busy busy busy

Man the past couple of weekends have been busy. First up was an event for work. We were a sponsor of the March of Dimes "Walk for babies" in Dekalb county. Actually since I have worked with the March of Dimes for 13 years now I made sure I put a little something in the budget for them this year. Come to find out it was nothing new since work used to be more involved in past years, but for some reason just stopped. I can see how it can happen since they go through personnel at the March of Dimes like tissue paper. Just when you get comfortable with a director, they would quit or get fired. Anyhow I arranged to be a sponsor this year. I put out the word to get a group together to walk or just help at the start of the walk. I got a resounding 1 reply from my email to all employees.. and she ended up cancelling. The problem is that the March took place on the same weekend as the credit union was going through a computer conversion so it was all hands on deck for that Saturday. So I show up with some giveaways for the walkers and also bring out a 12 foot high inflatable piggy bank. Its actually a pretty cool inflatable that can also float if I put helium in it, but I am reserving that for parades since helium is so expensive. I got the idea to put air into it, to be able to use it at more events during the year. My first attempts to inflate this balloon took a little over an hour with an air compressor. I was thinking that it might be a bad idea to use it with air. But at our annual meeting as we were deflating the balloon a member came up to me and said, "why are you using an air compressor, you need volume not pressure, you should use a shop vac" All I could say was DUHHHHHH. So I bought a little shop vac that can inflate and deflate the balloon in a little over 10 minutes. So I hung out at the beginning of the March, and after they left, I grabbed something to eat and took off for the day. It was a small crowd, but there was ALOT of other stuff going on that day in Auburn.



The next weekend was the March of Dimes "Walk for Babies" for Fort Wayne. The Auburn walk takes place at 1:00pm, the Fort Wayne walk takes place at 9:00am which means set-up starts at 6:00am. You know, it's dark then. Of course as I am driving to help with the set-up. It's dark, and I am tired. All of a sudden I see a duck walking down the middle of the street. I hit the breaks and try to swerve, but *thud* oops. Stupid Duck. The setup for the walk goes pretty good for a start location. The chairperson of the walk was in charge, and the new director was walking around in a daze and not telling anyone what to do. Hopefully she will get a little more assertive if she sticks around. After setting up tables and whatnot, I was in charge of the stage area and also recruited to be an emcee for the event, but I knew I wouldn't be required to talk much since the radio sponsor was sending out some DJ's. The DJ's were guys that I knew and worked with back in the good old days so it was fun to catch up and joke around. They guy that they sent out with the vehicle and equipment was a guy that was my intern and remote tech back when I worked for WOWO downtown. The jocks showed up, but no vehicle and no P.A. system. Nothing like a couple hundreds people in a large area and no way to talk to them. I found out that he left the station without a microphone. I called him up and gave him a rash of crap, calling him a Rookie. He finally shows up and we plug everything in to find out that the DC converter to power the P.A. doesn't work. Lucky for him I had a backup and grabbed a generator that we had and plugged him in. Of course it's so late that we have to immediately start the program and rushed to get the walk started on time. Finally the relief of getting everyone started. Usually after the walk starts is when we got into setup mode for the lunch for when everyone gets back, but I had to head North for another event for the credit union. This was a kite fly for a radio station in Auburn. It was a windy freakin' day so not much kite flying was done. I had never been to this event before so I wasn't sure how it worked or how much room I would have to set up. I asked if I would have room for the balloon "pigzilla" and was assured there was plenty of room. Well I got there to a couple rows of 8 foot tables. I started inflating the pig and it pretty much dwarfed everything around me. There wasn't a picture of the event that didn't have the balloon in the background. Put the other bank there to shame. SCORE. So I hung out there for 4 of the longest hours of my life. By the 3rd hour I was seriously dragging, since I was up at 5:00am. I quickly tore that down and headed home. I felt bad for the event because of the wind, but it looked like a fun event.

It kind of sucks that I have to work weekends every once in a while, but I basically set my own hours during the week. I am just thankful to be employed, and the events are pretty fun to do.