line up, sign up

Busy days, slow blogging. Back to a routine of 8:00 a.m. phone calls, and work into the evening. Yeah, us old farts can do the hours; we just don't like it!

Conference stuff is going insane, but that's not news any more. Still in the middle of selections and dragging people back to work.

Why did I ever think my life was interesting enough to blog? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes I can't tell; other people get to choose. When you're in the middle of things, you're not the best judge.

Last night was a church meeting. (All right, all right, we're Unitarians, and it is officially not a church.) I rebuilt their web site last year, and they're all very pleased. Still.

And the point of all this blogging (or rather one point, anyway) is to get comfortable with Movable Type so I can set up multiple blogs on the church web site. The more that other people can put their stuff directly online, the better for me! Anyway, MT is starting to make some sense.

The meeting last night ended up being an open-ended discussion about volunteerism. It's a tough issue, and one that I get to deal with on the conference, too. (We project 400 people will attend this year. It takes about that many people volunteering in one aspect or another to make it happen. A big part of my job on the conference is dealing with that, one way or another.) The church is having trouble dealing with it, too, which everyone finds very frustrating -- and our Unitarian tendencies to talk everything to death and to organize everything into consensus doesn't exactly help. A consultant tells us that this phase of church growth lasts about 6 years. The minister says that we're 5 years into it, and she's getting impatient!

At one point, the minister said that she wanted to talk to me later about setting up volunteer recruiting on the web site. I made a note to call her, and 10 seconds later I couldn't remember what we were supposed to talk about. Bad sign.

On another front, Carol's finally ready for a new cat, after her beloved Russian Blue, Micky, died about 18 months ago. She's found a 6 month old Abyssinian, which is exactly what she wants. I think we're in trouble!

Diane