A Little Bit Different

Seventeen weeks down, thirty-five left to make a difference.

This past weekend, I attended the reception for the Grand Worthy Advisor for California Rainbow.

For me, there was a little bit of a stroll down memory lane involved because the event was held in Oakland at the Scottish Rite Center.  The last time I was in that hall was for a Coronation event that my medieval group held there.  It was very interesting being back up on that stage with the honored member.  The only part that was new, and not necessarily good, was that they had set up spotlights on one side of the stage to shine down on the microphone and those darned things shined right in the eyes of everyone on the stage.  When I got called on to do introductions, it was a good thing that I had memorized which of my officers and escorts were there and could just introduce them in protocol order, so it didn't matter the order in which they were sitting because you couldn't hardly see anything at all!  I've never wanted so badly to be wearing sunglasses indoors at an event before.

Of course my memory of the hall was not perfect.  I couldn't remember if the main floor was three or four and I confess that the parking lot was bigger than I remembered, but it still was far too small for all the attendees.  Of course, the cool part for me is that I got saved a parking space, so one of my Grand Officers was happy to give me a ride since that meant that he could use my spot.  The jury is still out on whether I would have gotten a ride otherwise, but since I always try to consider my Sisters and Brothers in the best light, I will choose to believe that he would have given me the ride anyway.  And we had a lovely dinner afterwards, so that is good too.

It was also nice to be just visiting because going to a Rainbow function meant that I just got to sit in a chair and look pretty, wave when introduced, introduce a few people that I already know and sit down - no remarks and no worries about whether the program was going correctly or not.  It was a nice change, but then I do like having the chance to give remarks some times, so all things in their proper place, I suppose.

It also provided an interesting contrast because there was a 180 shift from the weekend before.  That previous weekend, we attended our first Official Visits in the South, a social one and a traditional one, and made our own Official Visit to our Senior Living Community.  The social had a great program of musical entertainment with a tasty lunch and the traditional had a very fun theme of medieval romance.  I wore one of my favorite medieval dresses and had a lovely dinner too.  And when we made our Official Visit to the SLC, the Grand Officers got to perform their Ritual work for the residents, so I had to do all the traditional Worthy Matron duties.  It was really nice though to be able to present fifty-year membership pins to two of our Residents.  The ceremony is quite lovely and having the chance to honor these members was touching.  So going from all that to "sit and look pretty" was a nice break, almost like a vacation.  But of course, there is no rest for the wicked, I mean, weary, yes weary is what I meant! :-)

This weekend, we are excited to go to Mountain View for our IMPACT 2013 session put on by our Leadership Committee and our Northern Home Festival in Richmond and our Official Visit in Salinas.