Extravaganza count down - 4 hours till dance off

Well, tonight is the big PARSA end of year extravaganza. I am taking a quiet moment just now, away from the frantic organising, to gather my thoughts, and dump them onto my blog for the world to see.

The DJ is booked, the belly dancing is organised, the band is tuned up, the prizes have been purchased (everything from a soccer ball to woopee cushions .. its class all the way!), and the tickets have been sold (though not a sell out unfortunately). The only thing left is to decorate the room, and quietly disappear into a corner of the room and get quietly drunk, pretending none of this has anything to do with me. Although this may be difficult given I'm the MC.

In all honesty, I think it will be a good night .. Probably not quite as good as it could have been (with more people), but a good night nonetheless. Its PARSA's last social function (apart from a Christmas party for the representative council), and I'm looking forward to a bit of a break from the social events. This one has caused me a fair bit of stress, yet when I talk about why its stressful, its hard to pinpoint any one thing. What I will say is that on the last official day of ticket sales, we only had 30 tickets sold, and I was very worried .. two days after the "last official day", we have 89 people coming! So ticket sales, relatively speaking, have been booming.

There have been other stresses. Our DJ and band has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride from the start. Somehow, just two days before the event, our $600 deal with a local band/DJ promoter has blown out to $850 because they needed to hire sound equipment! Despite the fact that I was assured they would be able to source the sound equipment from somewhere, and that I "need not worry about it".. in addition, we have been forced to put the DJ before the band because the DJ has to be somewhere else (I think). Can't wait to see our treasurer's face when he sees the budget blow out on this one.

It hasn't all been bad. The ANU Union, who are providing the venue and catering, have been excellent. I have been ringing Fiona in the office all week, making adjustments to floor plans, and adding numbers to the booking.. Although my last phone call was actually to reduce numbers because I figured out, after three days, that I had made two booking for the one person (they had rang me, and emailed me, but because they were hard to understand on the phone, I wrote their name down incorrectly. I found this out an hour ago!


Despite some stress, I am glad we have managed to pull this off (well, we haven't yet, but all is in place, as much as it can be). Whatever the outcome, I am looking forward to some quieter days .. hmmm .. Maybe even research (which of course means more blogging!).