Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Project Runway Comes In Handy
This past weekend was our Jam and Jelly Day celebration, after which my partner and I got to attend the Northern Grand Representatives meeting and present our projects and pins and most importantly, the dress and vest we've chosen for the Grand Representatives for 2013.
Wanting the GRs attention for the presentation items, I knew that the dress had to go last, because once you've shown the dress, the attention is gone. Like any big announcement, once you make it, everyone is too busy talking about it to pay attention to anything else, so save it for the big bang and then call it a day.
So we started with our Make a Difference Program flyer and pin, which is what we are doing instead of a travel program for 2013. Traditionally, when we have done travel programs, or anything like this one of ours, where people collect points or do tasks and then turn in a sheet to get a pin to show that they did the stuff, the Grand Representatives serve as our liaisons all over the state to manage the sheets and pins. With travel programs, members who earn the required number of points turn their sheets in to the local GR who checks to make sure it is right and then sends it in to get the pin to present to the member. We are doing the same thing, with the GRs collecting the sheets and then checking to make sure the required items are done and then sending the sheet in to us to get a pin to present to the member. It helps when you do this, to show them the sheet and explain the program so that they can do it the way you want it done. Also, a lot of former GRs come to the meeting and in areas that don't have current GRs, the former GRs can promote the program and help too.
That part went pretty well. They loved the pin, which did come out completely cool looking! Then we presented our project and that went over pretty good too. Everyone was excited over some of the very useful and user friendly things we are doing, so that was nice too.
Then it was dress and vest time. We did the vest first, because the dress must come last, and they seemed to like it. Then it was finally time for the dress and they seemed to like that a lot! In fact, I had several former GRs to who came to me and said that it was a shame that they couldn't be appointed again, because they really would love to get the dress - so YAY! You know when I agreed to get in the line, no one told me that I had to have skills in fashion design on top of everything else. But maybe all that naughty pleasure of watching Project Runway has come in handy after all. :-)
So they seemed to like everything, which felt good and was a nice positive experience. Of course, in some ways, that was only the warm up crowd, because next Saturday, we have to do the whole presentation again to the Southern Grand Representatives Association meeting and they could be a tougher crowd. But we will see how it goes and cross our fingers on everything going just as well as it did last Saturday.
Next weekend, I am in Anaheim and San Diego.
Too Hot to Handle
[Note: This was from last week and didn't post, I guess. My IT guy says he's talked with our provider and hopes that we won't have burps any more.]
This past weekend, I got to go to a couple of very nice receptions with a quick stop in Las Vegas for my mother's birthday and I learned a few interesting things.
The first thing I learned is that if your flights are more than four hours apart, Southwest will not let you check your bag through to your final destination. Apparently, because I checked my bag in San Jose for my flight to Las Vegas that landed around noontime and my flight out was not until 7:00 pm or so, the San Jose person would not check it through to Burbank, my final destination and, because it was more than four hours before my next flight left, I could not just take the bag up to the ticket counter and check it back in. Instead, I had to lug it to my sister's car and then check it in when we got back to the airport. Luckily, I had plenty of time each way, but what a bother.
Then I learned that Las Vegas has gotten hotter than it used to be and I mean really quite hotter than it used to be. I used to go to Las Vegas every year to see my sister at different times of the year. Then, after her son was born, I would go every year timed to be there for my nephew's birthday party. Unfortunately my sister, whom I love dearly, had the bad taste to have her son in August, so from 1996 until his Bar Mitzvah in 2008, I went to Las Vegas every single year in August. After that, I did go once in September and found out that September is a lot cooler, but I have data for all those years in August and in all those years, while we did hit three digits every now and then, usually the high was no more than 105 degrees - plenty nasty, but bearable for the short time needed to go from the car to the air-conditioned whatever (mall, restaurant, house, supermarket, etc.).
But not this year! This year it was 119 degrees! And these people build outdoor shopping malls - what are they thinking!?!? And they walk around in them too - without hats or water bottles! It was 116 degrees on the second floor of the parking garage - 116 in the shade! When we got in the car, I was afraid I was going to burn myself on the seat belt tongue. And people live here - voluntarily and all year long!
Apparently, my sister likes the heat because she suggested we walk around the outdoor mall and to be a good sport I went for it. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the last time I felt dry heat like this, it was in a day spa sauna, prepping me for my body scrub, and they measure how long you are in there and give you bottles of water to drink while you sit there. We had to walk around and without supplies either! Finally, she wanted to go in a store and I sent a silent prayer upward for air conditioning. I could feel the heat oozing out of every pore and my core temperature getting back to almost bearable while my sister complained that she was cold. I offered to buy her a jacket. :-)
So I get back to the airport and fly back to Southern California for my weekend of receptions. But the hard part was that the heat, or at least most of it, seems to have followed me because for a second weekend in a row, Southern California was three digit hot. Now I do not do heat well at all. Anyone who knows me knows that I am totally sun and heat soluble and should not be out in either for any length of time. But here I was, day after day of baking beyond my ability to cope. I suppose that at the receptions these past two weeks, I probably wasn't the best of company because I had the worst heat and dehydration headaches. The Chapter rooms were too warm and while other facilities had better air conditioning, you still had to get in and out of the car and walk some distance in the sun and the heat. And doing it in a formal with a full petticoat was pretty unbearable. The two receptions in lighter clothes were certainly easier to do, but the heat was just nasty.
The problem is that there is really no good escape. Whether you are in Southern California or in the Central Valley, from Bakersfield all the way up past Sacramento, if it's August, it seems to be HOT. Sigh!
Next weekend, I am in Burlingame and Union City. I will not make it to Golden Gate Fields because of work.
This past weekend, I got to go to a couple of very nice receptions with a quick stop in Las Vegas for my mother's birthday and I learned a few interesting things.
The first thing I learned is that if your flights are more than four hours apart, Southwest will not let you check your bag through to your final destination. Apparently, because I checked my bag in San Jose for my flight to Las Vegas that landed around noontime and my flight out was not until 7:00 pm or so, the San Jose person would not check it through to Burbank, my final destination and, because it was more than four hours before my next flight left, I could not just take the bag up to the ticket counter and check it back in. Instead, I had to lug it to my sister's car and then check it in when we got back to the airport. Luckily, I had plenty of time each way, but what a bother.
Then I learned that Las Vegas has gotten hotter than it used to be and I mean really quite hotter than it used to be. I used to go to Las Vegas every year to see my sister at different times of the year. Then, after her son was born, I would go every year timed to be there for my nephew's birthday party. Unfortunately my sister, whom I love dearly, had the bad taste to have her son in August, so from 1996 until his Bar Mitzvah in 2008, I went to Las Vegas every single year in August. After that, I did go once in September and found out that September is a lot cooler, but I have data for all those years in August and in all those years, while we did hit three digits every now and then, usually the high was no more than 105 degrees - plenty nasty, but bearable for the short time needed to go from the car to the air-conditioned whatever (mall, restaurant, house, supermarket, etc.).
But not this year! This year it was 119 degrees! And these people build outdoor shopping malls - what are they thinking!?!? And they walk around in them too - without hats or water bottles! It was 116 degrees on the second floor of the parking garage - 116 in the shade! When we got in the car, I was afraid I was going to burn myself on the seat belt tongue. And people live here - voluntarily and all year long!
Apparently, my sister likes the heat because she suggested we walk around the outdoor mall and to be a good sport I went for it. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the last time I felt dry heat like this, it was in a day spa sauna, prepping me for my body scrub, and they measure how long you are in there and give you bottles of water to drink while you sit there. We had to walk around and without supplies either! Finally, she wanted to go in a store and I sent a silent prayer upward for air conditioning. I could feel the heat oozing out of every pore and my core temperature getting back to almost bearable while my sister complained that she was cold. I offered to buy her a jacket. :-)
So I get back to the airport and fly back to Southern California for my weekend of receptions. But the hard part was that the heat, or at least most of it, seems to have followed me because for a second weekend in a row, Southern California was three digit hot. Now I do not do heat well at all. Anyone who knows me knows that I am totally sun and heat soluble and should not be out in either for any length of time. But here I was, day after day of baking beyond my ability to cope. I suppose that at the receptions these past two weeks, I probably wasn't the best of company because I had the worst heat and dehydration headaches. The Chapter rooms were too warm and while other facilities had better air conditioning, you still had to get in and out of the car and walk some distance in the sun and the heat. And doing it in a formal with a full petticoat was pretty unbearable. The two receptions in lighter clothes were certainly easier to do, but the heat was just nasty.
The problem is that there is really no good escape. Whether you are in Southern California or in the Central Valley, from Bakersfield all the way up past Sacramento, if it's August, it seems to be HOT. Sigh!
Next weekend, I am in Burlingame and Union City. I will not make it to Golden Gate Fields because of work.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Sliding For Home
As people are reminding me almost every day, it is exactly five more weeks now to the Revelation of the 2013 Grand Family and only ten weeks and two days to Grand Installation. Wow!
So the time has come for me to start turning in the products of the past year's work and to prepare for the beginning of the end. The end of the planning anyway, since after this month, the stuff that you can plan for will pretty much be over. Then what is left is to carry out the plans.
That is not to say that being Worthy Grand Matron is stress free - far from it. But it seems to me that the type of stress is very different. When I was Princess, the ramp-up to ascending the throne was very much like the Grand Line process of having to find people to serve for you and doing paperwork and planning lots and lots of details. But once you are on the throne, (also known as living in the fish bowl), the stress changes to the stresses of the moment and the day. A crisis arises and you have to deal with it. Someone goes nutty and you have to talk them down. You have to pack the right clothes, make sure you bring the right stuff, buy presents for people, work out details of your events with your chairs, and all that, but the long term, long range stuff is done.
As I round third base and head for home, I hope that I don't actually have to slide in because I run out of time. And I remind myself that some things have a "done" version and a "done for now" version. For example, the calendar has been submitted to be included in the Grand Chapter Itinerary, but there are no places in it for the Grand Officer Receptions and several concordant bodies have not gotten me their time and place details for their events yet. So that is "done for now", but will need more stuff put into it before the full Roster is published at the end of November. On the other hand, Lord willin' and the Crik don't rise, (meaning barring an unforeseen disaster) the selection of Deputy Grand Matrons is "done" done. I am still working on a few committee appointments, hoping to get them "done" done in the next week or so. I have the clothes for the Grand Representatives for next year ready to show at their Northern and Southern meetings later this month and should have the pins and Make a Difference Program sheets ready for them too, so that is "done for now" but not "done" until they have seen them and I get out the order forms to them.
It is of course also time for me to ramp up for the Revelation and the Grand Officers' School and the Deputy Grand Matron School, all of which are coming up fast. I think that the clerks at the Office Depot are starting to recognize me when I go in there, but they are really good about helping me out, even when I have really weird questions like where in the store to find two part door prize tickets or blue painter's tape. But I do not need yarn - No Grand Line Officer should ever have to buy yarn again as long as they live!
Tonight I am meeting with my personal secretary to go over the Deputy Grand Matron binders and their contents, and the labeling for their CDs and a hundred other things, like envelopes for the Past Grands for during and after the Revelation. It's these little persnickety things that aren't written down that really get to you.
This weekend, I have to make a stop on Friday in Las Vegas for my mother's 75th birthday dinner and then on to Riverside and Upland.
So the time has come for me to start turning in the products of the past year's work and to prepare for the beginning of the end. The end of the planning anyway, since after this month, the stuff that you can plan for will pretty much be over. Then what is left is to carry out the plans.
That is not to say that being Worthy Grand Matron is stress free - far from it. But it seems to me that the type of stress is very different. When I was Princess, the ramp-up to ascending the throne was very much like the Grand Line process of having to find people to serve for you and doing paperwork and planning lots and lots of details. But once you are on the throne, (also known as living in the fish bowl), the stress changes to the stresses of the moment and the day. A crisis arises and you have to deal with it. Someone goes nutty and you have to talk them down. You have to pack the right clothes, make sure you bring the right stuff, buy presents for people, work out details of your events with your chairs, and all that, but the long term, long range stuff is done.
As I round third base and head for home, I hope that I don't actually have to slide in because I run out of time. And I remind myself that some things have a "done" version and a "done for now" version. For example, the calendar has been submitted to be included in the Grand Chapter Itinerary, but there are no places in it for the Grand Officer Receptions and several concordant bodies have not gotten me their time and place details for their events yet. So that is "done for now", but will need more stuff put into it before the full Roster is published at the end of November. On the other hand, Lord willin' and the Crik don't rise, (meaning barring an unforeseen disaster) the selection of Deputy Grand Matrons is "done" done. I am still working on a few committee appointments, hoping to get them "done" done in the next week or so. I have the clothes for the Grand Representatives for next year ready to show at their Northern and Southern meetings later this month and should have the pins and Make a Difference Program sheets ready for them too, so that is "done for now" but not "done" until they have seen them and I get out the order forms to them.
It is of course also time for me to ramp up for the Revelation and the Grand Officers' School and the Deputy Grand Matron School, all of which are coming up fast. I think that the clerks at the Office Depot are starting to recognize me when I go in there, but they are really good about helping me out, even when I have really weird questions like where in the store to find two part door prize tickets or blue painter's tape. But I do not need yarn - No Grand Line Officer should ever have to buy yarn again as long as they live!
Tonight I am meeting with my personal secretary to go over the Deputy Grand Matron binders and their contents, and the labeling for their CDs and a hundred other things, like envelopes for the Past Grands for during and after the Revelation. It's these little persnickety things that aren't written down that really get to you.
This weekend, I have to make a stop on Friday in Las Vegas for my mother's 75th birthday dinner and then on to Riverside and Upland.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
WebMagic 2013 Comes To Life
This past weekend was our Associate Matron/Associate Patron workshop for all those Sister and Brothers who will be serving as the heads of their respective Chapters when I am Worthy Grand Matron next year.
Well, maybe I have to stop myself there for a second. See, I keep saying next year because I think of my year as 2013, and that is next year, but the brutal truth that unfortunately I have to stop sidestepping is that next year is not really next year. Next year starts in, oh my ever loving bleeeeeeep, eleven weeks. We are under the ninety day mark, have crested the hill and are now sliding on banana peels into the finish line. Stuff is starting to go in to the Grand Secretary to be prepared for the Itinerary that goes to print in just a few weeks, the last appointments are being done this week and next (at least that is true if the Lord loves me as much right now as he has up until now) and the last couple of calendar items are coming through to go in for processing. Wow - it is really getting close now! Just Wow!
But back to the workshop - where I made several comments about how much I have learned about the members and our Order and our needs and wants and things that we love and things that bore the socks off us in my last five years of traveling - Wow again, five years have really almost gone by already - well, eleven weeks short of five years to be accurate - Wow some more - where did they go? Hey, I want a couple of months back darn it!
But really this time, back to the workshop - One of the highlights of holding your AM/AP workshop is that you get to announce to all your girls and their guys what you have chosen for your Special Project for the year. There is more controversy about a project announcement than you might think because we have some members who are very firmly of the view that the Project should be one of our own charities and others who feel just as strongly that the Project should be something that reaches out into the community and helps others in a way that allows our members to reach out. We had an inside charity in 2010 and 2011 and outside charities in 2008, 2009 and 2012, so in my five years, I have seen both.
My partner and I really racked our brains on what we wanted to do, and the dilemma posed by the above debate, and then realized that what we wanted to do was not a charity project at all, but instead, we wanted our members to take a year to invest in ourselves. We decided that what our Order needs to grow and present its best face to the world at large is a professionally designed and updated web site, with a bazillion times more useful content and one click access to the most widely desired things. We have a web site that is very pretty, but using it is very hard and lots of basic functions were never built into it. We also want to go to an online newsletter so that our members can post local Chapter news without the cost of printing and so that new stuff can be posted every month instead of just quarterly.
But to do that, and deal with all the surrounding problems of hardware, bandwidth, access, coordination with our existing databases, training our office staff, etc., etc., is going to take a lot more money than we usually have to spare. So the only way it is going to happen is as a Special Project of the WGM and WGP. So we decided that this was what we wanted to do, the contribution we could make to the future of our Order that would provide benefits to us for years to come. We know that it is not a sexy, exciting project, like curing cancer or helping vets, but it is very, very NECESSARY so we have to hope that our members want to help.
So my partner got a person he knows to put together a little demo CD with some basic click functions, just so we could show some of what we wanted to accomplish and we showed it and the crowd went wild. Everyone seemed to love the idea and anyone who didn't love it at least didn't say anything about it and several people asked me if they could contribute now instead of waiting and of course I told them how to do that.
The only place where we fell down a bit is that neither my partner nor I had thought about a name for it past just "our special project" and apparently, that is not good enough. The next thing I know, people start shouting out names and we went back and forth on a little instant straw polling and now it is official. The 2013 WGM/WGP Project is now WebMagic 2013.
Next weekend, I will be in Yorba Linda, Orange and Norwalk.
Well, maybe I have to stop myself there for a second. See, I keep saying next year because I think of my year as 2013, and that is next year, but the brutal truth that unfortunately I have to stop sidestepping is that next year is not really next year. Next year starts in, oh my ever loving bleeeeeeep, eleven weeks. We are under the ninety day mark, have crested the hill and are now sliding on banana peels into the finish line. Stuff is starting to go in to the Grand Secretary to be prepared for the Itinerary that goes to print in just a few weeks, the last appointments are being done this week and next (at least that is true if the Lord loves me as much right now as he has up until now) and the last couple of calendar items are coming through to go in for processing. Wow - it is really getting close now! Just Wow!
But back to the workshop - where I made several comments about how much I have learned about the members and our Order and our needs and wants and things that we love and things that bore the socks off us in my last five years of traveling - Wow again, five years have really almost gone by already - well, eleven weeks short of five years to be accurate - Wow some more - where did they go? Hey, I want a couple of months back darn it!
But really this time, back to the workshop - One of the highlights of holding your AM/AP workshop is that you get to announce to all your girls and their guys what you have chosen for your Special Project for the year. There is more controversy about a project announcement than you might think because we have some members who are very firmly of the view that the Project should be one of our own charities and others who feel just as strongly that the Project should be something that reaches out into the community and helps others in a way that allows our members to reach out. We had an inside charity in 2010 and 2011 and outside charities in 2008, 2009 and 2012, so in my five years, I have seen both.
My partner and I really racked our brains on what we wanted to do, and the dilemma posed by the above debate, and then realized that what we wanted to do was not a charity project at all, but instead, we wanted our members to take a year to invest in ourselves. We decided that what our Order needs to grow and present its best face to the world at large is a professionally designed and updated web site, with a bazillion times more useful content and one click access to the most widely desired things. We have a web site that is very pretty, but using it is very hard and lots of basic functions were never built into it. We also want to go to an online newsletter so that our members can post local Chapter news without the cost of printing and so that new stuff can be posted every month instead of just quarterly.
But to do that, and deal with all the surrounding problems of hardware, bandwidth, access, coordination with our existing databases, training our office staff, etc., etc., is going to take a lot more money than we usually have to spare. So the only way it is going to happen is as a Special Project of the WGM and WGP. So we decided that this was what we wanted to do, the contribution we could make to the future of our Order that would provide benefits to us for years to come. We know that it is not a sexy, exciting project, like curing cancer or helping vets, but it is very, very NECESSARY so we have to hope that our members want to help.
So my partner got a person he knows to put together a little demo CD with some basic click functions, just so we could show some of what we wanted to accomplish and we showed it and the crowd went wild. Everyone seemed to love the idea and anyone who didn't love it at least didn't say anything about it and several people asked me if they could contribute now instead of waiting and of course I told them how to do that.
The only place where we fell down a bit is that neither my partner nor I had thought about a name for it past just "our special project" and apparently, that is not good enough. The next thing I know, people start shouting out names and we went back and forth on a little instant straw polling and now it is official. The 2013 WGM/WGP Project is now WebMagic 2013.
Next weekend, I will be in Yorba Linda, Orange and Norwalk.
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