Yep, I succeeded...

I'm here, I'm alive, and the sun is still shining...

First, let me say: WHY IS IT STILL SO HOT? Isn't it fall? Darnit! I want cooler breezes, sweater weather and chilly nights. Stop with this humid heatwave. Grrrr...

OK, so where have I been? At the tradeshow, of course. Yes, the tradeshow has come and gone. Thanks to past experience, the help of a very hardworking co-worker in another office and lots of preparation and sweat on my part, the show was a success. I loaded the company vehicle on Tuesday night, left my house early Wednesday and we had our space set-up by Wednesday at 4 p.m. I decided to NOT fight traffic and ate dinner near the convention center on Wednesday, which meant I didn't get home until 8 p.m.

Our booth looked great. I redesigned all the graphics this year and decided to use 2 pop-up frames equalling 23 feet for the space. These frames are made of anodized aluminum and weigh about 25 lbs. and literally "pop up" as opposed to constructing the booth piece-by-piece. The graphics attach to magnetic strips and hooks and are printed onto a thin plastic material that is flexible. The decision to use these booths saved the company more than $4,000 in shipping costs for an old, antiquated booth from Michigan and saved my head/arms/legs several bruises from when the parts of the old booth would likely fall on me during installation (as happened last year). This year our booth was bright/light, current, had a seating area, lots of space for collateral materials and a fun activity. We had our (mine and Steve's) personal Wii in our booth and it was a big hit. Because I scored a prime location at the front of the show floor, people could see the crowd and stopped to see what was going on. We had attendees launching dastardly characters into the air by pumping the controllers up and down -- no button pushes needed (so easy for non-gamers).

I was up on Thursday at 4:45 a.m. and out the door at 6 and at the show by 8 a.m. Thank God for Starbucks... seriously! Our booth passed inspection with flying colors and the show started at 11 a.m. The space was overcrowded with our lazy staff, as I expected and tried to avoid, but the day's frustration was allayed by a late lunch at California Pizza Kitchen with two co-workers and my ability to talk to anyone (as so-said by one of the lazy staff members).

On Friday I was up at 5 and at the show by 8. The floor was slow the second day and I could not wait to break down the booth by 2 p.m. The same helpful co-worker who helped me with set-up came and helped with breakdown, which quite frankly, was another Godsend. We had everything in the company car by 3:30 and I was on the road to home. I hit bad traffic and didn't make it to the office until 6:30 and wasn't home until after 7 p.m. I was pooped!

This weekend was mostly spent on catching up with sleep and doing stuff at the house. I'm almost caught up with photos/the website and the announcement about holiday sessions and hope to have that all out and up by the end of the week.

I promise -- my next post will be more creative and less dry. I'm doing a "Week in My Life" journey at the prompting of Ali Edwards. For more info, click the {A} over there in the blog list. I'm having a lot of fun taking photos and journaling. I just wanted you to know where I've been all this time. Thanks for reading!