51. Even better

Previous - 50. A perfect day

Saturday

The problem with saying a day is "perfect" is what do you say when the next day is even better? If there was a cloud in the sky today, I missed it. It seemed warmer than on Friday but still not too hot. I caught part of Mary Chapin Carpenter's set (hard to hear, for some reason) but actually preferred KT Tunstall, who's name I didn't recognize but whose music I do know. There was a lot of good music on both stages. But that isn't why today was so special. 

For a year I've been thinking how I could sort all the vendor trash from the Arrow/Banjo stage area, and today I did it. To the best of my knowledge, no trash left the vendor area that was not sorted and labeled and ready to go directly into one of our dumpsters. I do realize this accomplishment can really only be appreciated by the people who have worked the back end of HSB where they have had to root around piles of black vendor bags knowing that each one has to be painstakingly sorted through -- because some contain rich deposits of compost along with a good dose of recycling. They are the bags everyone dreads having to sort. 

Again, this doesn't sound like that much of an improvement since I still had to sort all these bags at the little stations we've set up that the vendors have no idea how to use correctly. But opening a bag and quickly sorting it in the field (usually, though not always, into the landfill container) is different than sorting through a bag that has been hauled to the far end of the event, transferred from pile to cart to pile and maybe smashed under a pile of similar bags where it sits for days until someone drags it to a table to carefully sort.

This was my ultra-marathon and I finished. There's still one more day to go, but I'm actually holding up well. My new heavier under sock seems to be working. I expect to be feeling like a very old person tomorrow night -- making noises when I rise to my feet, for example. But I will be a very old person who has outworked most of my younger coworkers and totally rocked my (self-imposed) task. It doesn't get much better than that.

Also, our little platform, running between the compost and recycling dumpsters, has about the best view of anyplace at the event. I've been taking breaks up there just to enjoy the scenery and music. 

Next - 52. My dogs are barking