The Auction Party

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. :)