I thought our show season for this year ended with the York, PA show in October. I expected my football announcing schedule to take up the next weekend (which caused me to miss the show in Sevierville, TN), and a home playoff game to keep me from Birch Run, MI the first weekend in November. Then the football team lost twice in December, which meant they would play on the road in the first round (where they lost 24-22 on Saturday evening) – and I finally cried “Uncle!” to Gary’s constant twisting of my arm . . .
And so it was that I awoke to a cold rain on Thursday morning in Birch Run. When I had been there in the past, the layout of the booths made it impossible for me to drive the truck inside and keep it there all day – so I was expecting a good soaking as I unloaded the truck. But things changed last year when the dates were moved up a week and the cropping area was moved to the other half of the building, so I got to drive inside for both setup and teardown. And I was relieved.
I was also relieved that Tish Ramsey was available on short notice to help me set up the booth. During the process, I found three pennies and two dimes on the floor – all of the coins made it into my pocket, but didn’t give me hope of giving up my day job.
This is the first time that the booth has been “landlocked” (no space between ours the the booths on either side) for about 15 years, so we had to rearrange the spacing to create an aisle on each end. Tish and her mom discovered on Friday that the aisle was just wide enough (by about an inch on each side) for wheelchair access. That’s Stamp On It’s booth to the right – and the close proximity gave me my chuckle for the weekend . . .
I am a natural grammarian – but even with the use of “ain’t” I still thought this was funny . . .
This was on the floor in front of our booth – and nowhere else in the building. I’ll bet the expo center staff wasn’t terribly pleased when they initially found it. But it made for an interesting conversation piece since it was very close to my register.
It was an “Old Friends Weekend” – Sue Nelson hasn’t demoed in our booth for several years. And she actually got to sit down and demo some, in-between getting up to hug her followers who hadn’t seen her in a long time.
The view from my cash register on Friday morning – and a look at a selection of Memory Box dies that Sue had recommended we bring along. This will be happy news for many who shop our local store – they have been asking for these for a long time, and they will be in our store soon (and on the website for the rest of you).
When the show ended on Friday, I had to switch from a hotel next to the outlet mall across the street from the expo center to one 20+ miles away in Saginaw – apparently there are people who will pay $170 per night on the weekends for a room within walking distance of outlet shopping, but I’m not one of them. However, I got a surprise when I opened my door . . .
Somehow, I got upgraded to a two-room Jacuzzi Suite – seriously, all I needed was a bed and a shower (and hopefully a good TV selection).
Not for me, thanks . . .
You may recall seeing this pic on the blog a couple of weeks ago. I submitted it to the Dayton Daily News and was told a little over a week ago that it would appear in Thursday’s paper – of course, I was 250+ miles away on Thursday, but I got to see it online. Honestly, I liked my original picture more – I thought the red sky showed up better when the houses in my neighborhoods weren’t visible.
After the show, I had an extremely pleasant drive home (with apologies to our friends in East Lansing) – I left the expo center just as the Ohio State/Michigan State game kicked off, and when the postgame show ended I was five minutes from my house. So I’m back at work today, going through a weekend’s worth of e-mail and trying to catch up. The first thing that was brought to my attention this morning was two new items from Tim Holtz . . .
24 new colors if Distress Spray Stains that complete the set of 52, and one more Christmas Stamp Set. Yes, I made sure they went on our website promptly . . .
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