Last week, Kyle and I emceed the Star Seekers Charity Dinner for the Grand Forks Children’s Museum.  We co-emceed (Tri-emceed?  What do you call it when there are three emcees?) with an awesome woman named Brittney.  As Brittney is a much-loved community figure and an excellent emcee, and as I am a nasally narcissist who didn’t want attendees saying things like, “Hey, let’s get rid of this nasally narcissist and bring back Brittney,” we – Kyle, Brittney, and I, but mostly me – decided that Brittney would do introductions and announcements, Kyle would do the games, and I would do the live auction portion, which I selected because it was only five items and should have been the shortest part.

The live auction should have been the shortest part because the evening was a “Star Waiter” event in which local celebrities “waited” on tables to earn tips in the form of donations to the museum.  Since the celebrities were paired up with actual waiters and waitresses there was little actual tablewaiting, and instead the celebs spent the time trying to get tips in more creative ways.  For example, one of the celebrities was hockey player Jocelyne Lamoureux, who let attendees pose for photos wearing one of her Olympic gold medals for the low price of a $20 tip.  As you can guess, Jocelyne (and her sister Monique, also an Olympic gold medalist) spent most of the night taking pictures with people because how often does a person get to see an Olympic gold medal in real life, let alone wear one?!

Obviously, the italics on the word “should” above have given away that the live auction was NOT the shortest part of the night.  It was, arguably, the whole night.  This was due to two reasons: 1) both the attendees and the waiters were incredibly generous with their gifts; and 2) I, a person who – hard brag – had emceed several auctions before that evening, didn’t know how to lead an auction.

Let’s start with #2.

Like I said, I’ve emceed other auctions.  I’ve never led an auction.  The first auction item of the night was a Christmas cookie baking party with Food Network star Molly Yeh (who lives in East Grand Forks, Minnesota, for you dear readers who aren’t in the Midwest).  I gave my little spiel about Molly, let everyone know that if you really appreciated your friends and loved ones (and wanted to show up everyone else at your office cookie exchange) you’d win this activity and make the greatest Christmas cookies in town, and reminded the crowd that all of the money from the auction was going to the Children’s Museum and if they didn’t donate they probably hated kids, and then turned to the side to let the auctioneer do his or her thing.

Except that I should have looked down at my own self, because I was the auctioneer…which I knew, obviously, but didn’t really process until that moment.

In summary, here’s how I did as an auctioneer: not great.  For one, I didn’t do that thing that auctioneers do where they make a bunch of repetitive sounds or whatever to keep everyone jacked up.  Instead, I just kept telling crappy jokes.  Two, I kept forgetting the last bid; several times, the audience had to remind me where we were in terms of dollar amounts.  And three, sometimes I’d get so wrapped up in telling my crappy jokes and trying to remember where we were in the bidding that I’d let the auction go on too long.

Which brings me back to #1:

One of the best parts about living in North Dakota is that people are always willing to step in to help.  Since I was standing up there doing a sucky job of taking a million hours to auction off each item, several of the guests and waiters started offering up more things for me to auction off to help raise money for the Museum.

“One of the guests asked Kathy to auction off a wine social at her house,” Brittney whispered to me as I left the stage to give a few minutes between the first auction item and the second.  The Kathy she was referring to was the wife of the President of the University of North Dakota; both she and her husband were waiters and had already raised a bunch of money that evening by selling their homemade toffee (Kathy) and doing one-armed push-ups (Dr. Armacost).  I went back up on stage and auctioned off the wine social, which went for a boatload because the Armacosts are the Brittneys of UND (aka much loved).

With that event now auctioned off, again, I went to leave the stage – and, again, Brittney stopped me to tell me that one of the guests would donate two tickets to a sold-out social event, and another guest would donate HER two tickets to a sold-out hockey game.

Long story short, this went on all night.  I ran out of crappy jokes about the third joke in and had to bring our very good sport of a mayor up and make him promise to take off his shirt if an item went for a certain amount, and then I had to promise his wife that he would keep his shirt on if it raised even more.  I had to bring up a hockey coach – also a very good sport – and get him to agree to wave to a winning bidder during a game, which I’m not even sure is allowed; I guess we’ll find out in a few weeks.  I was supposed to leave room for musical performances between auction items, and we had so many surprise auction items by the end of the night that we only got to three songs.

We got home that night in time to see the Minnesota Vikings make a big comeback and win their first regular season game.  The organizer of the event said they raised more money than last year, and that was a win, too.  I also made the executive decision to leave the auctioneering up to actual auctioneers – so, really, everyone won that night.

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The photo above is two of the three emcees of the evening. Fortunately for Brittney, she and I never had a chance to take a photo together.

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This week on North Dakota Today we talked about Ronan Mitchell, my Nice Person of the Week, as well as 50 years of making beautiful music in Bismarck-Mandan.. (Valley News Live)

This isn’t nice news, but Marilyn Hagerty was a really nice person and a writing legend and lived a lovely life. (Grand Forks Herald)

Are you in Grand Forks?  Want some free corn?  Cans 4 Corn is TODAY. (Facebook)

Speaking of corn, Grand Forks’ Community High School students picked corn for those in need. (Facebook)

It’s Suicide Prevention Month. Take advantage of the beautiful weather by participating in one of North Dakota’s Out of the Darkness Walks.  You can find a list of them at Oops Only Good News. (Oops Only Good News)

For the fourth year, the Devils Lake Fire and Iron Firefighters Motorcycle Club have taken an annual ride in support of Altru’s autism diagnostic clinic. (Grand Forks Herald)

Have you ever thought, “Boy, I could really use a pencil“?  Well, are you in LUCK. (Facebook)

North Dakota Staff Sgt. Alex Borah was reunited with his family – including his 2-day-old son – after a 6-month deployment with the NDANG. (Facebook)

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