WAG - What a week… and it’s only Thursday
Last night, for church I showed up in slightly disheveled appearance. This is partly due to the fact that when my usual ride to church knocked on my door, I was sitting before my computer, dripping wet, clad in towels and franticly typing.
Last night we premiered a new format for our weekly Royal Ranger meetings. We’re having a winter camping outing in three weeks and we’d like to have everyone earn the Winter Camping Merit. Notice how one neatly ties into the next? We just finished the Pinewood Derby little racecar season two weeks ago (with the girls besting the boys for the second year in a how) and were going to start hitting the books extra hard to make up for lost time.
The old system was to let the boys run around before church, getting rowdy and slightly on edge, before herding them into a small room where they had trouble keeping calm and quiet and later splitting up into other rooms where it was only slightly easier getting them under control and working on requirements.
The new setup was to lock up the sports equipment before hand, to cut down on some of the distracting adrenaline and testosterone that later lingered and made concentration difficult throughout the evening. To prepare for the campout, a lot of information has to be sorted through and recorded in activity books, so that meant the commanders have to do a bit of work before hand too (so there would be no running around in circles before the meeting for us… we’ll not while playing sports, but I certainly circled the secretary’s office a couple times while waiting for the 100-odd pages of copies to print off).
Another commander and I spent a lot of time over the weekend laying out the lessons for the next three weeks. We plotted out the next three meetings, even inserting extra time to help kids who missed a week to catch up, in hopes of keeping everybody on track. We even purchased a box of folders (only one color, orange, to keep them from fighting over preferred hues. Also, when they take the folders on the campout, orange folders are less likely to be misplaced and abandoned in the bushes) to help them keep track of their handouts and requirements.
Of course, the system works better if the commanders remember to print off the requirement lists with the space to write down the information we tell them is important.
So, right before my ride called to let me know he was on his way, I had popped out of the shower, recollected this unfinished detail, and was desperately trying to crank out (type up and format) what would end up being six pages of the winter camping merit.
Thus, when I arrived at church, with somewhat grizzly hair and a four-day growth of facial hair wearing dress pants with a hole in them paired with a COLORADO t-shirt, you could tell I’ve had a long day.
The meetings went well. The lesson plans have already been altered – it hurt us that the adult church service was shorter than usual due to the pastor being gone due to a family emergency. The fact that its hard to go from fun and games one week to more pencil orientated work the next also slowed us down.
Still, we’re ultimately on track… and very thankful we built the extra time in for the Rangers – which we’ll be taking advantage of shortly.
As for the rest of my week prior to my towel clad typing session, I’ll try to backlog as many of the worthwhile entries that I can. Privacies issues dictate I can’t go into certain details as to actual questions on the G.R.E. or details concerning the drunks I was, literally, chasing this weekend. Some things just can’t be shared in cyberspace.
Suffice it to say, it’s been a very productive week; especially when I’d show up to class. That reminds me, even though my five-day growth of hair remains un-mowed, I should really get to moving on. An application to graduate school assumes that one is going to pass the classes they are currently enrolled in. I don’t want to challenge that supposition as this point in my academic career. I’m sure my parents are with me on that one.
I hope everyone’s life is going as interestingly, if not just a little bit slower paced than mine. Either way, I hope to catch us with you all at some later mile marker down the line.
Take care and don’t forget to gird that towel tightly… or finish your work earlier… whatever works best for you.
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