Midnight Tour

Tomorrow is the big day. 450 or so ventriloquists will travel the short distance from the Drawbridge Inn to the driveway of my home.

The work is (mostly) over. The yard is mowed. The flower beds are mulched and (after the mowing) remulched. The pavement has been swept. The house has been cleaned from top to bottom. Well, I didn't clean the attic and I didn't clean the basement, so "top to bottom" is a misnomer. Let's say the house has been cleaned from "a little south of the middle to a little north of the middle." In any event, it's more than anyone will see.

Tonight--any minute now, in fact--will be the 2nd annual Midnight Tour. This was Jeff Dunham's idea from last year (At least, I think it was HIS idea. I remember there were about 5 of us in a huddle trying to figure out how to raise cash for the museum. I THINK he came up with the idea). Jeff auctions off to the highest bidder (a waste of words. Who else would you acution off to? The 4th from the highest bidder? The bidder with the pinkest shirt?) a midnight tour of the museum and Jeff's the guide. It's really just a chance for people to get to hang out with Jeff for a while and to hear about the museum from someone who is pretty intimately knowledgeable about it. Jeff has been an adviser for years, and in the early days, when he was just starting out, he used to save the cost of a hotel room when he was in town and stay over at the museum. He's been coming to the conVENTion since he was a teenager, and he knows a lot about the collection. In the eight years we've been here he's even repaired a number of the figures. So he has lots to share about the museum. This year, from what Lisa told me, the auction raised $1,800. Six people put in $300 each, so there's a crowd coming over.

I may or may not go out to see them. I'm pretty tired. And the girls are asleep in their rooms. They're going to wake up tomorrow and want breakfast, and they won't care whether or not I went to bed at 11:30 or stayed up until the wee hours of the morning.

This is our 9th convention at Vent Haven, and I've never gone this long without going to the Drawbridge Inn. Even the first year I went to the Advisers Meeting on Friday, but this year I've been doing child patrol all week. And I really don't mind it. I like the ventriloquists. They're an all right group of people. But I really haven't missed being over there.

I think I might be drifting off, so my body seems to be deciding for me about whether to join the midnight tour. Maybe if I get up from this computer and walk around I'll get a renewed sense of energy. I'll try that and let you know later what happened.