Showcase 2019:
Wednesday. Denise works with a client Wednesdays, so we hit the road a little after noon, arrive in Portland around 3:30. Showcase shares the hall with the Gathering of the Guilds, so our load-in is through a narrow ramp, two cars wide, at the south end of the hall, theirs through the much larger Commissioner's Lot on the north end, which they'll share with us after 4:00 pm. We decide to drop our bags at the motel first.
It's a good idea in theory, but our motel is about 5 miles out, towards the airport, as the rates were half what they're charging downtown. So we spend about 45 minutes in stop-and-go rush hour traffic on I-84 and 205 before arriving, stressed and exhausted, at the EconoLodge. The exterior doesn't look promising--they're remodeling, and the siding's torn off, air conditioners uncovered, light fixtures and fire alarm dangling by their wires. A big stretch of the concrete second floor balcony isn't--they've torn it up and haven't repoured yet, so we walk to our room over disturbingly bouncy oriented-strand board. But the elevator works, and the room is lovely, 70's kitschy furnishings--oval-backed chairs and fake-granite coffee table and night stands, and an amazing huge marquetry headboard on the kingsize bed.
We come back on surface roads to the Convention Center, taking notes of interesting restaurants, get there around five. Commissioner's Lot is empty, and the traffic crew waves us in, pulls out two huge carts for us to unload the van. We get everything in, set up the shelves and lights, do a little touch-up painting, then call it a night around 7:00.
Supper is enormous salad rolls and pho at
Pho Corner on Sandy Boulevard, about halfway back to the motel. And so to bed.
Thursday. Come in bright and early and start unpacking pots. I discover in my enthusiasm to fit as much as possible into the van, I've packed too tightly: Broke a pasta bowl and the plate that was supposed to be a spacer inside it, and later notice there's also a crack in a large batter bowl, from something smaller being forced inside. Sigh. These things happen. People frequently ask if I worry about kids breaking stuff in my booth. This rarely happens; I break far more of it myself.
Finish setting up and stowing the restock boxes around 12:30 and break for lunch. This gives me around three hours to kill until the Sales mandatory meeting at 4:00. They've gone to a new point-of-sale machine, using the Square system, and want to make sure everyone's trained. Most of us use Square on a tablet or phone, so the interface is familiar, though there are a few new details. We'll be recording cash and check transactions in the system as well, and if all goes smoothly, we'll test another feature on Sunday, flagging sales by potter as we enter them. If this works, peeling tags may become a thing of the past.
I can already tell this is going to speed things up--we're adding up our total sale on the register, rather than running tape on an adding machine first, and they process chip cards amazingly fast. No more waiting, twiddling thumbs, and humming the Final Jeopardy theme...
Denise is in the mood for Italian, so Google directs us to a nice little place called
Pastini, on a stretch of Broadway we've explored before. She has ravioli with shrimp, I get the chicken Marsala fettuccine.
Friday. We're in early so I can vote on Gallery awards. Brenda is putting finishing touches on her booth, with a big bucket of mulberry blossoms, when a hummingbird appears! It buzzes the blossoms, flies off to Charlie's booth when she turns to see what I'm excited about. It goes on to visit the flowers in booths all over the show--including plastic ones, sadly. We're all a little worried about the little thing. How will they get it out again? Jenn, whose booth is directly behind ours, is married to a Convention Center staffer, and he tells us they have a plan: after the show closes at 7:00, they'll turn off all the internal lights, open the doors to the Commissioner's Lot, and hopefully, it'll fly toward the light.
It's still around at 6:45. I see it lighting on a dogwood branch outside the Info Booth for a minute, then it zooms through Lobsang's booth and is gone again. A few minutes later, they make an announcement: Tea has caught the hummingbird! He's taken it outside and released it. Everybody cheers. Tea's booth is behind Lobsang's, so when it came over the wall, he reached up and caught it on the fly. Potter's hands, man. They're amazing.
Today is Denise's birthday, so we splurge, stop at
Clyde's, an old-school steakhouse, complete with the faux-crenellations on the facade, medieval-ish decor, red pleather banquettes and horseshoe booths. We both get prime rib and a salad, pay extra for the sautéed mushrooms, and stuff ourselves.
Saturday. Denise texts the cat-sitter to ask how the kitties are doing. Wait, you're out of town? is the reply.
Oh shit. We'd told her about the show end of March when we'd last gone out of town, and she said we were on her calendar. Neither she nor Denise confirmed before we left, and she was at Saturday Market and couldn't get to the house until evening. They'd been alone since Wednesday afternoon.
I knew they'd be okay for water; both the bathtub and bathroom sink have slow drips, and they drink there more often than from their water dishes. The food bowls would be long-empty, though, and the litter boxes didn't bear thinking of.
Fortunately, our neighbor Bob, a retired log truck driver, had given me his phone number for emergencies some time ago. I called him up, told him where to find the emergency key, and he let himself in and put out fresh food and water. He's a dog person, so rather than trying to explain how to clean litter boxes by phone, I told him to just put a bunch of fresh litter down over the top. Didn't see the kitties, but later that evening, we got a text from Carol with a picture of both of them on the table. I fully expect to be fawned over Sunday night. Or murdered in our beds. One of those.
Supper is comfort food,
Namaste Indian Cuisine on Weidler. We soothe our jangled nerves with buffet biryani, pakoras, korma, curry and chicken tikka masala.
Sunday. I always seem to get the early-morning Demo shift, perhaps because they know I never go to the after-party Saturday night. At least three people have told me they plan to come back for the demo, and in fact all do, some of them staking out front row seats. In fact, the whole place is full, all the seats taken and people standing at the sides. I walk them through my glazing set-up, decorate a few bowls, then make some paintbrushes, glaze more bowls, repeat.
My favorite part of these things is audience participation. I'll hold up a bowl, pick someone and say "What's your favorite animal?" Then proceed to draw it. I did a monkey, white rat, tiger, bunny.
There's a middle-aged Japanese couple, might have been tourists, might have been with the visiting Hokkaido potters, but she was watching from my right side, taking pictures, he on the left, so I asked her for an animal. She didn't have the English name; after some cross-stage discussion, neither did he. She was able to say "big tail." While the audience made unhelpful suggestions (Elephant? Really?), she typed it into her phone, and showed me "Squirrel." So I painted my new baby squirrel pattern, which she delightedly photographed.
Treated ourselves to hot lunch at the Convention Center Grill--burger, grilled chicken sandwich, fries. I forget once again to check my sales numbers while Chris is out in the hallway with the laptop, so I only know we've been re-stocking steadily all weekend and I took three empty boxes out to the van this morning. We've run out of frog banks and octopus stew mugs, tall mugs, well, almost everything tentacled. All the pie plates are out, as is an extra small baker filling a blank spot, and we're down to one each rooster, hen and cat painted mugs. It's been a good weekend.
The show closes at 4:00, and the show furnishings truck has priority at the loading ramp, so we pack up pots and I wheel out cartloads to the parking lot while Denise continues to take down shelves. Hand truck wheels scream like the damned on the first load, but I happen to have silicone spray in the van, so subsequent trips are much quieter. Last load goes out at 7:00, and we're on the road shortly afterward.
Supper is sandwiches in the van. We're home a little after 9:00. Cats have yet to let us out of their sight.
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Last week was... challenging. 
Coulda been snakes.
