Silver Lining

This past weekend I had a lovely opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade, to find the silver lining inside the rain cloud and to make the best of a bad situation. On Saturday, I had a call from a lady who told me that the Conductress of her Chapter had not gotten the sheet of Transitional dates in her packet that went out last Monday and she was wondering if we had cancelled the Transitional. After taking several deep breaths and trying not to freak out at how a missing piece of paper had turned into a cancelled event, I explained that no, we had not cancelled, that all the Transitionals were still on and that they were still all in the same places and at the same times. Having handled the immediate problem, I then started to consider the bigger picture. Of the 181 Chapters in California, I had had to mail packets by regular mail to Conductresses for 74 of them. I knew that all the ones on e-mail had gotten the Transitional schedule, so the total possible pool of missing people was 74. I knew that some of them had picked up the schedule at the State Dinner at Grand Chapter, some of them had gotten it sent to them by their Association President and some of them had already told me that they were just helping out for the one year and not going on. Eliminating all of those left me with about 60 to 65 who might or might not have gotten the schedule. So, not knowing which ones did and which ones did not get the list, there were two options. I could type or write out 65 envelopes and send out another mailing right now, which might or might not get to them on time, depending on where they were, or I could pick up the phone and call all these Sisters and make sure they had their local information. Mailing would have taken me about two hours, calling about four, but with calling, I might have more certainty. I suppose I could have done nothing, but the thought of 65 people who might miss because of a mailing was unacceptable. Still, calling 65 people is a pretty daunting task. The next choice facing me was how to do it. My cell phone signal in my house is very poor, but the cell phone has unlimited calling and free long distance. My land line signal is great, but I would get charged ten cents a minute for the calls. I did briefly toy with the idea that I could sit in the jacuzzi and make the calls because the signal outside is very good, but I didn't have a laminated Conductress roster and it is hard to dial when the screen fogs up. So I decided that I would sit in the breakfast nook, which has maximum windows, and make the calls, all 65 of them. And yes, it did take four hours. And yes, I've never had so sore an ear in all my life! My old phone was a flip phone, so it was at least contoured a little bit. These BlackBerries and other BB type phones may be great for e-mail and texting, but holding a flat surface to your face for four hours is misery squared. The worst part was that the signal was only usable on the left side, so I couldn't even switch off from ear to ear. I had to take a break every twenty calls or so to massage life back into my ear. Nevertheless, I got all the calls made and hopefully one more nightmare out of my life, fingers crossed. And I did get some good lemonade and silver lining out of the situation. For lemonade, I got to speak directly with about half of the sisters that I called, leaving messages for the others, and got to find out about them and their Chapters and chat a little, which was nice. For silver lining, I got to move eighteen more people off my snail mail list so that in the spring, when I send stuff out, I am down to only 56 mailings, less than two pages of labels. Hurrah! (I realize that normal people don't get excited about this sort of thing, but if you've been there, you understand completely!) So this morning, I got to add a bunch of people to my e-mail list and take them off the snail mail list, I got to make more notes and comments on my Spread Sheet of All Knowledge About My Girls and I've already started getting some responses back to the questionnaires in my last packet, which makes me very happy. I also learned a couple of interesting things. I learned that some people can set their cell phone not to receive incoming calls. I suppose that is to save minutes. But it is very inconvenient when those people have disconnected their land line and don't provide an e-mail either and my tech friend tells me that phones set that way also do not show the call in their call log, so I guess some people don't want to talk to anybody. I also found out that some people set their voice mail on their cell phone not to allow messages to be left, so I guess that they are relying on their call log to get back to people and I hope they call me back, but we will have to see. Next time, I am checking all the packets twice! Next weekend, I am in Fresno and Manteca.