Crafty Bastards!

So the Ullman clan took a nice little jaunt up to the nation's capital for the Washiington City Paper's fantastic Crafty Bastards Arts and Crafts fair last weekend. We drove up on Saturday afternoon (didn't want to leave too early, as we were making our first non-grandparents overnight trip with the midget, and you just never know how a three-month-old is gonna react to a whole mess of unfamiliarity) to Brooke's BFF Alycia's house, smack dead in the middle of the gritty city. Had a fine dinner of Gino's East Deep Dish Chicago Pizza (delivered directly from the restaurant in Chi-town) with Alycia, her husband Jim, her brother Aaron and mom Linda, who are just about the nicest goddamned people you could ever hope to meet. Later, not even a close, exciting Florida-Auburn football game could keep me from falling asleep by a little after ten.

A little after nine the next morning, the girls dropped me off at the Marie Reed Learning Center in Adams Morgan to get ready for the show. The whole shebang is held outside, and the weather was fantastic. I checked in with PopIdiot pal Kelly Alder and threw my table together. I had some new goods to sell (Cartoon Cuties stickers and button set, Atom Bomb Bikini #5) , and I was really anxious to see how they'd do with the public.

The next seven hours are a blur of confusion, conversation and commerce. The people really turned out for the show...it was crowded all day long. So crowded, in fact, that aside from a few trips to the Port-o-let, I didn't have a single chance to walk around and check out the other booths. It was a madhouse. It was a mad-hizzouse! Brooke, Evie and Alycia showed up at around noon after grabbing some lunch, as did my BFF Billy Burg with his wife Laura and little girl Addie. Unfortunately, with all that was going on, I didn't get to shoot the breeze too much...but it's always a treat to see the guy!

A little before five, I closed up shop and packed up my things for the return trip back to Richmond. Evie, who'd been an absolute trooper all weekend long* needed a bottle and a diaper change, so we stopped at a Burger King along I-95 and decompressed a bit. Good thing too, because without food in our bellies and a clean diaper on the midget, the hour we spent in crawling traffic twenty minutes north of Richmond might've resulted in disaster or homicide, rather than just abject frustration.

*Really, I can't say enough about this kid. In the face of all kinds of visual stimulation and a sea of loud noises, not to mention being held by like twenty different people in the space of 24 hours, Evie kept her cool completely, never got more than a little fussy, never freaked out and screamed...she just did her thing, napped here and there, smiled a lot and basically showed everyone that she's the cutest baby ever. How lucky am I?