Rounding the Corner

This past weekend was the Jewish High Holidays, so there were no events and next weekend is the prep time for Grand Chapter next week, so that will be event free if you pretend that it doesn't take an entire weekend to pack for Grand Chapter, which it does.  But before I get to packing, for me there is list making to do.  There are just so many things that need to go with me to Grand Chapter that without a list, the packing would be impossible.  And there are dozens of decisions to be made too, on what will and won't go based on what I think will or won't happen.

One of the things that makes this time of year tough is keeping track of who you are and who you will be.  For example, there is a special book with the ceremonies that we do at Grand Chapter which has both an opening and a closing ceremony in it.  You are not supposed to write in these books because in theory, you turn them back in for the next Grand Family to use.  We may be going away from that, but I haven't heard so yet.  Anyway, in the Opening Ceremony, you are your current 2011 office, but the Closing Ceremony is done after Grand Installation, so for that you have to learn the lines for your 2012 office.  All of the line officers just spent two weekends in the past month (Grand Officer School and Deputy Grand Matron School) in their 2012 offices, but of course for Grand Chapter, we are still in our 2011 offices.

I have discovered that this year's transition is much easier than the past two years were.  When you are Grand Marshal, you go to the schools as Associate Grand Conductress, but strictly speaking, you haven't been elected yet, so it feels a little funny because you are Grand Line Officer without being a Grand Line Officer.  When you are AGC, you are at the schools as GC and then you go back but when you swap back and forth like that, you are doing very similar floor work and words, but on the other side of the floor, so it is really easy to get messed up on which side of the room you are on and which way you turn.  But going from the South to the West and back seems a lot easier so far.  The work is all different and the room looks totally different.

Of course for me, the room actually looks a bit familiar because I was Grand Warder way back when and the Grand Warder also sits in the West, so at the schools I was sitting about four feet to the left and two or three steps up from where I already spent a fabulous year, and the view is familiar and fun.  Of course there will be a new Grand Warder in 2012 and we reassured him that he should not feel nervous at all just because there were five Former Grand Warders in the room watching him do his work, oh no, no cause for nerves at all.  We were just trying to reassure him; that's why we kept reminding him, five of us with our eyes just on him! :-)

I tried to get him to come up and try out the chair next to me, just to see how it feels.  I am pretty sure that sitting in the AGM's chair when I was Grand Warder helped give people ideas that led to me being up there now and I just wanted to return the favor, but the GW to be was having none of that and could not be coaxed into taking the chair for a spin.  Sigh - they're making them too smart these days.

So now that I have the schools behind me, I am learning my lines for the session and looking at the floor work that we will have to do.  It is going to be just a shade trickier this year for me than last year.  To begin with, last year I just had to follow the Grand Conductress and I knew that she would know where we are going, so that was less stress right there.  And since the bulk of the escort duties were done in an informal opening session, that escort was easy if exhausting because you just went west and brought people east and went west and brought people east and went west and . . .   But this year, doing the escort during the session, you have to remember who goes in this way and who goes out that way and stuff like that there.  It is also the Official Visit of the Most Worthy Grand Matron to California, so we are expecting an extra big load of dignitaries and visitors to escort.  Lucky me!  I just hope that they left us a lot of practice time on Wednesday so we can go over all these bits and make our Grand Family proud.

Next weekend is packing weekend and then I am off to Grand Chapter Tuesday afternoon.