Only Mostly Dead

Yesterday was one of the longest, hottest, stressiest days of my life.  But, like the 14 hour car trip that got us to the St. Louis Art Fair, in which I kept thinking to myself, “This is too boring, too hard, I don’t want to play anymore”, once it was all over, it didn’t seem so bad.  Kinda like childbirth.   Or so I hear.

We began the day by FINALLY getting our new credit card terminal to work.  It hadn’t been programmed correctly when it was sent to us, and it’s failure to function was FREAKING ME OUT.   But after three days in tech support limbo, they got it working just in time.

The weather was perfect, if a little warm.  Perfect if you’re doing nothing more strenuous that lifting a glass of iced tea to your lips.  But setting up the tent was fraught with complications we hadn’t forseen, and took much longer than expected.  I won’t bore you with details, but we started at 11:30, and when opening time rolled around at five, we had NOT had the chance to slip back to the hotel for a much needed shower, and were still madly scrambling to unpack robots.  Dehydration was a problem, too.  You’d think that in the middle of setting up a huge art fair on a hot day that SOMEONE would be selling water.  They weren’t until five, by which time we were dead. 

Or only mostly dead.  Amazing how the appearance of customers in one’s booth can revive a gal.  Response was positive and enthusiastic.  Sales were good, if not overwhelming.  But this is a three day event, and if the shoppers are anything like me, they want to see everything before making their decision.  A few other notes:  went through an entire box of 250 business cards on the first night, and only have 250 more.  Hadn’t expected that, and will be rationing them out today.  Also–our proximity to the martini, beer and wine tent is a mixed blessing.  Lots of traffic, but later in the evening… Let’s just say a few bots hit the ground, but nothing broke.

Sorry, no picture, but we honestly didn’t have a spare second before the show started, and the booth was too crammed with people to even see inside once it did.  We’ll try again today.