Friday, December 08, 2006

These Boots Weren't Made for Walking

No coffee yet, "Sweet Surrender" by Sarah McLachlan on iTunes. It's 5 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now. 5 degrees! Ooh baby, gonna make that walk to Starbuck's a treat. I have to work for my caffeine this morning. Toto, as you can probably guess, we are not in Kansas (or Atlanta for that matter) anymore. Nope. Today I write from my room at the Embassy Suites lakefront in Chicago (Go Priceline!). It's One of a Kind Show time again, and we are off and running. Tomorrow I will put up pics of the booth, but for today, just a few highlights of life for the glass artist on the road.

The car was packed so fully that there was bubble wrap crammed up to the ceiling. It lumbered up the interstate making occasional vulgar grinding noises. I know it's not supposed to sound like that, and it only has a couple thousand miles on it (if that) so I am a bit worried. Sell! Sell! Sell! I need to get rid of as much glass as possible so we go home lighter and have room for all the wine I have to carry. Thanks to the arcane tax restrictions on wine, some California vinyards (from whom I purchased wine club memberships) can't or won't ship to Georgia so I have it all shipped to my in-laws in Illinois and pick it up twice a year when I come to town for a show--unless I drink it here. It's nice to have a stash.

Today I am tired. The show started last night and I made the mistake of breaking in a new pair of boots. I figured, heck, it was only four hours! I never wear heels anymore and today (and all night) the balls of my feet just ache. Today I am back to sensible flats (still boots). And it's hard to dress for this show. They're only so many layers you can put on. It's 5 degrees ( 5 DEGREES) outside and under the 2400 watts of lights (and additional heating helpfully supplied via the furnaces by the Merchandise Mart facilities people) I need a silk cami, a sarong and a fan! Ah well, I'll survive.

This morning I am going to walk the floor and hunt for friends' booths. I think I have schmoozed with everyone but Chrissie and family (Dave are you here?), but I haven't seen all their booths yet. The show opens at 11:00 and I then I am going to sell, sell, sell! Now I had better go get dressed (layers, layers, layers).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know who else worries about layers, don't you? The chicken farmer...

Anonymous said...

Good Luck on selling out. We didn't make it in. Called on Monday and they still didn't have a spot for us and because of the weather, we decided if we couldn't leave by Tuesday that we wouldn't be able to make it. So we are still here in Tulsa. Hope the show goes well for you.
Doug, Chrissie and Karen