I had something of an adventure this week.

This past Wednesday I worked as staff for the Toronto Art Expo at the Metro Toronto Convention Center. It was just a temporary thing. I got the offer to come and work from one of the folks I had met at the Shonen Knife concert last year who is in charge of hiring for the event. It was very cool to be thought of for an opportunity like this, as they were looking for artistically minded people.

Essentially, I was one of 20+ people there to help artists unloading their artwork from their vehicles and moving over to their booths. This work mostly consisted of wearing a red shirt and pushing wheeled carts, mixed with healthy doses of sitting around and waiting to push yet more wheeled carts. Occasionally I would be asked questions that I didn’t know the answer to and had no qualifications or authority to answer anyway, such as what to do when things went wrong with people’s booths. This was slightly annoying as all I was ever told about was related to pushing those wheeled carts.

Anyway, I worked for 11 hours, and while I can’t say it was grueling work, since there was plenty of time to sit in between the busier periods, it was hard enough to make it nearly impossible to walk out of the building when I was finished. I wasn’t tired, but my feet were absolutely killing me, and I’m still aching today. But it’s going to amount to some money in my pocket, and I got to see some cool people and eat some pizza, so it’s all good.

Best of all, the folks that I met at the Shonen Knife concert knew that they were going to see me again, and since I had to leave as soon as the concert ended, they got me a CD and had it autographed by the band! So now I have an autographed Shonen Knife CD. That totally rocks and I’m incredibly thankful for it. So it was definitely a great day in that respect.

I’d do it again at some point down the line if I was asked. But this experience has made me glad that I don’t do work like that on a regular basis because it really takes a lot out of ya.

Sayonara.