Not the spring break entry
Apr. 4th, 2005 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhSo, this is the story of why I disappeared last week.
I help run a student group on my campus; I'm the treasurer of Fusion, the main GLBT group. Friday we held a drag show, a huge event compared to the type of things we normally do. Some of the preparations for it had started last quarter- renting out the necessary space and equipment, applying for funding, making flyers, attempting to sign up performers.
And then we had spring break, and to be honest, I kind of forgot that we were having this on the first Friday of the quarter. I thought it was the second or third. Which means that, the day before the event, we started doing all of the many, many other things that needed to be done. I spent most of Thursday walking around the Short North- which is our art gallery/coffee shop/funky little stores section of town- and trying to convince people to give us donations that we could use as prizes.
I got a surprising number of things; I'd say that I ended up with probably over $100 in merchandise, by doing nothing more than walking into stores and asking if they had anything on hand to give me. I didn't even have any proof that I was with an organization other than a flyer I was handing out. It's great that people are trusting and all, but if I had been lying, I would have had so much cool stuff for myself.
Not that I took any of it. I'm just saying, you know. If I had wanted to... But I didn't. Really. I swear. ;)
Anyway. Then I went with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shes_unreal, who is one of the co-chairs of Fusion, to cash our funding check, and see about getting an advertising banner put up outside the student union, and meet with some of the other people who were organizing all this.The next day I had to go back to the Short North, to buy decorating supplies and hit up a few of the stores I hadn't gotten to the day before.
Oh, and I attended a protest against the Patriot Act. You know it's been a busy day if 100 identically dressed, chanting people storming a library slips your mind.
I caught up withshes_unreal again, along with a guy named Doug I'd never seen before, to drive out and pick up the bigger decorations: a backdrop for the stage, columns, a few other things. None of us had ever been to this place before, as shes_unreal had been talking to them over email, but we finally found it, in the middle of the ghetto. It turned out to be on the upper floors above some kind of warehouse; we had to get buzzed through the front door and then take a freight elevator up to the offices. And then after all that, they refused to deliver to us, so we had to fit as much as we could into Doug's car and drive back to campus.
Which is where the real fun started, because we had three or four hours left before the doors were supposed to open, no one knew how to set up the backdrop, or where the AV guy we'd hired was, or- most importantly- who most of our performers were. Alan, who was in charge of that, showed up soon after, and he and I started to organize a set list. That was kind of crazy. There's nothing like having no one, including the suggested host himself, know who your MC is. Or having to cancel one of your performers half an hour before the show because his plane still hadn't landed.
I ended up being the stage manager; I'm sure everyone who's ever been involved in any kind of stage production knows how that went. We lost microphones and had ones that wouldn't turn on, had too many people backstage and then had the people we needed disappear, we had people in the wrong costumes and in the wrong order and running all over the place to grab needed, forgotten, props.
And somewhere in the middle of it all I managed to break my student ID. Our campus requires you to use your ID for everything: to check out library books, to eat in the cafeterias, to get into your dorm, to get into offices, to ride the buses, to buy things from any of the stores in the area. I needed to get mine readjusted, as is required at the beginning of every quarter, to get into Fusion's office. They do this in the student union, but something went wrong when they tried to do mine. It ceased to work for anything, meaning I couldn't buy anything, or get into building where I live. Having to stand around outside in the middle of the night until someone with a working ID comes by so you can get into your home? Not a lot of fun. And of course, the people who broke it couldn't do anything to fix it; they wanted to send me to the main ID offices, which were already closed until Monday.
But, in the end, it was a lot of fun. Things like that always are: it's all running around and stressing and being panicked and too hot and a million other things, and then you realize that, for whatever reason, you're grinning and laughing at everything and you've never had a better time. Life is so much more addicting when it's exciting.
On an entirely different note, my birthday's coming up. It's Sunday the 10th, and I'll be 21. I feel kind of silly for saying this at all- I mean, I don't expect anyone to do anything- but I didn't mention it last year and then people yelled at me for not saying anything. So, um, yes. In case you wanted to know.
I help run a student group on my campus; I'm the treasurer of Fusion, the main GLBT group. Friday we held a drag show, a huge event compared to the type of things we normally do. Some of the preparations for it had started last quarter- renting out the necessary space and equipment, applying for funding, making flyers, attempting to sign up performers.
And then we had spring break, and to be honest, I kind of forgot that we were having this on the first Friday of the quarter. I thought it was the second or third. Which means that, the day before the event, we started doing all of the many, many other things that needed to be done. I spent most of Thursday walking around the Short North- which is our art gallery/coffee shop/funky little stores section of town- and trying to convince people to give us donations that we could use as prizes.
I got a surprising number of things; I'd say that I ended up with probably over $100 in merchandise, by doing nothing more than walking into stores and asking if they had anything on hand to give me. I didn't even have any proof that I was with an organization other than a flyer I was handing out. It's great that people are trusting and all, but if I had been lying, I would have had so much cool stuff for myself.
Not that I took any of it. I'm just saying, you know. If I had wanted to... But I didn't. Really. I swear. ;)
Anyway. Then I went with
shes_unreal, who is one of the co-chairs of Fusion, to cash our funding check, and see about getting an advertising banner put up outside the student union, and meet with some of the other people who were organizing all this.The next day I had to go back to the Short North, to buy decorating supplies and hit up a few of the stores I hadn't gotten to the day before. Oh, and I attended a protest against the Patriot Act. You know it's been a busy day if 100 identically dressed, chanting people storming a library slips your mind.
I caught up with
shes_unreal again, along with a guy named Doug I'd never seen before, to drive out and pick up the bigger decorations: a backdrop for the stage, columns, a few other things. None of us had ever been to this place before, as shes_unreal had been talking to them over email, but we finally found it, in the middle of the ghetto. It turned out to be on the upper floors above some kind of warehouse; we had to get buzzed through the front door and then take a freight elevator up to the offices. And then after all that, they refused to deliver to us, so we had to fit as much as we could into Doug's car and drive back to campus. Which is where the real fun started, because we had three or four hours left before the doors were supposed to open, no one knew how to set up the backdrop, or where the AV guy we'd hired was, or- most importantly- who most of our performers were. Alan, who was in charge of that, showed up soon after, and he and I started to organize a set list. That was kind of crazy. There's nothing like having no one, including the suggested host himself, know who your MC is. Or having to cancel one of your performers half an hour before the show because his plane still hadn't landed.
I ended up being the stage manager; I'm sure everyone who's ever been involved in any kind of stage production knows how that went. We lost microphones and had ones that wouldn't turn on, had too many people backstage and then had the people we needed disappear, we had people in the wrong costumes and in the wrong order and running all over the place to grab needed, forgotten, props.
And somewhere in the middle of it all I managed to break my student ID. Our campus requires you to use your ID for everything: to check out library books, to eat in the cafeterias, to get into your dorm, to get into offices, to ride the buses, to buy things from any of the stores in the area. I needed to get mine readjusted, as is required at the beginning of every quarter, to get into Fusion's office. They do this in the student union, but something went wrong when they tried to do mine. It ceased to work for anything, meaning I couldn't buy anything, or get into building where I live. Having to stand around outside in the middle of the night until someone with a working ID comes by so you can get into your home? Not a lot of fun. And of course, the people who broke it couldn't do anything to fix it; they wanted to send me to the main ID offices, which were already closed until Monday.
But, in the end, it was a lot of fun. Things like that always are: it's all running around and stressing and being panicked and too hot and a million other things, and then you realize that, for whatever reason, you're grinning and laughing at everything and you've never had a better time. Life is so much more addicting when it's exciting.
On an entirely different note, my birthday's coming up. It's Sunday the 10th, and I'll be 21. I feel kind of silly for saying this at all- I mean, I don't expect anyone to do anything- but I didn't mention it last year and then people yelled at me for not saying anything. So, um, yes. In case you wanted to know.
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 05:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 01:02 pm (UTC)*g* Yay.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 10:57 pm (UTC)