Crashing & Banging

August 12, 2009 by Richard
Filed under Just a Thought, Music

The crashing and banging part is coming from the basement where the men are installing the new furnace. The old one is old and heavy and has been living in the same spot for almost 50 years so it’s reluctant to give up its space. It will soon be gone but right now there is a terrific racket going on.

That’s okay, it’s all part of the process. The install is supposed to take two days so I’ve tried to plan my schedule to be in the house during this period. The “mature” old cat, who was rather freaked last week when we had the ducts cleaned, is having a mini-vacation out in the studio where she won’t have to deal with all the noise and commotion. I think she got the better end of the deal, as the studio is already air-conditioned while the house is not (yet), and the forecast high here today is in the 30’s. (astute readers will have noted that it’s taken me an extra day to get this post finished. It’s not in the 30s today, but they are still crashing and banging in the basement)

I’ve no shortage of things to keep me busy, as I’ve been saving up some of those special tasks like reconciling the bank statement and doing the house books which are so hard to keep up with when it’s nice outside.

However, what I really wanted to share today is what a great time I had working at the Regina Folk Festival this past weekend. Keith, one of my golf buddies, has been involved with the business side of the festival for years, and “recruited” me to help set up and run the new beer ticket sales area. Previously it had been done adjacent to the bar which created huge bottlenecks, so this year they had a whole new setup. I originally said I’d help get it set up on Friday for a couple of hours, but somehow that turned into eight hours on each of the three three nights of the festival.

We had our own pavilion/tent on the south side of the festival area near the bar but not right in its space. Because it was a new setup, Keith had scheduled lots of volunteers, but we soon learned that between 4 and 6 people at the table was enough to sell the drink tickets and verify that people were of legal drinking age. Keith and/or I would stand out in front organizing the lines and dealing with anything else that might come up.

Here’s one of our volunteers now

Stephanie shows off her volunteer shirt

We had an almost good view of the stage (there was this one tree…) but were far enough back so as to be out of the traffic flow except for those who wanted tickets. We could hear fine and the sound wasn’t quite deafening. The volunteers were fast enough that we rarely had line-ups, and the best part was that we all had fun. By Saturday there was some dancing in the tent and by Sunday evening all the volunteers in our area were up and dancing. We even had the customers dancing.

Take a look!