Tag: IOGT

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Gratitudes 2018, Day 36

After stuffing over 150 newsletters into envelopes this evening, I decided to write a Newsletter Edition of gratitudes tonight:

  1. Microsoft Publisher. “Start with two columns. You want to add a picture? Click this button, move it here, resize it, drag it over here. Want to change articles? Drag the old one to the side of the screen for possible later use, then copy and paste the new one in its place.” Every other month, create the same basic template and start all over again. Suck it, printing press!

  2. Mom’s industrial-sized double-sided color copier. Prints out lots of copies a minute on 11×17 paper so we can do all of the printing and production at home. Suck it, Kinkos!

  3. Mom’s paper folder. There was a time where we made two folds by hand: two sheets of 11×17 paper in half to make an eight-page 8.5×11 newsletter, then fold it in half again (originally into thirds) for stuffing into envelopes. If that first fold wasn’t exact, you could end up with some really crinkled paper. You say there’s a machine that’ll make a perfect first fold for us? Suck it, folding paper by hand! Well, I guess we still have to make the second fold ourselves… dang it!

  4. Self-sealing envelopes. Sure, you could lick over 150 envelopes every other month, but these envelopes have a sticky strip so you can just press the flap down to seal it. Suck it, dry tongues with paper cuts on them!

  5. Our little white plastic basket. Instead of just throwing the envelopes into a gigantic, disorganized pile, we can stack them nicely in this basket, then easily flip through them to make sure we printed the right number and all the envelopes have stamps. Suck it… eh, I think I’m out of things to be hostile towards. I’m just really grateful we have so many tools to make producing and mailing these newsletters faster and easier every year.

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What a nice backhanded compliment!

You may need to settle down with a bowl of popcorn for this blog entry. Hell, I might want to grab some popcorn for this. Depending on how deep I got into the back story, this could take a while. Before we begin, I should introduce you to and/or refresh your memory about a few things.

First off, the National Good Templar (NGT). It’s a national newsletter that gets distributed to all U.S. members (and a few overseas) of IOGT, officially known as the International Organization of Good Templars. Please, please, please note that we have no relationship to the Knights Templar: we’re not religiously affiliated; our major goal is to practice and promote the non-use of drugs and alcohol; it began in Utica, NY in 1851, so no raping, burning and pillaging throughout Europe during the Crusades that I know of.

The previous editor of the NGT was charging an exorbitant amount of money for each issue last year (her own fee plus costs for another company to do the printing, mailing, etc.). For an organization that’s nationwide, we’re pretty small—we can’t support going into the hole $12,000 in one year. Borrowing money from China is not an option. Thus, I decided to throw my hat into the ring: I submitted a bit that was significantly less expensive. (The previous editor sent out a bid of her own several days later that compared the two. It turned out that the totals were really close when she priced mine at eight issues and hers at six.)

I was given the job to produce six issues this year, but I was making a few changes: I’d be using 20-pound paper instead of 80-pound (thinner and lighter) and printing it via my mother’s copier/printer (it’s not professional-grade, but it could eat your personal printer and still have room in the paper tray). I was sending them in envelopes instead of folding them over and putting little sticky tabs on the edges (another reason why we don’t need the 80-pound paper). I also included a section on Page 1 to notify people that after 72 years, they could finally receive their copy of the NGT via email (a .pdf file will look cleaner, smoother, it’ll be in color… all sorts of benefits).

This second part, which is probably a refresher for most of you, is about backhanded compliments. They sound nice, but there’s a hidden layer of insult behind it. Example: “You’re pretty cute for a fat girl.” Yes, he said you’re cute. He also said you’re fat. He might be thinking, “If your face was on a skinny girl, it’d give me nightmares and I’d wake up in a cold sweat, needing something to drink because I threw up a little in my mouth.” But since you’re fat, you’re pretty cute. Backhanded compliment.

With that out of the way, time to bust out the popcorn and see how the story unfolds. Continue reading “What a nice backhanded compliment!”

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Why, yes, I love eating twigs and berries!

Okay, maybe this summer camp isn’t that extreme—we use cabins that have running water—but it definitely lacks the comforts of home: no air conditioning, no soft mattresses and… no internet access. Crap.

Actually, I’m not too concerned, given that this will be my 30th year of attendance. Yep, three decades. God, I feel old… But I’ve had fun since I started as a camper at age 5, became a teen counselor at 15 (I think—it’s been a couple years) and into my 20s (our definition of “teen” is a little loose when it comes to camp counselors) and now I’m the Waterfront Director, playing lifeguard during free swim and instructor during swimming lessons. Of course, that also means I have a higher potential of melting or spontaneously combusting since I sit on a dock while kids swim in the lake, but I’ve had plenty of years learning to deal with sunburn as well. (Hint: Shawn has had many days when he could have qualified for a wet t-shirt contest.)

I’m just mentioning this because I’m heading to IOGT Camp tomorrow after class so we can start setting things up for the official start on Saturday. Thankfully, I won’t have to study for a final exam during camp this year, so I won’t feel guilty about passing out on my cot once in a while. (Even if my skin doesn’t melt off, sitting in the hot sun for a couple hours a day gets draining after a while.)

The lack of internet access there means I won’t be able to write any blog posts for a while and also won’t be able to approve comments that look like spam. If you’re going to write something douchey, you’ll have to do it in plain English. Sorry, internet trolls.

So that’s it for now. I hope you all enjoy your summers and do all sorts of fun activities that put smiles on your faces and give you plenty of happy memories. I plan on doing the same, though that could be difficult if I spontaneously combust. In that case… hey, I’ll never have to take another final exam! I’m smiling already!

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The first snow of the season in Minnesota

Like I said yesterday, I could have tried getting home sooner, but it wasn’t a good day to drive fast. Hell, it wasn’t a good day to drive, period, but I had places to go, so I was going to be careful. I was going to take my time and make sure I got home in one piece. (One smashed-up car per year, that’s my limit.)

The day got started when I went up to Minneapolis for an IOGT meeting. If nothing else, we needed to do an audit for the fiscal year that ended on August 31st. Since I’m the treasurer, my presence was kinda necessary. It was starting to snow when we left, but things weren’t too bad heading north to the city. Once the meeting was over, though, things were no longer “weren’t too bad”. It was pretty nasty outside.

I was heading to a friend’s house for an Xbox party—he bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 a couple weeks ago and invited a handful of people over so we could kill each other over and over and over. (Yeah, that’s basically the point of the game: blow up everyone else.) Normally, it would take me maybe half an hour to get there. Yesterday’s drive lasted a little over an hour.

What’s worse, I was tired. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this at some point before, but it may have been a few years ago: my eyes don’t focus in the same place, so when I start getting really tired, I get double vision. That was happening for about the last third of the trip. I cranked up the radio, turned off the heat, drove slowly, focused on the road and I managed pretty well.

Such was not the case with everyone out there. For some ungodly reason, people in Minnesota forget how to drive in snow over the summer, so when the first one of the winter hits… over the course of five miles or so on a major highway, one van had spun out and hit the barrier so it was on the left side of the highway facing traffic. Another car went right instead, so it headed down the slope of a hill. Not very steep, but not flat by any means, so I imagine the driver had lots of fun spinning around in circles, bouncing around in his seat thinking “Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit…” He didn’t hit anything except the ground, but I didn’t want to be either of those guys, so slow and steady seemed like the better option.

I got to my friend’s place, played Xbox with the others for a while, then demonstrated just how tired I was. He’s got a setup down in his basement that’s really good for watching movies: a projector on the ceiling that turns the wall into a giant screen, awesome stereo sound system… it’s pretty sweet. When there’s lots of gunfire, exploding grenades and people yelling at each other into their headsets because they keep killing each other… pretty loud. And I fell asleep. Then I woke up because I was cold. After my friend gave me a blanket, I fell asleep again.

Thankfully, all that rest made it a lot easier to get home. (So did the fact that it was a little after 11:00pm and it had stopped snowing, but the sleep helped, too.) I got back on the road and drove home, but I still wanted to be careful because of my one-vehicle limit. Thus, by taking my time, I got home with just a couple minutes left, talked to my mom for a bit, then got to my laptop and cranked this baby up right about midnight. I probably would have been fine driving home a little faster, but I’m still okay with my decision. Because I’m okay. Had I driven faster and ended up not okay, backdating last night’s entry by five minutes would be the least of my worries.

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IOGT Camp aftermath

Yesterday, I finally got home after a week and a half at camp. It’s always a little tough getting back into the swing of things at home, which is probably why I haven’t tried posting anything until tonight.

Incidentally, there were several times when I thought yesterday was Tuesday. I don’t know why, especially since I’ve had classes on Tuesday nights for the last three months. I ended up having to take an Accounting exam on the Tuesday of camp, too, which made the first half of camp more interesting.

For one thing, it was a lot easier to get the kids to be quiet the first night. Last year, they kept whispering to each other until about 2:00 in the morning. This year, I told them all that I needed to study for my exam and I wouldn’t be able to focus if they were making noise. I got some ridiculous protests like “But I talk in my sleep!” That’s when I busted out an angry (and truthful) “These are not a good few days to be testing my patience!” They got quiet a lot faster than last time.

As it turned out, all the nighttime studying and lack of naps paid off: I scored a 95% on the exam. Along with e-mailing me my score, the professor added a note of thanks for taking the class seriously. Mind you, he was the second instructor—he taught managerial accounting, whereas the first guy taught financial accounting—so he doesn’t know that the 95% should help compensate for the two exams I took earlier in the course.

I know that you (and the campers) may be wondering about the “lack of naps” comment. It’s true, I like to take naps during my free time there. Part of that is because I don’t sleep very well (me + cot + not-long-enough sleeping bag ? restful nights). Another part is because I’m the lifeguard and sitting on the dock in the hot sun for big chunks of time saps a lot of energy out of my body. When they start asking to go swimming half an hour early… HA HA HA! No.

Ironically, we always go to a waterslide on Thursday, which was the day it was cold and drizzly. That’s good for keeping lines short for the slides. Hell, it kept the lifeguard staff short—we outnumbered them 5-to-1 when we got there and they eventually abandoned the rapids ride completely (a bunch of short curving slides between splash pools). However, the cold and drizzle chased us inside for lunch and eventually led us to leave a couple hours early.

Lessee… there was one night I was glad I have some movies on my laptop. We had some nasty weather coming our way, so everyone headed for shelter to wait out the storm. I’m sure a lot of parents can confirm this: getting a bunch of kids together can get noisy. Trust me, they get noisier when they’re in a room where there’s very little space to move (and the enclosed walls probably didn’t help). Thankfully, I had brought my laptop to the shelter and we all started watching the movie “Up” until the weather let up a little. That’s when everyone left the building, started getting ready for bed and then the power went out.

I guess a couple branches fell down on a nearby power line, so we had electricity again early the next afternoon, but camp is a lot more interesting when you have to take measures like putting road cones on top of toilet lids as a reminder to not use them because there’s no power for the water pump. It turns out that pouring a whole bunch of water into a toilet bowl really quickly will make it flush itself, so we filled a large barrel with lake water and put it next to the outdoor bathrooms (vs. the ones in the cabins).

I’m sure there’s plenty more to write about, but I’m a little rusty after so much time away from writing. I suppose I could have written something while I was there, but seriously, that would have cut a big chunk out of my nap time.
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Okay, a couple more notes: thanks to aloe and occasionally wearing a t-shirt while sitting on the dock or teaching swimming lessons, I’m only peeling a little bit on the top of my left ear, my nose and the back of my neck/shoulders. Given that I didn’t put on any suntan lotion while setting up camp—putting out buoys and the swim area rope—that’s a lot of thanks.

And setting up the swim area was an adventure. We had about an hour to put out the buoys, which was a snap since Brent had made anchors for all four of them that stay in the water year-round. He attached a line to three of them, so after finding the first, we followed the line and then approximated the location of the fourth compared to the other three. Before Brent made his anchors and everything, putting out buoys could take an hour or two—this year, it was closer to twenty minutes.

When working that evening, the water was really smooth. Not so much when trying to put out the rope. It’s a small lake, but we had… three foot swells with white caps? When you’re trying to loop a rope over the top of a high-floating buoy to mark the swim area, that doesn’t help much. There were a few times when I wrapped my legs around the buoy and reached up to tilt it toward me—the waves were still going over my head. At some point, a wave rocked one of the buoys hard enough to give me a bruise on the inside of my right thigh. And at another point, a wave hit me smack in the side of the head and it took six hours to get the water out of my ear. Needless to say, that morning was an adventure.

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Stop, go, stop, go, stop, go…

It’s almost time for summer camp and I think I’ve got everything packed that I need. (Thankfully, I have a safety net—commonly known as my parents—so if I’ve left anything important behind, they can bring it when they come to visit in a couple days.)

Note that I may or may not have internet access there, which means there probably won’t be any new blog entries until next weekend. (It also means a shitload of e-mails to delete when I get home, grumble grumble grumble…)

There’s also a distinct likelihood that without much time in the sun this summer, I could hold a yellow pepper and a cabbage in my hands and look like a beet salad. Or if I stack them up under my chin, a stoplight. If I cover up most of my face, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer! You get the idea.

But those are minor details. The truth is that I’m about to spend the next week and a half at camp as the waterfront director (note the discussion about turning red above) and it’s gonna be a lot of fun. With that said, I better go through my stuff again. Not that I’ll be able to find anything at this point since I just threw a lot of it into a couple bags, but I’d rather not call home tonight with a plea to bring clean underwear.