Saturday, May 17, 2008

Long Hot Day


It's over...whew. I forgot how much work these craft fair things are. It wasn't as successful as it has been in past years. Usually, the pancake breakfast generates lines that run the length of the school but today there was never a line. Not once all morning. The line is why they started putting the booths out front, along the line route (previously it was out on the softball field). So, it was a long, slow, hot morning (it reached 104 today) but we did slightly better than break even so that's a plus. Of course, selling blankets and knitted items - really not the best thing to do in this kind of heat but oh well.

You know those EZ Up canopy thingies that you just push up and bing bang boom you got yourself some shade? We don't have one of those. We have the kind that you have to actually put together. it comes with 30 or so different metal pole pieces, labelled 1, 1b, 2, 2b, and 3b (I have no idea what happened to 3!) and the instructions are, for all intents and purposes, in Sanskrit. We started putting it together around 6:30 (the breakfast officially started at 7 and my sister, being a teacher there signed up to work for an hour right at 7) by 7:15 I gave up (threw loud clangy metal pieces on to ground cursing under my breath while trying to remember this is a Christian school and there are small children in the vicinity) because I still hadn't put out all the goods on the tables.

I was soooo ready to chuck those poles under the next passing car but I refrained and good thing too cuz right when the shade from the neighboring canopy was about to disappear, my sister decides to give it another go. This time we had 5 people putting this together and finally managed it in about 10 minutes. We decided that as soon as we were done there, we were heading straight to the store to buy the EZ Up kind. Which we did and if any of you out there need one but are put off by the crazy high price and you're near a Rite Aid, go there and get yourself one right this instant cuz they're on sale for $50! What a deal! We bought ours with some of our earnings from today.

So, now I'm exhausted and going to try and get some sleep. Nite.

2 comments:

Melanie Gray Augustin said...

I used to do markets in Australia and I know exactly the frustration you're talking about. How I hated putting up our shade and would look longingly at the ones that were up in a flash.

muralimanohar said...

Heehee...I used to be the vendor for my friend's business selling handpainted windtwisters (I also painted, packed, and shipped...I am a woman of many talents :lol: ), and I would set those tents up every week...would take me 15 minutes from hauling the poles out, to flipping the last elastic thing on. :D Of course, then I had to hang a couple hundred or so hooks and twisters....eesh. :p