Days Away

Well friends, here we are- our 9th Anniversary Celebration is only 4 days away! After all this work- all the calls, emails and trips to get auction items, sponsorship search, guest speaker hunt, etc. we are in the home stretch. Things are in a good place. However, I am filled with anxiety as usual. I have a headache that keeps coming and going and I don't get headaches very often and I've been having anxiety dreams. My biggest concern is event turnout- it is always an issue. You can have the best auction items in the world, but if you don't have many people there to bid on them, then it doesn't help. Last year, we raised $9,000, so hopefully we will meet that again. I've been working on following up with everyone I invited and posting the event in different places. I've also been asking people who are attending to bring friends, coworkers, etc. The weather is looking decent for Friday which is good. I'm doing everything I can and I'll keep working on getting people to show up. We are almost done with bid sheets. I was up until 3:30am last night working on them and some other things related to the event. Tonight, I did the slideshow of calendar photos that we play during the event. A friend of mine borrows a projector from his office and we use that to play the slideshow. He has helped do that for the past few years and it is always a big help. The guests love to see the slideshow. I added a few photos from our donations this year to the slideshow as well.

I picked up 3 more auction items today. I have two more to pick up this week- one on Wednesday in Providence and the other, hopefully tomorrow in Milford. Tomorrow, one of our board members who has done an awesome job in getting items, will be dropping off items here. I've given up on chasing down anymore auction items. There are a number of people who promised items that I'm having major difficulty getting a hold of. Since we are only 4 days away, I need to stop trying to get the items. It always happens this way. The good thing is that I can rest assured that I did everything possible to try to actually get the items.

I have two grants that I need to work on, but I'm not sure how much time I'll be able to spend this week on them. I will spend some time on it,but the major focus of the week is getting ready for Friday and following up with people to get them to attend. I also got word that Patrick Kennedy who is running for Congress will be stopping by our event, which is great news!

Well, that's the latest for tonight. Tomorrow, the goal is to get all the bid sheets finished, test the credit card machine and get a bunch of the other small details taken care of for the event. (live auction signs, stuffed animal decorations and other items to display at event) I also need to write my speech for the event and of course work on event attendance. I think I'll head to bed early- this headache is coming back. Until tomorrow friends...