A Friend With A Truck

[Note - This was for last week, but evidently didn't post - Sorry!]

One of the things that has always struck me as interesting is that a petition for membership in the Order of the Eastern Star does not have this question on it - Do you have good knees?  My tongue is firmly in my cheek when I ask that, but I admit that once, many years ago, when I was at a Grand Conductress reception, just for fun, I counted how many times we stood up and sat down from beginning when the Hostess came in until the end when we sat down after the closing benediction to wait for our turn to go to the buffet tables.  I didn't count this past weekend at the reception, but years ago, the count was seventeen.  I don't know why that seemed like a lot, especially when you spread that over three hours, but the standing and sitting always seems to come in groups, so it isn't really evenly distributed over the time with rest periods in between.

I was thinking about this, not only because we attended a lovely Grand Conductress reception this past weekend, but because I was thinking of other questions that no one ever thinks to pose before we are asked to do things and the one that struck me this week was that before you get into the Grand Line, someone ought to ask - do you have a friend with a truck?

This past week, we went to pick up the hard copies of the Worthy Matron and Worthy Patron books that will be given out at the workshop at the end of the month.  When we set up the workshop, I didn't want to charge everyone who was coming for the cost of a hard copy of the book in a binder because not everyone wants a hard copy book in a binder and making every pay an extra $25 when not everyone wanted one didn't seem fair.  So we let people order paper if they wanted it and then I had that number of paper copies run off at my printer so we didn't make a bunch of expensive extras.

Early on in the process, my partner had commented that maybe the people in Southern California could help put the books together.  I did manage not to drop the phone with laughter but confess to chuckling a little bit when I asked him how we would get the books north for the workshop if we put them together down there.  But I did start laughing when he said - you don't think that we need more than a couple dozen do you?  Of course, that was very uncharitable of me and I apologized, especially since he has never had the experience of helping out other people in the Grand Line and seeing what happens.  But I knew that we'd have more than a hundred orders so twenty or so did seem pretty funny at the time.  Maybe you had to be there.

Anyway, this is where my friend with the truck comes in because that is what was needed to pick up the hard copy binders and bring them to my house last Tuesday and the same truck is going to take them to the workshop on the Thursday beforehand.  We had so many orders that with the books standing up, the boxes filled out an entire layer in the bed of the truck and not a mini truck either!  A full sized pick up!  With more papers tucked in the cab behind the seats too!

So if you don't have a friend with a truck, what do you do?  Make fifteen trips with three boxes each time?  For that matter, what do you do if you don't have a print shop?  The average book size is about two hundred pages, although in an odd break from what is commonly known, the 2013 Worthy Patron books are actually more pages than the 2013 Worthy Matron books - go figure!  And the total came to about 36,000 black and white copies all of which had to be hole punched.  Now the print shop has a drill for that, but I am sure that in days past, some poor Grand Line officer, along with all of her Chapter, her friends and those she could beg, borrow or steal, sat somewhere doing all that punching by hand.

So it isn't just about time and money, it is also about local resources - you need a friend with a truck!

Next weekend, I am in Auburn and Rancho Cordova.