So Why Does It Feel Like I Lost?

So I didn't get into the Frozen Four Final last Saturday.  I tried.  Lord knows I tried.  Told everyone on Craigslist I was looking, and yet except for one gentleman, no one replied to me.  I went down to St. Paul about four hours before the game and walked around.  My scalper had one ticket, and he demanded a big price for it.  Same for all the other asshole scalpers at the X.  There were dozens of us, pathetically holding up fingers indicating the number of tickets we need, and there were people right there, holding tickets to sell, and it doesn't look as though those scalpers sold them for anything close to a reasonable price.  (Well, there was one guy, an old man in Notre Dame gear and a black overcoat.  He had one ticket to sell.  He asked for $100; I said $50 while walking away from him.  I wonder if I should have walked back to him and tried to talk him down, but I think that he got his $100 asking price from a scalper.  Or maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better.)  I swear, these goddamn pricks don't know how to sell at a loss.  They'd rather eat a ticket than sell it for less profit than they feel entitled to?  Bullshit.  There were dozens of empty seats in that arena, I know it, and they went unsold because scalpers walked away with them.

Guess I'll jump at a ticket for the final before the final.  But not too quickly, because they could magically go down in price, like it did in the week leading up to it, so I should wait, at least a bit.  Oh, fuck it all.  This is why I walked away from the game.  I'm not going to blow a hole in my wallet just to go.  It was a good game, but I went to Patrick McGovern's and I watched it just fine.  And I walked away, like I said, with some money in my pocket and some shreds of dignity left.

So why does it feel like I lost?  This is one of those huge sporting events that don't come around here all that often, and I was determined to go.  Until the price became too exorbitant, and then I decided I wouldn't.  I wish that sticking to my principles felt better, but for some damn reason, right now, it doesn't, it really, truly doesn't.