Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

I thought about having this locked down to just the KC folks, but what the hell, some of the rest of you might be interested, too.

Here's the deal: Every year, forever, the Gaia Community has done an arts-and-crafts show (the Winter Bazaar, if you've been following along) as a winter fund-raiser. Every year, we make about $1000 on this event. We have put a lot of work into making it bigger and better, which means that we make more money every year, but it also costs more money (and more time) every year, leaving us with a steady profit of, yep, $1000. Getting volunteers to assist with the thing is difficult, getting someone to manage the thing is nigh impossible. Attendance is generally poor. So I'm thinking, this sucks, let's not do it anymore. If we don't do it, we need to come up with some other fund-raising concept that will make at least $1000 profit for the organization.

zylch and I spent some time this evening kicking around the idea of having a Yule Ball, some sort of reasonably upscale (but not obnoxiously upscale) costume and/or fancy dress party experience instead. There would be music and dancing and probably food, and possibly a silent auction and/or raffle. It would be a holiday party that you could take your significant other(s) to, regardless of gender, number, or preferred lifestyle arrangement. It would have a magical theme (possibly but not necessarily something Harry-Potter-ish). There is every possibility that there would be games and/or some sort of participatory art experience. There would be a door charge, previously mentioned silent auction/raffle, and possibly sales of non-alcoholic beverages (because we probably can't get a liquor license).

The thing is, we've not done an event like this. I have no sense at all of whether there would be enough interest in it to make it work or not. Hence, a preliminary investigation, very unofficial. Feel free to comment further on the concept. (Also, if you really love the Winter Bazaar, feel free to defend its continued existence. Nothing's been decided yet at all.)

[Poll #1241479]

WANTED: Your help with the Gaia Community Bazaar.

The Bazaar is, for those who haven't witnessed it, a weird little arts and crafts show, where you can show up, shop for handmade stuff, eat delicious cake, have a massage and a Tarot reading, and now, watch a lovely belly dancer and other entertainment.

It's going to be April 26 at Center High School, 8715 Holmes Road in Kansas City, MO. The Bazaar runs from 10:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., with space open for vendors from 8:30 to 10:30. Registration as a vendor for the event is $50, or $30 for Gaia Community members. Tables are available for a rental fee of $7 each.

If you are a reasonably local person (or willing to come in for the weekend) who makes and sells art, crafts, or ritual stuff, and you'd like to vend with us, you can register here. If you have a friend who fits the bill and would like to take part in our show, please feel free to send the information on. Registrations should be in by 4/16. The event is targeted at Pagan, New Age, and other such folks, but they're probably not the only people who will walk through the door.

Thanks for reading - I imagine there will be a few similar solicitations from me in the days to come as we try to get this thing up and running.

Thanks to the wonders of antibiotics, I am back at work today. Sadly, triadruid seems to be succumbing to some of my various and sundry germs, and is at home resting. I have profound hopes that we will all three be well by the time we leave to go on vacation in a few weeks. I have it on good authority that it was 85 in Miami on Saturday, so I'm looking forward to getting a little bit of that.

The Bazaar went off with only a few hitches. A few people didn't show up, a few people did show up who I didn't expect, the parking lot was wretched and probably drove off shoppers, and late in the day, we almost had some sort of gang war between bazaar vendors and a group of people who wanted to put on a dance show. Other than that, it was fine. Gaia made exactly as much profit as we always make. It doesn't seem to make a difference where we have the event, how much we pay in advertising and space rental, how many vendors we have or who they are, our profit is exactly the same every year. I have no idea why.

On Sunday, we considered ourselves to be profoundly Off Duty, so we spent a lot of the day playing mindless video games and trying to establish a definitive set of cartesian coordinates to describe the Pirate/Ninja/Monkey/Robot thing. This mostly failed, as we found that it is almost impossible to define any quality that reliably differentiates pirates from monkeys. More research will almost certainly be required.

We also did a little bit of espionage, and went down to the Holly Holly Holly Holidays show, which seems to be the main competition for the Winter Bazaar, both for vendors and for shoppers. (I think there are three Hollys in the name. Some perverse part of my brain often renders the show name as Polly Wolly Doodle Days, but what can you do?) We picked up some good ideas, which will need to roll around in my brain and rattle out at the 2007 Bazaar Planning Meeting, which we'll probably do in a few weeks. Ah yes, it's the biggest, most stressful event of the year, so as soon as I finish one, I have to start planning the next one. I'm not in charge of the next one, though. I mean it this time.

Just a reminder -- the 8th Annual Gaia Community Winter Bazaar! Saturday, December 2, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., at the Bannister Mall. Come shop for all your pagan friends (and your non-pagan friends, too). We'll have jewelry, gifts, clothing, accessories, toys, leather goods, perfume, soaps, candles, drums and drum goodies, ritual tools, dolls, pottery, stained glass, books, music, herbal products, and a whole lot more. Also, tarot readings, yummy baked goods from the Kitchen Witches (including The Infamous Rum 31 Flavors of Booze Balls), and chair massage will be available. There will be a raffle for some Fabulous Stuff at 5:30 p.m.

Come and join us for some fun, low-stress, unique holiday shopping -- we'll be downstairs at the north end of the mall. I hope to see some of you there!

The roads are covered in frozen shite, I've got a sore throat, a nasty cough and a fever, and on top of that, FIVE, count-em FIVE of my 30 Winter Bazaar vendors have canceled or strongly think they might not be able to make it.

I think I might go crawl in a hole and die now.

I am definitely not going to work today.

Feh.

Ahem. Also, if you want to get in on the Winter Avarice Gift Exchange 2.0, please send me an email by Wednesday. Details are in this post. If you'd rather reply to the post (or this post, or whatever) than email, that is also okay.

See, if I get all the responses by Wednesday, then I can have people matched and info sent back out by Thursday, so that all you local types can potentially come and purchase your exchange gift at the Winter Bazaar on Saturday. Go-go cross-marketing. I are smart.

I ran out of meds yesterday. This is not a big thing. Just call and refill, right? Sure.
Except that I took my empty med bottle and pulled the sticker with the prescription number off of it, so that we could store glitter in it at the office. I threw the sticker away. I are smart. Godsdammit.

In other news, Winter Bazaar is 12 days away. I have practically no tables. I haven't sent vendor packets yet. I was going to do packets last night, mais non. I had a Yule planning meeting. So they will probably get done tonight. Right between going to the post office, going to the pharmacy, going to the grocery, and making something to take to Thanksgiving on Thursday. Oh yes. What a week it is turning out to be.

ETA: Fortunately, zylch left behind some of her meds. Not the same dosage as mine, but still better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

This week's Free Will:
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In his book *Thumbsucker,* Walter Kirn explores the tension between security and passion. We all yearn to feel safe, he says, and yet we also need to express our native wildness, which is crucial in giving us a visceral sense of being ourselves. If we put too much emphasis on being careful, we squelch our primal urge for unpredictability and lose touch with our need to play. According to my analysis of the omens, Leo, you're at the end of a phase when caution and self-preservation have made sense. Don't wait too much longer before you put your ass on the line in search of too much fun.

Already this week I've had about seven bad ideas that smelled too good to ignore (not too good to not pursue, mind you). Thanks a damn lot, Rob.

Not that I have time to pursue bad ideas, anyway. Tonight, opaljax and I are working on brakes. The rest of the week is written off for getting information out about Winter Bazaar. Saturday, people from Dallas are coming to talk about our church and how they can make their church work better. Sunday there's more Dallas, and a ritual. Next week, I'm finding tables for the Bazaar, and maybe working on some of my stuff to sell. Wednesday night, we're going to triadruid's family's place for Thanksgiving on Thursday. Friday next looks pretty clear, though. Maybe I could have some bad ideas then.

I neglected to mention, in my wretchedness last night, that just as we were getting out of the car from coming home last night, there was a stag meandering down the middle of the street. We went to the front of the house to look at him. He stopped to look at us. I'm trying to get over my deer issues, you know. "You stay on your side of the street, buddy," I warned him. He looked at me, as if to say the same thing, and then wandered off. You may not know this, but deer hate me. Not only have I been involved in a number of deer v. car interactions, but also, I have been personally attacked by deer in the past. In fact, most hoofed mammals seem to have a problem with me. Horses will wander from the other side of the paddock to bite me. Goats will... well, drink my beer, but I'm pretty sure goats will drink anybody's beer, so I suppose that doesn't count. I don't know why I'm the target of hoofed-mammal hate, but there it is.

Also, since Winter Bazaar is practically upon us, I spent some quality time making jewelry last night. I finished all of Diva's commissions, which is good. (I like to have commissions, because they guarantee I'll get paid for the piece, but I also dislike them, because I'm never sure that what I make will live up to people's expectations. I'm neurotic like that.) Then, I had the Song of Amergin in my brain (for which I blame the deer), so I made three or four pieces that were based on that. I'm trying to work out whether I should label them with the lines they're about when I take them for sale. On the one hand, I'm pretty sure people are more likely to buy a piece that has a title, but on the other, how pretentious!

Apparently, I spent too much time yesterday thinking about 8elements' alternate lives. I dreamt last night a vast mishmash of possible me... Blech. The important part was that recurring throughout all the lives was a dragon-shaped hole. Everybody acted like it was a dragon, but it was always visually represented by the arrangement of other objects around it, so that they would outline a dragon. The dragon itself was never seen, just a dragon-shaped space where other things weren't. In one part of the dream, we took it to the movies, and the movie was about a dragon, but it wasn't a dragon, just a dragon-shaped space. And so on. Also, at one point, it rained caterpillars, which I cannot abide. Caterpillars are the world's tumorous outgrowths and they make me ill.

All of this, as horrible as it was, was not enough to wake me. What woke me was a sequence in which I was trying to plan the Winter Bazaar, and crimson_owl was on the phone asking me to explain to him every detail of everything that was going to happen at the event.

The Winter Bazaar is eating my soul. I think it will be someone else's job next year. Had I been bright enough to build a best practices book last year, it would have been someone else's job *this* year, but I was lazy. Not so this time -- who inherits the job from me will also inherit a wiki on the damned thing. Surely that will absolve me of the guilt of handing someone else the job, right?