In Which I am Utterly Spent

Against all odds, the exhibit that I was assigned not fully 2 months ago is open, or will be in a day or so. It was supposed to open Monday, but the local paper apparently promo-ed it as opening Sunday, and of course people will want to get into it tomorrow. Today we practically had to beat them off with a stick, as you could see into the installation area from the bottom curve of the ramp to the Lower Level. It did my heart good to hear that many kids screaming with anticipation... which was good, because it counteracted the palpitations I experienced during the two final case installations. We borrowed cases from another--VERY GENEROUS--museum to put 2 of the costumes loaned us by Lucasfilm into, as we don't really have large cases just hanging around. Those cases had some... structural integrity issues... during the installation process, which then led to problems with the graphics applications. One thing progressed to another, and by about 3:30 pm I was cussing (quietly) a blue streak while pulling velcro up, moving a large piece of vinyl 3mm to the left, sticking the velcro down, checking the position, unhooking the velcro, moving it 2mm right and 4 mm down, sticking the velcro, looking at it from the front again... Man, it was frustrating. Kudos to all my coworkers who valiantly put up with this and all sorts of other crap in the last couple of days. All told, things went about as smoothly as one could have imagined considering the hugely accelerated timeline. And I'm really happy with it. It was important to me to have a good product at the end of this--not just something satisfactory, or something that echoed the last venue that had these objects, but something new and interesting and cohesive and fun... and I think we did it. Come see it and find out for yourselves, if you can! Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Exhibition will be at our museum til next January 31. Oh, and there's a spaceship in the Welcome Center. Just so's you know.