Auction Hero

The 3rd annual Mining for Silver Dinner and Auction was last night at The Rice Palace and if you weren’t there, then you missed out on what was a really, really fun time, and I’m not just saying that because I was on the committee. I’m saying that because of how I feel this morning – bone-tired and a tad hung over – but, basking in the glow of what I think was a job well done.

Not only did the donors come through – we had 76 silent auction items and 7 live auction items – so did our auctioneer, Mr. Dylan Out-Of-The-Box Bolin. Check out his website. I put a link up for it to make your lives that much easier.

His job description for the evening was to “. . . separate you from your money . . .” which was difficult since on that particular day, Wall Street took a nose dive, but Dylan managed to pry the cash from the audience’s cold dead hands. How? He did it with his surgically sharp wit.

He started off with a little story about how he and his wife had recently become home owners, and how that brought to the fore the importance of the neighborhood . . . and how, since he and his wife signed so many papers – enough to make the recently passed Health Care Bill look like a leaflet, he has morphed into That Guy, the one who is a little anal retentive about lawn care issues, especially that no-man’s land of your lawn, that little strip of sod between the sidewalk and the curb, which, by the way, is property of the Forestry Division, which I would have thought involved more shrubbery and a better habitat for furry woodland creatures instead of weeds and a few casually tossed, empty 40 ouncers.

He added that extra something that was lacking in auctions past . . . I did the duty last year, and I thought surely it would launch my stand-up career, instead it was my David Letterman-Academy-Awards moment. Ouch.

They are still tallying up the numbers, but, how ever they come in, this year’s auction was a hit, not a miss.