Numbers game

[offcntr]

Had a bit of confusion Friday afternoon as we were setting up for Silverton Fine Arts Festival. We'd gotten the booth set up, the shelves leveled, shimmed and staked, a two-hour job, as the ground is wildly irregular, even in the level-ish spaces. I was just lifting boxes of pots out of the van, when a show staffer came by with another vendor, trying to find her space. She was assigned booth 88, right next to our 87, but someone was already set up there. 89 and 90 were also filled, so they looked around for somewhere to stuff in an extra booth--not an impossibility with as loose a layout as the show features.

They eventually settled on space 29-and-a-half, and the vendor, Angela, started moving in her booth and tables. At which point, the staffer announced that I'd been given the wrong booth; according to the program, I was to be in booth 86.

I knew this wasn't right. I'd gotten an email with booth 87. My move-in envelope said booth 87. The alphabetical list of artists in the program said I was in booth 87.

Turns out, we were both right. In the booth-by-artists list, I was in 87. In the booth-by-numbers list, I had 86. Also in the Artist's Thumbnails section, with name, number and a photo of our work. And it wasn't just me. Angela had two numbers; Darcy, in 88, had two numbers. I don't know how far the mix-up went, but clearly, somebody needed to work on their Excel skills. Or proofreading skills. Possibly both.

As it happens, nobody had set up yet in 86. Did I want to move my booth, she asked? Remember, I'd just spent two-hours on my knees with a level, various size shim blocks, 400-penny spikes and zip ties, so I might have declined a little, er, forcefully. Fortunately, Angela is a friend of ours from Saturday Market, and was more than happy to be our neighbor.

The fact that we bring cookies probably didn't hurt.