At one of my last parties, I realized
that I had thrown enough parties designed to get wild and meet lots
of cool people. I wanted to do something new. Something with a
bigger purpose in mind. Something that would leave people with warm
fuzzies. Something…for the children.
So, I started spreading the word about
people auctioning items off and donating the proceeds to charity.
People seemed genuinely interested in the idea and had lots of
creative ideas. So, I went for it. I planned the party the weekend
after the St. Louis Exchange and I knew that it was going to be
awesome. A few setbacks occurred, like getting sick during the
exchange which had lasting after-effects that kept my throat in a
constant state of dry-coughing hoarseness.
Thankfully, with the help of the best
man in the world, Lee
Gibson, I knew that nothing would get in our way. From the
beginning, Lee was the backbone of this operation. From coming up
with the name: “Tommebay”,
to designing the website,
to designing the “I
Gave Stuff” and “I
Bought Stuff” stickers, to auctioneering,
to building the hot-tub steps in the 13th hour, this man’s
presence reigned supreme over the party.
It would take forever to go over all of
the magical highlights of the party; however, in brief, some were:
- Auctioning Matt
Peck‘s pants
- Mary’s demonstration of Blues
Dancing with Becky
- My roommate, Mark, winning the
$105 bid for the “Date
with Amy”
- Finding Mark and Amy exploring new
items already. (Read the can)
- Kathy’s AMAZING painting of the
Shim
Sham steps.
- Matt
Peck bidding $250 on that same painting.
- The “Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy” Consultation
- Me freaking out after finding out
what cool stuff I missed out on in the “Assorted
CD 1” collection and finally
getting the “Assorted CD 2” box
- Rusty buying Sarah’s “Soon
There Will Be Art”
- Lee making Waffles at 3:30 AM for all of the late-night snackers.
- “The
Tingler Demonstration” (I have video. Wow.)
By the time the 3rd and last
set of auctioning was done, (1:30AM) everyone was in high spirits and
Lee announced that had raised $1695 for charities. At that point, my
heart froze.
I knew that we were going to make some
money. I knew that we were going to help some people out. I knew it
was going to be a good time. If we raised, say, $400, I was going to
be happy. But 1.7K?!?!
I’m very honored to have been blessed
with such cool people (with deep wallets. 🙂 ) to be able to pull
this off. There’s been mention of doing this again. Definitely.
Just let my my house recuperate for a while, ok?
–Tommy is feeling the warm fuzzies
P.S. I think that this must have
earned me some karma points, because I got pulled over for speeding
coming back from Movie
Night and got off with a warning. 🙂