The auction's over

Kinda sorta almost over. I've been working on the kids' school auction for the past two months, and for the last three weeks in every waking minute that I was not working on my regular job, the new house , or the old house. I was the technical and business guy on an auction committe comprising 5 moms and me. The hours are brutal -- I was up till at least midnight every night, usually past 1 am, and several times past 2. It's strange that I felt such a sense of duty, responsibility, and dedication to a non-paying job that interferes with my paying job.

Leading up to the auction, I kicked it into high gear with data entry, scheduling, printing gift certificates, bidder sheets, guest lists, etc. For the last two years, I helped out by developing a slide show that is shown during the live auction, with one slide per page. I also did photo slide shows to display before and after the live auction. This year, I got someone else to do the live auction slide show, and she did it much faster than I would have. I guess I tend to be a perfectionist and slow, and she was good and fast. I stll did the phto slide show, taking a couple of nights, and then the show did not get used on the night of the auction. What a waste. Well, at least my company will pay the school for my volunteer hours (at $12.50 an hour!) For last Friday and Saturday, that will be a cool $400.

On the night of the auction, my highly untrained volunteers and I managed to record almost every winning bid, donation, and pledge correctly, in a frenzy of flying paper, gift certificates, and bags of items. We had the auction at the new school building this year, so I was able to plug into the school's network, and used their copy machine as the printer for the event. That kicked ass compared to last year, when my wife had the print server die on her in the middle of checkout. Many people came to us after the big rush was over, and said we looked professional, organized, and efficient. From the other side of the desk, I felt that it more like controlled chaos, but I'm glad we projected the appearance of organization. I had meditated long on the checkout procedure, and while it did not work as smoothly as I had hoped, we were able to get it done. There is just not enough time between the end of the silent auction and when people start coming at you, requesting their total and items.

After the auction, we kept going, entering missed bids, reprinting invoices, and generally cleaning up. The next day, I went in and did more of the same. Of course, my wife had scheduled two family events for the afternoon, and called to give me a ration of guilt. I had literally moved my home computer to the school for the auction, and so rushed the hell out of there, running down the ramp to my car with all the paperwork and computer equipment. I work well under pressure, but only if I can concentrate on the job at hand. I am very bad at rushing to get out the door, and will inevitably leave something behind.

We got the kids their bikes for their birthdays, but cancelled the family dinner with her nephew.

In the following days, I re-checked every bid, every payment in cash, check or credit card, and handled inquiries from guests missing their items, or had not paid. The scariest part was transmitting the credit card data to the bank, knowing that if anyone called, my call waiting would destroy the upload. The upload is done via a credit card terminal that has no * key, so I couldn't disable call waiting. Luckily, no one called while I was doing it.

Now, I just have to mail out a few invoices and gift certificates, and collect from a couple of rejected credit card holders and deadbeats who didn't pay at all. And then I will be DONE forever! We are not returning to the school next year, so someone else will have the pleasure that I did this year. Now it's on the the move, taxes, selling the old house, and kids' birthdays.