Geez...Live & learn, I guess...

So, my car is packed to the brim for a big festival tomorrow, thousands of people. And I see this ad in my paper this week for a smaller town festival and figure why not? I'm all packed up already, right, even though I don't REALLY want to get home late tonight (because of the big festival in the morning) and have to clean everything up etc., but I can make a few hundred. So I call the town and ask them if I can bring my tent and do facepainting. She says they have rides and food vendors (plural) and they would LOVE to have me. They won't charge me a fee, just make a small donation to the non-profit club that sponsored it. Fine. So the small festival is tonight and I have to paint from 5-10 pm. Since part of it is in the dark, I go out and spend $50 on battery operated lights (not returnable since I threw away all the packaging), get myself ready and drive 35 miles to the festival (70 round trip). I get there 1 hr ahead to set up, NO ONE is there. There are THREE broken down looking rides and the food "vendors" (plural) is one cart with funnel cake. No other rides or vendors. This festival started last night (a Thursday, week of kids starting school?). I call the organizer, ask how she did last night. She says not many. I tell her (politely, cause I don't want a bad review on the net lol) that I had no idea it would be "so small" and that it takes a lot of work to do my whole tent, etc. setup and it doesn't look to me like it'll be profitable at all. She says nicely "she understands...maybe NEXT year". REALLY!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean don't you think an organizer would let you know how small something is and not "inflate" it? I was so mad!!! Well, live and learn, it'll never happen to me again, next time I'll ask how many rides? how many vendors? Guess I'm still too new at this! But maybe I'll save someone else MY mistake! Thanks for letting me vent..., back home now....aargh! Tina

Yes, ask lots of questions...

The good thing is those lights can be used for future events, so really not a waste:-)

I like it an area that is kind of like that---our Farmers market on the BEST day will have about 25 tents and only 12 of them will be veggies--the rest are jewerly, food, and one guy even brings his "yard sale" stuff and sets it out---the worst I have seen is 3 tents and 1 food tent. Ah the "joys' of a small town!