Kicking Ass and Taking Names

I didn't think any more about doing the Philly show in February today--it didn't even come close to the top of the day's list. Neither did laundry, but I could die happy if all I left undone was folding laundry (not that I'm planning to die anytime soon). I repotted a couple of orchids to flex my fingers and warm up for the day, and then I got right to organizing A Fair of the Art and sending out the next round of tasks and requests. When I was about 3/4 of the way through, I accidentally deleted my message and almost lost it. Fortunately there is thing called the Internet that holds the sum total of all human knowledge (and tons of cute cat pictures), and on it I found how to recover the deleted draft email. Whew! Then I decided that, if everything went well, there would probably be a LOT of responses to my email and I didn't want to flood everyone's mailboxes and annoy them unnecessarily so I created a Google Group for the project and added everyone to it. Screw inviting people: I don't have time to wait for people to make up their minds if they want to hear from me or not. I just added them, welcomed them, explained why I set up the group, and got on with the important email. Wheee!

In the midst of My Fair Frenzy, I took some time to talk to one of my NextDoor neighbors about how to work with food trucks. He is a life-long carnie who has recently retired to Austin and is now in the concessions business--mostly with non-profits. His advice confirmed all of my hopes and suspicions, and allayed my fears. Yes, we are right to ask for a percentage of the profits--25-40% is standard and for a new festival 25% is a good place to start (everybody wins). In order to determine what 25% is, we sell $.50 tickets that are used to pay for food, and the food trucks don't actually take cash. At the end of the festival we pay them for the tickets they turn in minus 25%. Three trucks is a good number for our event. Three is actually a bit difficult to me as we have had twice that many trucks apply, and I hate turning anyone down. But I don't personally have to turn anyone down! There are a lot of other people involved and we can decide on the food vendors by vote, not fiat.

After the A Fair of the Art communication, I cleaned our apartment for this evening's renters. It was a very satisfying activity. Thirty-five years ago I cleaned houses and condos in a ski resort for a living. Today cleaning the apartment took me back to those times and the satisfaction of doing a menial job really well. After we finished rehabbing the apartment and when we started renting it, I had it cleaned by a cleaning service a couple of times. Today was the first day I went in and did all the cleaning myself, and I approached it from the ground up; I cleaned things that had obviously been passed over by the cleaning people (the back 1/4" of the wooden blinds on all the windows), and at the end the whole apartment was so clean it gleamed. As I worked I kept picturing my grandmother as the prospective guest, and I made sure it would be clean enough for her. My grandmother used to make me strip off my clothes down to my underwear inside the back door after I had been playing in the backyard. then I had to go straight to the sink and thoroughly wash my hands. When I came in and put on clean clothes, I wasn't allowed to sit on the couch--only the floor. My gramma cleaned her house professionally and religiously, and if I could please her, I could please anyone. Our guests tonight: Three guys in for a couple of days of mountain biking. Sexism aside, the chance that they actually appreciate the cleaning I did: 2%. That's okay. I did it for me, not for them.

The night finished with a family movie night to see Shaun of the Dead at the Alamo Drafthouse. A perfect end to a really kicking day.