Big Building - No Parking

This past weekend was the Grand Lodge session in San Francisco.  Because we do not schedule opposite Grand Lodge, and ladies are not allowed in until the Sunday morning public session, we had Saturday free.

The problem was that I had so many things to do, I of course got none of them done.  I spent the morning scrubbing the belly of one of my airplanes, the nastiest job there is in airplane maintenance (followed in a close second place by packing bearings with grease as a close second, but at least the packing grease is clean grease).  You have to get your rags and your diluted Simple Green and lie down on a creeper and then slide yourself under the plane and clean by reaching up.  One secret is to spray the rag, not the plane, so less cleaner drips on you.  Another secret is to use three rags in a reverse osmosis on each section.  You use one rag for getting the really thick black stuff off the plane, which completely saturates the rag, then you use another rag to get the residue off, and then you use a finishing rag that wipes away any little streaks or bits.  Then you scoot yourself on the creeper down to another piece of airplane and you toss the first rag in the used pile, your residue rag becomes your thick stuff off rag, your finishing rag becomes your residue rag and you start a new finishing rag, and so on and so on, over and over again.  We had an oil leak recently, so the belly was real mess.  The only plusses to the job is that it is good for triple work hours because it is such a grind, so I got five hours credit for a bit under two hours of work, and I can do it alone and unsupervised.  I have GOT to learn to do more stuff on my own!!!

Then I went target shooting with a bunch of friends who wanted confirmation that rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated and then we had a late lunch.  Then I came home and continued working on my Chapter/Lodge/Youth Group lists.

One of the ideas that we are considering for 2013 is having Masonic Family events where the Chapters invite all the local lodges and youth groups to an event for everyone together.  It can be a social event or a community service event or even a Relay For Life day.  But one of the stumbling blocks is to make sure everyone gets an invite from some Chapter or District.  So we are cutting up lists of the Chapters, Lodges and youth groups by Eastern Star District so that we can give people the groups that need to be invited in their area.  And for right now, I do mean cutting, and pasting!

Sunday morning, I went up to the Grand Lodge public ceremonies, which includes the youth groups and the Grand Lodge Installation.  What is interesting to me is that the Installation takes about two hours, same as one of ours, but the Ritual portion for Grand Lodge is a lot shorter because they install all but the seven top offices in one big group, then the next three in a group, and then the last four individually.  Grand Chapter's Installation has twelve installations, not six, and lots more floor area to cover too.  But Grand Lodge fills in the extra time pretty well.  It is a nice ceremony with some very touching and meaningful bits in it.

The thing about going up to Grand Lodge on Sunday is that there is NO parking!  People staying at the hotels can park there, but the parking garage next to the Grand Lodge gets full on Thursday and that is that for the weekend.  Taking BART doesn't work so well unless you take a cab or a cable car up the hill.  How such a big building can have so little parking confuses me.  The hall was only half full Sunday, so what do they do when it is all full?

I also enjoyed the chance to see the rooms on the Exhibit level because we are hoping to do a Ladies' Welcome Tea with goodie bags and door prizes on the Sunday of Grand Lodge in 2013.  About half the Brothers bring their ladies with them, but usually there is only an organized activity for them on Saturday, even though Grand Lodge starts on Friday afternoon.  So we are thinking it would be nice to have a welcome set up, with maps for shopping and tour info, maybe water and sunscreen wipes and kleenex and of course our trifold and maybe door prizes.  The rooms look great for that, so I hope we will be able to make it happen.

Next weekend, I am in Riverside for the Deputy Grand Matron's School of Instruction.