Wow!
It finally happened. I followed the groom's instructions and the next thing I knew - POW! I had a gavel in my hand and lots of people looking at me. I am told I looked pretty good last Saturday night. But some people need to learn the difference between:
I didn't recognize you! You look beautiful!, which leaves you wondering why they never mentioned that you looked like chopped liver before and whether the appropriate response is "Thank you" or "Sorry I was so ugly before,"
and
I didn't recognize you! I've never seen you with your hair up! or I didn't recognize you! I don't think I've ever seen you with make up before!, which could be true and yet don't imply that you were coyote ugly (one look at you in bed with them and the man gnaws his arm off to get away) or worse yet, Gorgon ugly (one look from a man and he turns into a marble statue out of fright), up until now.
Of course, many people provided me with just a sweet and wonderful, You look gorgeous, which was very flattering and far more fun than another not so hot comment:
Wow! You look great! Why don't you do your hair and make up all the time? I was very, very bad and I am afraid I told the truth (one of my great failings, I'm afraid). I told this person that the reason was three hours in a beauty chair, but that someday, when I win the lottery and hire a French maid, I will be happy to always have my hair and makeup done before going out into the word around, say, noon each day.
Of course the other reason is that it takes a lot of time to get the fifty plus hairpins out of my hair and two shampoo and rinse cycles to melt the hair back down off my head after one of these affairs, but for Grand Installation it was worth it and I am told that the pictures came out great, so for special occasions, Beauty Before Comfort.
It was also very gratifying to hear many members say that they appreciated my Installation remarks. I spent a long time figuring out what I wanted to say and even longer editing and polishing my comments until I could get the whole message out in just six and a half minutes. Then we closed and got done and everyone appreciated being finished at a decent hour too.
So one week is not over and I have fifty-one to go. My Worthy Grand Patron and I have already made some progress and we hope to make more as the weeks come along. The beginning is supposed to be the slow time and someone told me that there was supposed to be a honeymoon period, but I guess I blinked and missed that because my in box has already had a half a dozen problems and issues in it. A couple are actually already dealt with, others are just starting - how fun is that? NOT REALLY ANY actually. But with every job the bitter comes with the sweet, leadership can be a lonely business and I can't say that I didn't know what I was getting into, not after ten years on Jurisprudence. But the happiness of the progress we are already making far outweighs a few issues, so damn the torpedos and full speed ahead.
This coming weekend, I get to start installing my girls as Worthy Matrons in their Chapters and I am also planning on attending a Rainbow reception for a local girl who is a Rainbow Grand Officer. I asked if they were sure they wanted me there because there are protocol-type things that happen, now that I am actually Worthy Grand Matron and not just a Grand Officer, but the adult advisors assured me that it was good for the girls to get to do these things. I guess I will find out if the girls agree.
Onward and upward!
Monday, October 29, 2012
Friday, October 12, 2012
School Is Out
Last weekend was our Deputy Grand Matron School of Instruction, the last big, big, school we have to do - Whew!
The School is traditionally two and a half days and what an exhausting two and half days it is. The problem is that there's really more like five days of material to cover and there just is not more time, so you have to make a lot of hard decisions on what to do and what to skip and then you just work, work, WORK until you drop. Information overload is not just a phrase after you've been through one of these schools!
But it was a great school! Even though the hours were long, the 2013 Deputies were real troopers. Early in the morning, late at night and every time in between, the ladies were positive, cheerful, and eager to learn. They really got loaded down with information and training, but I think that everyone was pleased with what they did and learned. It really felt like all the work in putting it together and setting it up really paid off. But I am totally ready to get a full night's sleep at some point. Almost every night for the two weeks before the Revealing and then during the two weeks between that and the Deputy school, I would wake up at around 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning, remembering one more thing that needed doing or one more thing that didn't get done, or one more thing that didn't get staged to go or one more thing I needed to arrange or one more thing. . . . and then I couldn't get back to sleep! I keep a pad by the bed to write stuff down, but I would get so worried that I would run out of time to get things finished that I would just get up and work on the stuff for an hour or so and then try to go back to sleep for a bit before getting up at 7:00 am to go to work. That makes for tough days when you normally don't get to sleep until 11:00 pm or midnight. Now I am afraid that I may have gotten into the habit of waking up at that time and will keep doing it. Grrrrrr!
Anyway, now that my staging area that was filled with eight boxes and four tote bags full of stuff (plus miscellaneous stuff that didn't fit in a box or a tote bag) for the Deputy School is now emptied of that stuff, (pretty much all of it went home with other people - yay!), it is time to fill that area up again with all the stuff that has to go to Grand Chapter. Unfortunately, the piles keep getting bigger. The pile for Deputy School was bigger than the pile for Grand Officer School and the Grand Chapter pile will be even greater still. I have two cars, possibly three, taking my stuff down. A couple of years ago, I had two cars coming home with me and I was warned that this year, it may be three or four cars worth of stuff coming home. Yikes!
I also have to pack an awful lot of clothes. There's formal outfits and travel outfits and casual outfits and costume pieces and the shoes for each and the hair bits for each and the underthings for each. How is it possible that I could raft down the Grand Canyon for eight days with a twenty-five pound duffel bag holding everything I needed to wear and I can't get to Grand Chapter without a suitcase, two dress bags and two tote bags, one whole tote bag just for shoes! Sigh!
I've written the speech that I give after Grand Installation, but now I know that I also give one on Wednesday, so I will be writing that this weekend, while I am trying to finish everything else. I had this crazy idea that maybe I could get a manicure this weekend, but the jury is still out on whether I have the time for that. Sigh some more!
Next weekend, I am staging for Grand Chapter and then there I will be. It's going to be a Wow week.
The School is traditionally two and a half days and what an exhausting two and half days it is. The problem is that there's really more like five days of material to cover and there just is not more time, so you have to make a lot of hard decisions on what to do and what to skip and then you just work, work, WORK until you drop. Information overload is not just a phrase after you've been through one of these schools!
But it was a great school! Even though the hours were long, the 2013 Deputies were real troopers. Early in the morning, late at night and every time in between, the ladies were positive, cheerful, and eager to learn. They really got loaded down with information and training, but I think that everyone was pleased with what they did and learned. It really felt like all the work in putting it together and setting it up really paid off. But I am totally ready to get a full night's sleep at some point. Almost every night for the two weeks before the Revealing and then during the two weeks between that and the Deputy school, I would wake up at around 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning, remembering one more thing that needed doing or one more thing that didn't get done, or one more thing that didn't get staged to go or one more thing I needed to arrange or one more thing. . . . and then I couldn't get back to sleep! I keep a pad by the bed to write stuff down, but I would get so worried that I would run out of time to get things finished that I would just get up and work on the stuff for an hour or so and then try to go back to sleep for a bit before getting up at 7:00 am to go to work. That makes for tough days when you normally don't get to sleep until 11:00 pm or midnight. Now I am afraid that I may have gotten into the habit of waking up at that time and will keep doing it. Grrrrrr!
Anyway, now that my staging area that was filled with eight boxes and four tote bags full of stuff (plus miscellaneous stuff that didn't fit in a box or a tote bag) for the Deputy School is now emptied of that stuff, (pretty much all of it went home with other people - yay!), it is time to fill that area up again with all the stuff that has to go to Grand Chapter. Unfortunately, the piles keep getting bigger. The pile for Deputy School was bigger than the pile for Grand Officer School and the Grand Chapter pile will be even greater still. I have two cars, possibly three, taking my stuff down. A couple of years ago, I had two cars coming home with me and I was warned that this year, it may be three or four cars worth of stuff coming home. Yikes!
I also have to pack an awful lot of clothes. There's formal outfits and travel outfits and casual outfits and costume pieces and the shoes for each and the hair bits for each and the underthings for each. How is it possible that I could raft down the Grand Canyon for eight days with a twenty-five pound duffel bag holding everything I needed to wear and I can't get to Grand Chapter without a suitcase, two dress bags and two tote bags, one whole tote bag just for shoes! Sigh!
I've written the speech that I give after Grand Installation, but now I know that I also give one on Wednesday, so I will be writing that this weekend, while I am trying to finish everything else. I had this crazy idea that maybe I could get a manicure this weekend, but the jury is still out on whether I have the time for that. Sigh some more!
Next weekend, I am staging for Grand Chapter and then there I will be. It's going to be a Wow week.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Coming Unstuck
My IT guy assures me that I will no longer have connectivity problems - that everything is fixed this time for sure! Unfortunately, my blog problems were never on the top of the radar for fixing and apparently everything under the sun has had to be updated in the past month, but, fingers and toes crossed, I should not be missing any more weeks because I can't upload. It has been very frustrating, but this time, the light at the end of the tunnel should not be an oncoming train - YAY!
Of course, things coming unstuck has been the name of my world for the past month too. It isn't that there is more to do, because of course there is, it is the things that were done that are now undone that would make me pull my hair out if I had more of it and the patches wouldn't show so badly.
Now lots of things have happened and have gone great! We had the most awesome Revelation for our 2013 Grand Officers with lots of fun, laughter, suspense and excitement. I had lots of people say that they liked it when we brought out the Grand Officers and Escorts all together and some people were trying to guess if we had color coded them, because many of the couples came out with one in white and one in black. But the truth is that I asked all of the Grand Family that was going to come out from the back room to wear black, white or silver and they chose for themselves and it just worked out. They really looked splendid though. Even though the styles varied widely, the color scheme kept them looking like a group and really, what can be more elegant than a beautiful lady in a black evening gown? I guess I just love the classics.
Then we had our Grand Officer school and that went well too. We got everything on our agenda done and we will see how well we remember everything this weekend as we go into Deputy Grand Matron school. For the first time so far as I know, we had an individual mentor for each Appointive officer and a helper or two for the Elected officers also. It made the instruction go incredibly smoothly because different groups could be working on different things at the same time and I just had to flit from group to group answering questions instead of working with one group and everyone else waiting around until I was done and could move on. Of course, the Grand Star Point Officers didn't get much in the way of breaks and had to be on site an hour early on Saturday morning, but that is typically their lot, because they have so much more Ritual to perfect than anyone else except the Conductresses and coordinating two people, when one leads and one follows, is way easier than coordinating five people who can't see each other half the time. And when they tossed me out of the room because they wanted to work some more before "MOM" saw them, that was rather wry humor, except of course that they weren't kidding. :-)
The DGM school is a rather complicated business because I have changed the method for doing the teaching and now will have three rooms with a third of the deputies in each one, but I hope that it is complicated like clockwork, lots of moving parts, but everything runs smoothly. More finger crossing!
But the frustration of the month has been people contacting me to change things that were done and have gone to print. For example, I have already had one OV change location and have a second one that may also do so, which means that the location in the Itinerary will be wrong and even if we fix it for the Roster, lots of people don't get that, so now we have to deal with extra flyers and notices. And it looks to me that these changes were probably caused by people not getting written confirmation of their hall reservations. I will be the first to confess that from a theoretical, honor system point of view, it should not take a piece of paper to assure that a hall reservation is neither changed nor canceled just because a better paying group comes along and asks for our date. But the practical side of me reminds myself that (a) the person you talk to verbally may not be making sure that the person who keeps the calendar has your information, (b) some halls are run by professional managers and what the lodge brothers say may not be the real word on the hall's use, and (c) sometimes the hall thinks that your date is optional or moveable if you don't have the piece of paper. So I hope very much that everyone has gotten their contracts or at least written confirmations and that two will be all the OVs that are moving. That's probably wishful thinking, but let's wish!
And then I have several people who were appointed to committees in past years, who said that they would continue in their terms, but now are not sure that they can do so. I know that stuff happens and I completely understand that health issues arise at the most inconvenient times, but Sigh! So now I have about four people to replace on this, that or the other committee, and those are probably likely to keep happening all year long, so I guess I am not ready to retire my Mighty Notebook of All Resumes just yet.
Still, here we are, almost to the end of the trip up the mountain, ready to cross the saddle and start our sledding back down to the bottom. Deputy School this weekend and Grand Installation only nineteen days away. Oy Vey!
Of course, things coming unstuck has been the name of my world for the past month too. It isn't that there is more to do, because of course there is, it is the things that were done that are now undone that would make me pull my hair out if I had more of it and the patches wouldn't show so badly.
Now lots of things have happened and have gone great! We had the most awesome Revelation for our 2013 Grand Officers with lots of fun, laughter, suspense and excitement. I had lots of people say that they liked it when we brought out the Grand Officers and Escorts all together and some people were trying to guess if we had color coded them, because many of the couples came out with one in white and one in black. But the truth is that I asked all of the Grand Family that was going to come out from the back room to wear black, white or silver and they chose for themselves and it just worked out. They really looked splendid though. Even though the styles varied widely, the color scheme kept them looking like a group and really, what can be more elegant than a beautiful lady in a black evening gown? I guess I just love the classics.
Then we had our Grand Officer school and that went well too. We got everything on our agenda done and we will see how well we remember everything this weekend as we go into Deputy Grand Matron school. For the first time so far as I know, we had an individual mentor for each Appointive officer and a helper or two for the Elected officers also. It made the instruction go incredibly smoothly because different groups could be working on different things at the same time and I just had to flit from group to group answering questions instead of working with one group and everyone else waiting around until I was done and could move on. Of course, the Grand Star Point Officers didn't get much in the way of breaks and had to be on site an hour early on Saturday morning, but that is typically their lot, because they have so much more Ritual to perfect than anyone else except the Conductresses and coordinating two people, when one leads and one follows, is way easier than coordinating five people who can't see each other half the time. And when they tossed me out of the room because they wanted to work some more before "MOM" saw them, that was rather wry humor, except of course that they weren't kidding. :-)
The DGM school is a rather complicated business because I have changed the method for doing the teaching and now will have three rooms with a third of the deputies in each one, but I hope that it is complicated like clockwork, lots of moving parts, but everything runs smoothly. More finger crossing!
But the frustration of the month has been people contacting me to change things that were done and have gone to print. For example, I have already had one OV change location and have a second one that may also do so, which means that the location in the Itinerary will be wrong and even if we fix it for the Roster, lots of people don't get that, so now we have to deal with extra flyers and notices. And it looks to me that these changes were probably caused by people not getting written confirmation of their hall reservations. I will be the first to confess that from a theoretical, honor system point of view, it should not take a piece of paper to assure that a hall reservation is neither changed nor canceled just because a better paying group comes along and asks for our date. But the practical side of me reminds myself that (a) the person you talk to verbally may not be making sure that the person who keeps the calendar has your information, (b) some halls are run by professional managers and what the lodge brothers say may not be the real word on the hall's use, and (c) sometimes the hall thinks that your date is optional or moveable if you don't have the piece of paper. So I hope very much that everyone has gotten their contracts or at least written confirmations and that two will be all the OVs that are moving. That's probably wishful thinking, but let's wish!
And then I have several people who were appointed to committees in past years, who said that they would continue in their terms, but now are not sure that they can do so. I know that stuff happens and I completely understand that health issues arise at the most inconvenient times, but Sigh! So now I have about four people to replace on this, that or the other committee, and those are probably likely to keep happening all year long, so I guess I am not ready to retire my Mighty Notebook of All Resumes just yet.
Still, here we are, almost to the end of the trip up the mountain, ready to cross the saddle and start our sledding back down to the bottom. Deputy School this weekend and Grand Installation only nineteen days away. Oy Vey!
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