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[personal profile] lillian13

The Bataan Celtic Death March North Texas Irish Festival is over for another year. Next year I'm just going to ask to take a vacation day on that Friday and 1/2 day on the Monday afterward. The organizers keep adding hours and adding hours, and adding acts, and frankly, people stop buying after a certain point, because they are a) too drunk, b) leaving, or c) outside watching the headliners. (The Austin show I sell my jewelry at has gone in the opposite direction--shorter hours, better bands, full shows and sales for all concerned, and we go home at reasonable hours.) 

We were open until 10 pm on Friday and Saturday; which made Saturday over 13 hours long, including getting there early to finish setting up, and getting everything situated for closing down. The organizers were all "OMG YOU MUST STAY OPEN UNTIL 8PM ON SUNDAY" but the vendors, to a man, thumbed their noses at them and started tearing down around 6:30 (or earlier, if they were far away from the stage), with no loss in sales. (One of the vendors next to our stage actually shut down at 7 on Saturday, and when they came over to berate him, he said something to the effect that he was on the &*^% Board of Directors of the show and they could just try to blackball him next year...hee!) Our new helper was awesome, and frankly, is the reason I don't feel worse today. We got packed up and loaded in record time because of her!

I saw

[personal profile] vickita, and many people I knew from the Dallas area. I repeated t-shirt prices thousands of times (even though they are prominently posted), and explained that, yes, we do charge tax, and no, there is no discount for multiple shirts. No, I will not give you a discount because your child is cute (he wasn't, particularly, he was a brat). Please do not spill beer on the shirts. If you do, you buy the shirt.

I saw many dogs (seriously, Irish wolfhounds are cool), and bought several shamrock plants from a greyhound rescue group. I bought a lovely maplewood spoon and a pack of evil, enormous oatmeal chocolate chip cookies from the baker that comes every year. I mourned the loss of the roasted sweet potatoes--the vendors that had been selling them to me for years stopped doing them because they take too long to cook.  (What did they replace them with? Deep-fried caramel apples. sigh.) Since I am sworn off fried foods, that left me almost no vendor food options, so I was very glad that we always bring sandwich fixings, fruit, tea, etc. with us.

Music: I heard many of the Hoary Old Standards several times each, done in varying degrees of goodness. I heard The Proclaimers "500 Miles" twice. I was not aware this was a traditional Scottish song. :-) Loescher & Kenneth were the only band to make an impression on me, and that was because of the silly covers they were doing on the keyboard. I want the new CD when it comes out, if they will be playing like that on it (I like my trad music with a twist).

I was very close to coming home with another cat. There was a lovely marmalade boy living in the bushes outside our hotel, very friendly and sweet. I let the cat rescue folks know about him and hopefully they will trap him and get him a good home.

Right now I am waiting for a load of clothes to dry so I can go to bed. I'll deal with Nebula stuff and grocery shopping tomorrow. I got home at 1 am, fighting wind gusts the whole way (it didn't start to rain until I was in Austin, thank goodness), and went to work and class. I even got things accomplished! But I have burned through that last surge of energy I got from class and I'm ready to just collapse.

Wednesday and Friday I'm going to see They Might be Giants and Dropkick Murphys. I hope I survive....

 

 

Date: 2008-03-04 05:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alycorn.livejournal.com
I always feel like I'm not really doing much during packing up...not sure why. Maybe because usually someone else is deciding where things go, so I often just hover and wait for them to need the next item? Glad you made it home safely, and I applaud you for actually doing laundry so soon - I looked at my pile and said 'screw this, I still have clean underwear'

I think some stupid little kid gave me the Irish strain of con plague. Or else the change in weather is messing with me, because I came home with a tickle in the throat that hopefully won't turn into a full-blown illness.

Hi, it's Ali - I added you ;)

Date: 2008-03-04 02:29 pm (UTC)
ext_1880: (Default)
From: [identity profile] lillian13.livejournal.com
It takes a while to get into the rhythm and to know what goes next in packing up. You'll get the hang of it in no time.

I hope you didn't catch something! I was pretty hoarse yesterday but that was because of all the yelling we had to do to be heard in there.

Date: 2008-03-04 03:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alycorn.livejournal.com
It definitely has that general all-over mild ache feel of an actual bug, rather than the throat-only soreness of yelling too much *tear*

You would think that having gotten con plague so many times before, I'd be immune to it by now. But there are as many varieties as there are types of nerds, so I'll have a ways to go (though if I can avoid collecting them all, I will do so)

Date: 2008-03-04 01:26 pm (UTC)
ext_8753: (Default)
From: [identity profile] vickita.livejournal.com
Re: L&K -- *g* It wasn't a keyboard... it was an accordion. Mark (Kenneth) had a new loaner accordion that was entirely electronic; no reeds. It made some interesting sounds, yo.

Date: 2008-03-04 02:30 pm (UTC)
ext_1880: (Default)
From: [identity profile] lillian13.livejournal.com
Well, he was certainly having fun with it! I hope their next CD is more in that vein.

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