It's been a long day...

But not long as in bad, long as in duration. I got up at 6:30 this morning to help with a fundraiser for the trip to Mexico. In other words, I worked at a pancake breakfast at a local church after both Masses today. It was early, but it never helps to whine and complain about early hours. And being perky wakes you up anyway (I’ve garnered a reputation as very effusive, upbeat, and friendly in my short tenure at the Newman Center, so I’m glad at least pretending to be a morning person contributed to it).

It was a long morning (started at 8am and didn’t even leave the church kitchen until almost 2pm), but it was a fun time. We listened to radio stations that were playing only Christmas songs and sang along and got to know each other and work together a bit. Which is good, because we’re going to be living and working together come spring break and the trip to Mexico, so we may as well bond early.

A word of advice for anyone cooking for large groups, though. ALWAYS use the powder and water pancake mix. NEVER use Bisquick. Inevitably, someone (like yours truly) will be too groggy to realize that she did the ratios wrong and added twice as much milk to the batter than was needed. I had to pour in another two-and-a-half pounds of Bisquick to make up for it. With the water and powder I just added water until it looked right and handed it to the cook. No math, no problem.

I only had a few hours between that and choir/Mass (I sound so pious in this post—I’m really not, I just happened to be at a fundraiser this particular morning with the same folks from Mass…), so I wrote out and photocopied my piece for music theory. It takes a long time to write it nicely (at least, it does for me), so that actually took about two hours. Then I ate the quickest dinner ever and ran off to choir and Mass.

THEN, after I got back, I settled in with a Will & Grace DVD, my knitting, and the last of Anne’s artichoke dip with crackers (yummy…) when my folks from my GLBT lit class called and asked if I could meet with them. I was the only one with an extra copy of our slide show (thanks for that flash drive, Mom—otherwise we would have had to shoot in the dark) and my partner didn’t have my notes, so I had to go despite my exhaustion. I expected a really unproductive meeting, but it actually went very, very well. We’ve added clips to really make our point (thank God for You Tube) and are going to add music, and we’re dressing up from our individual decades (I’m presenting the 1990’s, and one of the girls [who dresses like a hippie daily] used to wear all grunge clothes that happened to be from her uncle, so they’ll probably fit me. I’m gonna look like Kurt Kobane!).

Ordinarily I might not have been so thrilled about last minute changes especially regarding costumes (I’d say it sounds a little eighth gradish), but two other groups presented the other day. One of them had everything nailed so completely; their substance and their presentation, as well as attention to detail were all covered, so it came off as really stellar. The other group had a solid yet fragile substance and the presentation left something to be desired. The moral of the story is that when you forget details, no one notices, but when you cover them, they do notice and it usually enhances the experience. So here’s to looking like we care. We’re having fun, anyway. I’m much happier with this project than I was a week ago, but I know the only thing that saved us was the snow. We’ll take what we can get, thank-you-very-much.

So now, since I’ve been up since dawn (literally, and may I say watching the sun come up in this town is totally worth the lack of sleep), I’m kinda tired. I’m going to crawl in bed with a book on tape and snuggle in until I drift off…