Santa Lucia Festival - Omaha

The Santa Lucia Festival is a celebration of an Italian Saint - Lucy. I don't know how she became a saint, but I know her festival is pretty kickin'. Working this festival were all of the ambassadors - Angie, Klink, Mana, Mom (JeraLee), Amanda, and myself, along with both IntraLot guys - Bobby and Mike, The Marketing Intern - Ben Benson, and of course, TJ.

There were bands all through the festival, a rather large carnival, beer, and good food. We were told at the begining of the festival that last year the festival was ended prematurely by "tension between rival families," so we were hoping to see some mob personalities, but instead the event was moderately dead, because everyone was afraid of what happened last year.

Right away, almost before we opened, we met our perpetual customer, Rob, the food guy. On the first day, he gave me a cigar...how cool is that. Just up and gave it to me. Throughout the festival he gave us cigars, food, even one of his children. Over the course of the weekend, Rob probably bought $400 worth of $1 Scratch tickets, recieving maybe $150 - $200 of it back. Rob walked away with truckloads - literally - of our free promotional items. He was a stand-up guy and a fun personality.

Some of the bands that performed were downright horrible. Most of them were mediocre. One or two of them were within the range of good to very good. I don't remember all of their names so I'm not even gonna try. TJ hyped the whole festival to us, because he's involved in the planning, and it really was less than great as a festival...nonetheless, with all of us working, we had a great time.

We had a little trouble with the satellite which runs the lotto machine, but of course, not enough trouble to warrant the stress level of Mike. We got it figured out and it was no big deal.

One of the nights, TJ went up to the restaurant (Rick's Cafe Boatyard - a deplorable name for a restaurant...why not Rick's Boatyard Cafe, or even Cafe Rick's Boatyard...anyway) and came back hammered. He played air guitar and hit on the girls (something he does all the time) including Rachel, who came by to visit and pick me up.

Even though we didn't hang out afterwords until the last night, we had a really good time at the event itself.

On Sunday, we decided to celebrate the end of our 60-hour weekend by going out to Randy's Grill and Chill at 48th and Holdredge (48th and Burger King, and Klink describes it) and had a good time. We got pretty drunk because Bobby decided to use his company alcohol budget on us...okay, so it's an "entertainment" budget. After the bar, we came back here to my place and hung out. Jason got a little upset because he had to work the next day, which is reasonable, but we had fun and got even more drunk. We even broke out a little bit of moonshine and lit it on fire for JeraLee.

The moral of the story is this:
Mediocre festival + Awesome co-workers + enjoyable job = great weekend.