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!