It’s only taken 18 months, but life at the gallery is now a gentle routine. Said routine consists of frantically composing and constructing new enclosures, frantically sending out press releases for the next open house, running a Google search or five every hour to see if the press releases reached their intended targets, overdosing on pineapple frozen fruit bars (since I can’t drink) and needing to be tased before I can commission a giant mural to go on the outside back wall, going back home and crying on the cat, squeegeeing snot and tears off the cat before she’s stained green forever, finishing up the enclosures just before the open house, and opening the door to the public. I then listen for thunder, sleet, hail the size of hedgehogs and twice as friendly, tornado sirens, or what other meteorological atrocities Texas has in its quiver, and promise to take a local meteorologist out for dinner and tell him/her “there’s NO WAY you can be blamed for this, when you only got five minutes’ notice.” Then, once the last person leaves, it’s time to start it all over again. Just be glad I don’t do the enclosure construction in public where people are within reach, and when the cat is too far away.
Seriously, aside from the raging thunderstorm that blew in out of nowhere right at opening, and threatened to blow the whole of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex back to Lankhmar, this last open house really turned out well. The promised horsecrippler cactus ice cream was a hit, and we had enough left over that we’ll share the rest at the next open house. An old and dear friend brought his whole family, just in time to watch the sky open up atop nearly-white-hot pavement and watch the whole city become a communal steambath. A lot of new folks came out for the first time, and they didn’t seem to leave disappointed. And now for preparation for the next open house.
As for that next open house? Prepare for Saturday, October 13: the heat should break by then, that weekend won’t interfere with Halloween festivities, and the last of the drunks in town for the big UT-OU football game will have returned to doing whatever it is they do. We might even have wonderful weather for once. Watch for details.