Small Town Networking

The other day, I had signed up to work the annual county business and industry show – this is my 4th year working the show; third year for working it for the community theater.  I always sign up for this job because I find it fun.  Lots of people in the theater thank me profusely for working it; I guess they don’t find it fun?  I wonder why I like it so much… Well, first of all, I get to hang out with adults all day – that’s a plus and not something I’m used to.  And there’s the food – Dairy Queen has a booth about 5 away from ours every year where they give away samples of ice cream cake – YUM.  And then there are the spice people in the gym – they give samples of delicious spiced chicken.  Also in the gym are the dairy farmers with their samples of cheese – usually, but I didn’t see them this year; darn economy, I guess.  But a new booth this year was Myro’s Pizza, and they were giving samples of their baked potato soup (for a donation – you can’t give that stuff away for free, it’s TOO good!).  Most of all, I like working the Business and Industry show because I like meeting people from the area, spreading the word about the theater, and just being a part of and learning about things going on  in the county.  I always see many people I know; people I haven’t seen in awhile and some I see every day, and that’s always fun.  I usually work the show with a friend beside me, and we can chat in between “customers”.  That person usually introduces me to people whom I’ve heard of but haven’t yet met which is also fun.

This was an exciting year; we were very busy until about 2-3 pm, and during the busy time, we had many people who were interested in our theater – from audience to backstage stuff to kids stuff to donating things – I saw interest in almost every facet of the theater.  And there was interest in auditions for parts in plays; including a male who sings.  Those are an endangered breed around these parts.  I sure hope he shows up for auditions for our musicals.
At our booth, we had a display of pictures from our last show.  A passer-by pointed at one and said, “He used to be my neighbor.”  And I said, “That’s funny, he used to be my neighbor too!”  Turns out, the lady has been my next door neighbor for 2 years, and I didn’t even know it!

And the Humane Society had 6 adorable 6-week-old kittens at the B and I show!  I want a cat so badly – I did research on the internet to find out if they’ve come up with some miracle cure for cat allergies, but they have not.  In fact, webmd.com kept saying that people with cat allergies should refrain from getting a cat.  That’s enough to stop me for now, but I don’t know for how long…

So anyway, it was a great show  – I did actually get a little bored, but only because the action slowed down right as my co-worker had to leave.  I read our theater’s cookbook cover-to-cover, which was nice because I’ve barely had a chance to look at it before now.  It’s a nice cookbook, and I’m going to try a recipe from it for game night – had another frustrating trip to Walmart to shop for the ingredients.  But I don’t want to go off on a Walmart tangent right now; things are calming down for nighttime.  I did notice that the cookbook has my peanut butter bars recipe (MMmmmm, peanut butter bars!) under Halloween treats, where they don’t belong as they’re just a regular dessert.  Oh well, they’re somewhat easy to make and really good – I have to make those again soon!

Lisa