When we returned to Gray Area, Julia seemed a little calmer.  I think the more controlled environment settled everyones nerves a little bit.  She desperately wanted to finish our presentation early, so I left her alone in her element to do the video editing, while I assembled the seats, 3D prints, lights, camera, and everything in between as a indoor art exhibit.  Fun fact: this was actually my first time making an "art installation" for a gallery!  Pretty cool.

whee- My first ever art card thingy on a fancy podium.  I scribbled my hackaday.io name on there, and Julia added her contact, too

Andre was super helpful finding me some screws, and thanks to (I think it was  Steve) we were given permission to drill into the tall white support pillars that made up the minimalist decor in the space.  I thought it was cool of them to let me do that.  I was about to hot glue the spikes onto one of the metal chairs (fun tip, hot glue peels off hard sufaces easily with isopropyl alcohol), but I think Julia's rebellious exploration had reached its limit - she pleaded for me to get permission first.  A day earlier, I would've argued this (hot glue is freedom!!), but I could see she was stressed, so I agreed to ask, and was granted permission to dispense the hackers #1 adhesive.

The display we got to use was epic - 4K (or maybe 8K?) showing every hair on my chiny chin-chin

Everything got set up in a breeze.  It felt so empowering to have planned ahead with my tools and parts to meet the needs of the moment.  Nothing was left to chance or stress, and I needed no last minute runs for anything.  We cleaned up the extension cord appearance, as Julia added some background street noise to the final video presentation.  I felt a little local music could add some spice, and so we included "Freestylin' at the Fortune 500" at a very low volume as a backing track.  You couldn't hear during the show, but I'll be damned if I'll miss an opportunity to give promotion to The Coup (legit Oakland hip hop!)

Olof was so ontop of it, running around asking 'anything else you need help with?' He is not naturally blurry :P

Thanks to Julia's impeccable time management, we ended up finishing absolutely everything for our presentation a couple hours early.  It felt weird to have so much time to kill before the "grand opening" at 7pm.  I played with some of the hefty metal crowns Rebecca had allowed us to borrow, and chatted with a volunteer named Jenny (also an illustrator in the neighborhood, and Rebecca's roommate)  at the front desk while sporting a tiarra.  It was a very chill vibe, and all the artists were beginning to feel like new friends.  I also got to know Jess and Koi a bit more while checking out their trippy embryo project.  Koi designs dope wearables and sources parts directly from her connections in Shenzhen, and Jess offered to hook me up with a tour of the UC Berkeley lab sometime :)

                    why is the hydrolic lift in the middle of the room, I wonder?

It was super cool to see everyone's work coming to fruition - what only a few hours ago was a jumbled mess of tools, papers, and ideas now looked something like a epic art show!

As the opening time approach though, I felt a wave of exhaustion flood over me, and decided to head out.  I honestly wasn't as excited about the indoor part of our presentation and also didn't want to vomit all over the place, heh.  I went back to my car, and spent some time moving it to a better spot so I could load up my tools.  But before I could do that, I passed out from fatigue in the drivers seat.

[To be continued...]