Hey, beautiful people!
I'll apologize right now if this is a little random and incoherent. I'm extremely tired today, for reasons I'll expand upon later. But first...
I'm working on Castilian this week. It's a pretty smooth language, but it's become something I do in my spare time this week. We're full speed ahead on the bootcamp, which means long Zoom meetings and lots of time reading through the training manual. I was, however, able to finish one group of Castilian, and I'm into a second, so it's not all bad.
One of my big tasks this week was putting together the gift exchange and sending assignments to everyone. We have 17 people participating this year, so I had to make sure everyone had the correct person with all of the correct information from the survey. I'm still coming up with ways to make our Secret Angle Virtual Astonishing Gift Exchange (let me know when you get it) more exciting since we're doing it on Zoom, but I have until December 4, so we'll see.
If you're wondering how I make sure the assignments are random (or even if I randomize it at all), I'm going to let you in on my method. I came across it years ago, and it's served me well since then. First, write your participants' names on note cards.
It's important that you write the names twice. Once because they will be giving a gift, and once because they will be receiving a gift.
Shuffle the cards.
Cut the cards in half.
Did I need to use the cutting machine to do that? No. But it made me feel powerful.
Keep both halves in the same order. Put one half of the card in a row on a table, face down.
Put the other half of the card in a row below that, upside down, and offset by one or two cards. Still upside down.
At the end of the row, loop back to the start to finish.
Now, you flip both cards. The name on the top card gives a gift to the name on the bottom card. Et voila!
It's not a foolproof system. I do have to go through and make sure no spouses are giving gifts to each other. It could be fun, but they already have to buy a present for their significant other. And we have three husband/wife combos in our team this year! Also, I try to make sure that if someone has given a gift to another person in the last two years, they get a new person this year.
So you may have to do a little card swapping. But beware! You want to avoid a closed loop. For example, if Joe is giving a gift to Sue, then Sue would give the next gift and so on. You have to make sure that this line continues through all 17 people. It's very stressful. Thankfully, I had Lori's help on overthinking possibly problematic giving scenarios.
Anyway, it's all done now, assignments have been made, emails sent, and it's out of my hands until December 4. Any ideas?
Now for the reason I'm so tired. I've mentioned before that we do work days at OMS - outdoor or indoor tasks to get the building and grounds spic-and-span. Our spring work day was cancelled, and our original fall work day was postponed, then postponed again for rain. Finally, we were able to get it done yesterday.
I signed up for the warehouse organization. Yes, OMS has a warehouse. Theoretically, it's there to store missionary belongings while they are on the field. Possibly also donations and just whatever stuff OMS feels the need to keep around for long periods of time.
In reality, it has become a catch-all for all kinds of junk that people didn't know what else to do with. I've been aware of that for some time, so when I saw the warehouse was an option, I jumped on it. And I kind of took over.
Oops.
I was adamant from the beginning that when we were done, we'd have everything gone that didn't need to be there and everything else in ship-shape and Bristol fashion. Did that mean that some hard decision had to be made about what needed to be thrown away? Yes. Was I prepared to make those decisions? Also yes. I wasn't alone, of course. I had many fantastic people helping out, which is good, because the first area we tackled was the loft.
The only way into the loft is via a ladder, and I don't do ladders and I don't do heights. So I relied on these fine folks to get things organized and throw down some 75 empty boxes that had been gathering mold.
Yeah.
They did a fantastic job. If we knew who stuff belonged to, we let them know that it was accessible any time they wanted to remove it (hint hint). If we didn't know, we either donated it or binned it. Then, we established what absolutely had to stay and made sure it all had a nice, neat corner in which it belonged. And then I made up a floor plan so that no one would get confused about what belonged where.
No, I didn't actually operate the fork lift. That would have been terrifying for everyone.
I wish we'd taken more before photos. But I was so focused on getting rid of all that junk that I didn't really think about it. But please believe me when I say that those walls back there haven't seen the light of day in YEARS.
Anyway, I have much pain in my body, and my lungs hurt from all of the dust and mold. So this weekend is for sleeping. And coughing.
Bye!
Got it. Nice.
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