DJing Saturday night in Oak Grove was one of the more traumatic experiences of my career.  After driving all the way there, my computer sound card went out.  Why or how, I have no idea because it worked fine an hour before I left.  I forgot to bring any blank CDs so I couldn’t burn any music to disc and play it that way, but I did search my car and found a couple blank discs in the trunk.  I popped them in and tried to burn music, but they must have been too scratched up to work.

I called the boss and told him my story and he began debating what to do.  There was no one on call and he was a long ways away.  I told him to hold on and see if any of my friends could come to the rescue.  The obvious answer was Lauren who was out at Green Mill with her sister, but her untrusty Probe was not able to make the trip.  I called Walsh, and he agreed to go up to our room, grab Lauren’s laptop, download iTunes, and drive all the way here.

I had about an hour and a half before the reception started though, so there was plenty of time to fix the problem.  There were still people filing in early, so I needed some music to tide them over.  I ran to my car and grabbed all my CDs, only to discover the CD player wouldn’t work!  I got on the phone and called the boss about my new problem, and to my absolute shock and dismay, most of the buttons on my phone stopped working!  Computer, broke.  CD player, broke.  Phone, broke.  I was freaking out.

Eventually I figured out how to fix the CD player and threw on a Travis and Jonny CD to tide the crowd over.  Soon, Walsh arrived with the backup laptop.  I transferred the important songs over via my external hard drive (what a life saver) and within five minutes, it was time for the grand march/introductions.  I was in the clear.  Thank you very, very much to Mr. Walsh and Sarah who took a couple hours out of their Saturday to help me out.  Much appreciated.

After that, things began looking up.  I noticed my chair at the DJ table was directly above an AC duct!  The sweating soon stopped and I was cool enough to even put on my suit jacket.  The bride and groom arrived from their little “kidnapping” excursion and were both overly nice.  That’s the last thing I needed was an unreasonable bride and groom.  And as the night went on, I realized this backup laptop of Lauren’s was far faster than my old DSU tablet PC.  Dinner was almost worth the ordeal alone.  I had the choice of filet mignon or walleye, and I opted for the fish.  Sixteen people gave speeches which put a mild damper on the night, but I ordered a couple whiskey Cokes from the bar and soon my mood went from overly stressed to somewhat upbeat.

The dance was a success.  Nothing went wrong all night.  At the end of the dance, the groom came up and started writing me a check for a tip, but as he was about to write my name, someone came up to him to say goodbye and he got distracted.  He wound up following this guy outside, midway through writing my check!  I didn’t want to be greedy, but I had no choice but to interrupt and remind the groom my gratuity had not been received.  He said, “I almost got away with stiffing you.  Now I need to give you a good tip.  A really good tip.”  He gave me $100 and some other dude came by and gave me four $1 bills.  I made it home by 1:20, 11 long hours later.