HRM Steampunk Symposium Review - Sunday (Part IV)

Continued from Part III

Morning rolls around pretty quickly after you finally pass out sometime after 1:30 am. I'm not sure what woke me up, but I found myself staring at the ceiling in the hotel bed, while Cindy was sleeping peacefully. Since the alarm clock on the other side of the room was blocked by the chair, I grabbed my phone thinking it was some where close to 7:30 or so. Wrong, it was 6 am, ye gods shoot me now or at least hit me with a brick so I could sleep for another hour or two.

I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep and was almost successful until my phone alerted me with a text message (of course the one night I forget to shut that particular notification off I get a message - curse you Murphy) from my father in law, wishing me a great and productive day. I love that I get those messages from him and a couple friends as well. It really gives me a great start to the day even if it was at 6:30 am. I ended up tossing and turning until 7:30 ish when Cindy finally woke up and then jumped in the shower.

Of course Murphy was still having fun and decided that 3/4 of the way through my shower, I didn't need any more hot water. I was not amused and promptly removed myself from the shower to get dressed and go make myself a much needed cup of coffee before texting my husband so I could chat with him and the kids on Skype since I wasn't going to be home until about 10pm. There is something to be said for technology in cases like this. Of course it also leaves open all sorts of hilarious moments like when Cindy got out of the shower :

My son: "Mommy, where is Cindy?"
Me: "She just got out of the shower."
My son: "Can I see her?"
Me: "...... She needs to get dressed Tarin"
My son: "Oh."
Cindy busts up laughing from the other side of the hotel room.
Me to my husband who is laughing in the background: "He gets that from you!"
My husband: "He's just looking out for me!"
Of course my son thinks it's hilarious just because we're all laughing.

Ah, out of the mouths of babes.

After chatting with my kids and husband, Cindy and I started to pack up our suitcases. If we had been coherent enough on Saturday night, we would have been smart and started packing and arranging things then, but we had too much fun at the Ball and then laughing and giggling at our neighbors until all hours of the morning. But we had to deal with the two suitcase explosions first thing in the morning, which actually didn't take that long to get taken care of. The next bit of fun was us getting our suitcases and other stuff to the car before heading up to the vendors room. I think we sat there for 20 minutes figuring out a process to get the crap down there and then to get the other necessities, read: cash box, coffee, brains, and us, up to the vendor hall. 

Once we got the plan worked out, Cindy took her stuff down and then came back up for the items that needed to be taken upstairs, well most of them. Then it was my turn and let me tell you, hauling a heavy suitcase (dear god why did I bring 3 pairs of boots!) in a steel boned corset it quite an interesting feat. Even more interesting it getting said suitcase into the back seat (club cab) of a pickup truck, but I did it with little bodily harm to myself and very little swearing, not like I had enough breath to swear and wrestle with the suitcase at the same time though.

Ok! Suitcases in the truck, time to head back up to the hotel room and grab the rest of the stuff to take up stairs, like the plastic tub with the bottle of whiskey and wine as well as our change of clothes to breakdown in. Mission accomplished and I didn't spill any of my coffee either.

Me in my Airship Captain's outfit

Sunday's day of vending went pretty quickly and was a pretty good day with everyone getting their last minute purchases. I ended up with a couple potential custom orders for after the show which makes me quite happy. Friends stopped by to visit and we chatted with other vendors during the slow times to see how everyone was doing.

By the time 4 pm came around, Cindy and I could feel ourselves fading. At some point I ended up loosening the lacing on my corset because one of the pieces of boning was sitting on my hip bone weirdly and causing a bruised spot.The things we do for fashion, right ladies? ;)

As soon as the last customer was out the door, the corset came off and instead of heading out to the restroom to change (switch shirts was all I had to do) I performed the age old trick of putting on one shirt and taking the other one off underneath it. Cindy opted to go change in the restroom of course she had a bit more to change into that I did. There is something to be said for wearing dark pants with your costume that you don't have to change out of.

Full view of the costume (still a work in progress)

Breakdown is always a double edged sword. It means I get to go home and sleep in my own bed, but it also means that the fun weekend has come to an end and it's time to head back to the real world and real job.

Of course I never know where to start with breaking things down either. My booth help is always the one to ask "How do you want to do this?" and my response is always "I have no fricken' clue." You'd think after vending all the time I would have some sort of plan. Nope, I don't. I usually stand in the booth for at least 10 minutes trying to figure out how I want to start putting things away and this event was no different.

While I sat there trying to get my brain in gear, Cindy started to pack up her art and such and by the time she was there I actually had things planned out. "I love it when a plan comes together."

This year there were no instances of me smacking Cindy in the need with a clothing bar for the gridwall (thankfully), but there was lots of giggling and laughing and throwing of things. I think we actually got packed up in just under an hour. Go us!

Cindy dresses as my First Mate

Then came the conundrum of getting everything outside. (Remember the load in over in Part I?), yeah we did  too and we really weren't looking for a repeat of that. Thankfully the hotel was letting us use the main elevator to load out! Wooohooo!

Now when we loaded in, the sun was out, when we loaded out, not so much. It was 5:30 and well it was fairly dark and there was only two of us which meant, one would have to sit with the stuff outside while the other schlepped everything downstairs, but that also meant that the remaining stuff upstairs was left unattended. See where this is going?

Booth

So we got creative, the grid wall went down on the dolly first and then we loaded all the tubs onto it. Cindy made a couple trips down with smaller items like stands and such that couldn't be put into boxes and shoved them into the cab of the truck. When she got back up stairs we began the journey towards the elevator with a *very* heavy load and the carpet that we had to roll across didn't make the job any more difficult, then it was out the door to the hardwood floor....(yes I was sliding on the floor again) and over to the gangplank to the platform for the elevator. Things were going smoothly until we got the front tire of the dolly stuck not once but twice. Ok, down we go.....uh Cindy how are we going to stop this thing?

Packing up

We actually didn't have much problem getting the dolly stopped but we did have a couple pieces start to slide off the dolly, which were caught by Cindy. Ok, into the elevator and down we go, out of the elevator and oh crap....there go some of the boxes from the front of the grid wall. Pick them up and off we go, aw crap there goes the stand for the ascots. Whoops! it's not round anymore. Oh well...let's get the truck loaded.

Cindy sat with the dolly while I went and got the truck. The  drawback of using the grid wall as a base for everything is that everything has to be removed because the grid wall goes into the truck first. We're still working on a better system for this - or maybe just a 3rd person to help out (hint hint Tawmis).

Grid wall in - check
Plastic tubs in - chuck
Suitcases removed from the cab and put in the back  - check
Rest of the stuff shoved into the cab of the truck - check

Time: 6 pm - let's go home.

Me after Con :)

Cindy, chipper as always

The ride home was pretty mellow, we traveled down to Oso Parkway where we stopped at Dairy Queen for dinner, and ice cream, made a stop for gas and then drove back to San Diego, well Casa de Oro really, to unload the truck and then I dropped of Cindy and headed home to go sleep in my own bed. I made it home by 9:15 pm, counted out the cash box, tallied up the totals and then went in and PTFO'd in bed because I had to get up at 4:00 am to be to work at 5 am.




All in all it was a great con, the room we were in was beautiful and we seemed to have a lot more traffic than last year. I'm really looking forward to going back again next year as well.

I really owe a debt of gratitude for Tawmis for all his help with loading up and dealing with all my text messages with photos as well as keeping the Wyng'd Lyon Facebook page  as well as the Original Cin Facebook page updated. He help was invaluable and his updated added a light hearted mood when things got a bit tense for us while we were vending.

A special thanks goes to Cindy as well, for sharing in my madness and coming with me to vend for the weekend. I always have such a great time hanging out and being generally silly when we're at events.

Also a big thank you goes out to all the customers that came and shopped our booth! With out you the weekend would not have been as enjoyable. Everyone was so friendly and pleasant to deal with and we enjoyed making new friends and associated this time around.

Now it's time for me to get a few more days rest and then start prepping for Wild West Con in March out in Tucson. I hope to see many of you there.


Thank you all for taking the time out to follow us on this journey and read my ramblings too!

Until next time, take care!

~Colleen
Wyng'd Lyon Creations