Holy Backache Batman!

Yesterday was pretty surreal.

Back up. A few weeks ago my good friend and ex-boss Jerome asked me to work the James River Wine Festival for him selling water. He sells water. Bottled water from an aquaphor-fed arisan well in Hanover County, VA. It's fancy good water. Anyway. He asked me to do this for him because he had a family scheduling conflict, and he knows I'm good at working with people.

I've been crazy busy at work, so I actually called Jerome last week and told him that I couldn't work both days of the weekend. In fact, I could pretty much only cover for him while he was doing what he needed to do. I felt bad, but I'm WAY behind on schoolwork and needed one day to work on that kind of stuff. I really wanted to bow out of the whole thing, but knew he really needed someone to do Saturday during the day, so I agreed to do Saturday set-up and work the festival from noon until 4 or 4:30 when he could get there. He's been a good friend for many years and I didn't want him to miss out on any profits.

So, imagine being the only water vendor at a wine festival on a 96 degree day. While on the one hand it feels like I was there for 100 hours, on the other hand I was so busy and the time passed so fast that I couldn't believe it. Hauling ice, restocking coolers, and moving cases of water mean that today I can hardly move my back. Being downwind from the cigar vendor all day means that my allergies are going crazy. Plunging my hands into ice-cold water to retrieve the "coldest" bottle for a drunk reveler mean that my hand dermie is irritated and I have a hangnail on every finger. All that aside, I had a lot of fun and sold every bottle of water he left with me.

And, I was surrounded by free booze all day long and didn't have a single drop. Mainly because I couldn't get to it, but still...

Today I am trying frantically to catch up on schoolwork. Away I go...