I met Virginia. She's hot.

Here is a picture of me since some of you have been requesting one. This is what I look like! Remember?

This might be a cranky post, it was a cranky long weekend. We were exhibiting at the Af'ram Fest in Norfolk, VA, an African American festival that's been happening annually for more than 20 years. The festival itself was fine, but the weather was hotter than hot. Low to mid-90s and intensely sunny with little breeze, and our trailer was placed on blacktop which just magnified the heat. Our only relief was in the mall across the street where there was actual air conditioning, but our breaks were few and far between- only 30 minutes each day, and on Saturday and Sunday we worked for more than 12 hours and were on our feet the entire time. Ouchy. I got sunsick or heatstroke or whatever its called on Sunday and stopped being able to keep food down so they sent me back to the hotel for a few hours. Overall it was not my favorite weekend.

There were over 100,000 visistors to the festival over the three days. Our trailer was placed across from some art and tshirt vendors, and next to an U.S. Army trailer where they gave out free personalized dog tags if you gave them your address and phone number, but I sweet-talked the Army guys and scored tags for my team and I (see photo). Over 500 festival patrons visited Big Pink which is huge, so despite the extreme discomfort it was successful numbers-wise.

The thing about working such a huge crowd is, I'm actually not so much a people person. I can be when it's required, but days of dealing with that volume of people, especially combined with the constant loud music and noise, wore me down in a hurry. I think there is a certain point at which people begin to take up more than just physical space; its like their personalities and their voices take up even more space. And even when you are outside and maintaining your personal "bubble" it can start to feel very very crowded and squished and even oppressive. That is when I get very overloaded and crave nothing more than stillness and silence.

So right now I am homesick and I miss my apartment and my bed and my neighborhood and my books and red tea caramel lattes and my friends and Midwest weather and my car (so new! so shiny! so lonely!) and salads from Veg Out and Toro Sushi and board game nights and making my own cosmopolitans and Lake Michigan a block away and so many other things Chicago has that (insert random small town here) doesn't. Who needs anonymous hotel rooms with slow internet, bad pillows and boring old HBO when you can have Chicago and everything wonderful and exciting in it?

I'm just crabby. In 26 days the tour will be done. Tomorrow we are exhibiting at a pharmacy in Richmond, VA. This weekend we'll be in D.C. for the national Race for the Cure on the national mall, which is our highest-profile appearance of our entire tour. I am very excited for it and I love Washington D.C., so it's something good to look forward to. After that we go to Charleston, West Virginia where we have an unbelievable THREE days off in a row. Like whoa.

You should all download the song "Golden Days" by the Damnwells. It is my song-of-the-moment and you might love it too.

OH and I enabled comments due to my brother Adam's (heeeeey itch) request so you should leave a comment to say hello. I am pretty sure you can do it even if you're not a blogger member.