slow commute to the gym after work today. I guess you never know what kind of weather you're going to get when you live in Minnesota! I walked down to Cossetta's for lunch today, I love their gorgonzola salad - they load it with that blue cheese dressing that is so NOT good for you but is so worth it. The streets were super slushy, kind of like the snow is halfway melting when it hits the ground but still retaining somewhat of a frozen texture. Time to take those winter boots back out of the closet!

Pandora

I love Pandora. It's basically become my main source of background noise during the day. Does anyone else need background noise to work? I can't get anything done when it's totally quiet. I'm really not sure why, but I'm so much more easily distracted when all I listen to all day is my fingers hitting the keyboard. So I have this pretty amazing television in here, a stereo that plays everything (including my iPod), and what do I do when I get into the office? I queue up pandora.com aka the music genome project. Basically, you create your own station by just typing in the name of an artist that you like, and the program automatically mixes that artist's music with the music of other artists that have a similar sound. You can create as many of these mini stations as you want, and then you can merge some of them, or all of them, together and just have a giant mix to play all day. The catch? You can't repeat songs and you can only skip a certain number of songs per hour, because of the agreements Pandora has with the artists. But it's a great alternative to all of the commercials they play on the radio, and I've also found some music that I really like that I wouldn't have found without the service. Best of all? It's free. I think you can even get it to stream to your car or home radio, so you don't have to listen to it on your computer. That part might not be free, I haven't looked into it at all. Today's playlist? I'm thinking about mixing Fergie and Breaking Benjamin with a little Yo-Yo Ma. Eclectic, yes, but it breaks up the day :)

Spring Break

It's pretty slow here at Ticket King St. Paul today. Here's my theory on that: a lot of schools in Minnesota are on spring break this week and our customers are away from work/school and away from their computer and therefore don't have access to our inventory. I miss spring break. Looking back on it, I never really took full advantage of my time off, mostly because when you HAVE the time off you don't really think about it. But if I had a whole week to do anything that I wanted to, it would definitely be vacation time. Ticket King St. Paul would have to be closed for a whole week, though. So the Ticket King Spring Break would have to take place in a week when there are no events at the Xcel Energy Center. Speaking of which, we are officially in the last two weeks of regular season play for the Minnesota Wild - here are the links to their upcoming home games:

Friday, March 28th vs. the Vancouver Canucks

Sunday, March 30th vs. the Colorado Avalanche

Thursday, April 3rd vs. the Calgary Flames

This hockey season has gone faster that I expected. It still feels like we should be in the first half of the regular season! Other than that, there's not a whole heck of a lot coming up in St. Paul..however, for all of you Minnesota Twins fans out there, the home opener for the regular season is next Monday, the 31st of March (seems a little earlier than usual this year? maybe it's just me...) - which is your chance to go check out the hometown team back in action - and better yet, your hometown ticket broker (Ticket King, duh), still has quite a few seating options available for the game.

Just A Thought.

I love the fact that we at Ticket King are now open in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and that this offers our customers a much more convenient pick up option than our Hudson office offered, and also gives us the opportunity to meet a lot of our customers face-to-face. I had someone recently get a little, I guess upset would be the appropriate word here, with me because I didn't know who they were when they walked in the door, I actually had the audacity to ask for their ID before having them sign for their tickets. It turned out that this was the third time this particular customer had picked up tickets with us since October, and they did not think that it was very good customer service for me to...not be able to put a name with a face. Now, I do try very hard to know customers by name once they've been in here a few times. But I do talk to and see quite a few people on a daily basis. I guess my point is, when you come in here and talk to me, or any of the other Ticket King staff, it might take us a few visits to be able to put a name and a face together, but we do love meeting our customers, so it might take us a couple of tries, but if you come in here a few times to say hi we'll have it down pat. :)

WCHA Final Five: Championship

Tonight is the Championship game of the WCHA Final Five - and the Minnesota Golden Gophers hockey team is going to be in it! I can't belive that they made it this far - they've had such a bad season - but head coach Don Lucia has got to be just ecstatic! It just wouldn't be the Final Five if the Gophers weren't playing sometime on Saturday, so this is definitely a good thing. And you can definitely feel that people are excited about it around the Xcel Energy Center. Well, if you can catch the game at home, or even better, call me for tickets (651-281-8100) and go to the game tonight, make sure you're rooting for the maroon and gold!

WCHA Final Five

It's officially the start of one of my favorite hockey tournaments of the entire year: the WCHA Final Five!! The Minnesota Golden Gophers aren't predicted to do well, in fact they're playing tonight (Thursday), which is rare. But we've been busy worker bees all day here at Ticket King, both in our St. Paul and Minneapolis offices, and there is definitely a buzz around the Xcel Energy Center. There always is when the Gophers are playing here! I feel bad for the team, though, they've had a hard year. With Okposo leaving mid-season to turn pro, and the incident last weekend in Mankato, which ended with one of the Gopher players suffering a severe head injury, having to be airlifted to the Mayo Clinic and having emergency surgery. But best of luck to them tonight, I have to root for the home town team despite all the people from St. Cloud down here for the game. (My dad went to the U, so it's kind of a family tradition...) I'm sure I'll be updating as the tourney goes on, peace out!