Is It Really Thursday?!

Coffee in the Atlanta skyline mug, "Fade Away" by Chris Isaak on iTunes. I might just do that today. I did not post yesterday even though we were done setting up by 10:30 am. Yes, you read that right, AM not PM. Spent the rest of the morning going over pricing, schedules and details for the Dallas set-up with Bill and Todd. The afternoon saw the purchase of a Walker Display system to debut in Dallas, contractor appointments made for today (the studio gate blew off in the wind the night before last and needs to be re-hung), and a nap followed by a rest and an early night... This cold is kicking my behind to the extent that I can't even remember if I already wrote that I came down with it on Tuesday.

Set-up for the Atlanta's Mart was unlike any set-up I have ever done before. For one thing, it started on Monday, not Tuesday like I thought. Oops. So we were a day late arriving--and we were still almost the only ones in our area setting up--no sign of anyone else, neither crates and goods nor people. The floor was like a ghost town all day Tuesday. Yesterday morning it was starting to liven up with bustling vendors, and I bet today is a madhouse (everyone is supposed to be set-up by 2:00 pm). I won't know as I am not going in today. I am going to make price sheets, info packets, a production schedule and phone calls. The phone calls are to clients who still have invoices outstanding from last year--and there are several thousand dollars of invoices still out.

Like ACRE in Vegas, the Mart show makes use of a marshaling yard where vehicles wait until there is room at the dock for them. unlike Vegas where the marshaling yard is a couple of blocks from the convention center, the marshaling yard for this show is down past the airport. My scheduled move-in was 7:00 am so we had to drive down to the airport, get our paperwork and then turn around and drive back downtown to the Mart--all in rush hour traffic. Oy. It was NOT fun. Pulling away from the curb and heading out, I had a momentary panic that I had forgotten something and said so to Todd. His response was to tell me it would be all be fine, and then he stopped himself, looked at me, and asked in all seriousness, "What would you like from me here? Do you want me to panic with you [Oh no! What are we going to do?!?], or do you want me to reassure you and calm you down?" I had to bust out laughing, and the panic attack passed.

After a dry-run set-up Monday, and with valet unloading at the Mart, three people setting up the booth, and the foamcore walls and carpet already in place, set-up went really fast. By 10:30 am the back wall display and all the pedestals were up, and we were ready to put up the light poles--that's when we discovered the missing box. I made a roundtrip home in under a half hour--and the parking attendant even let me back into the same parking lot without paying again. Then the troubles started.

I had planned to use my own pipe and drape poles and supports as the support structure for my lights. But no matter where I put the vertical uprights to hold the crossbars, they were very visually obtrusive. Finally Bill came up with the idea of putting horizontal extensions off the top bars adjacent to my booth and hooking my horizontal support bars to them. It worked great, and I never would have thought of it on my own--thank heaven Bill was there! I am going to have to architect the set-up for the new configuration in Dallas very carefully in order for Todd and I to be able to get it all up in a day without Bill.

Tomorrow, good booth pictures (I forgot my camera yesterday) and maybe even a post live from the Mart (my booth is close enough to the Days Inn that I picked up the Internet service on Tuesday, heh).