We got our tickets for the Wisconsin Film Festival, and it only took thirty minutes this time. Last year, we were struggling for more than an hour to buy tickets on-line because of some awful glitch in the software that took so long to process payments that it kept timing out. We were ready for the same sort of shenanigans this year, though: My Darling B had her tablet and I had my laptop and each of us had a short list of must-see films that we went for the minute tickets went on sale. But aside from a short panic I hyperventilated through when I couldn’t remember my user name to log in, neither of us had any problems buying tickets. Thirty minutes and done.

The first show to sell out this year was Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing. We wanted to see it as much as anybody else, so it was the first set of tickets we tried to buy. My Darling B snagged a couple first but then ran into trouble trying to pay for them. I was checking out with some must-see tickets so I snagged a couple for Much Ado. That’s when they asked me for my user name and I hyperventilated and cussed my way through the process of trying to recover it. It only took five minutes or so, but felt like forever.

Once we’d gone through the process once, going back for more tickets was so easy that, when we were done, we had that irrational feeling that we’d forgotten something. B went through the list of films I was supposed to buy tickets for and I checked them off against the I had, reading from the confirmation e-mails. And this time her obsessive-compulsive tendencies paid off: She found a film that I missed, dove back into the web site and bought them in a minute.

When we finished, we checked the film festival’s Facebook page and Twitter feed to see how things were going with all the other on-line tickets buyers. Everyone seemed to be happier than last year, although by then there were lots of disappointed Joss Whedon fans.