Herding Cats

I caught a break today! The Chorale's Board was supposed to meet tonight, but the president and vice-president were both out of town, leaving the task of chairing the meeting to the past president. Since half of the directors were sick with colds anyway, the past president called to cancel the meeting. Woo hoo! I have some time tonight!

I'm considering resigning as publicity chair, simply because I've had enough of herding cats. Some publicity-related activities go smoothly -- the guy who writes the press releases and does the media contact has been doing it for ages, and his wife did so before he did. He works with the guy who takes all the photos. You can pretty much wind them up and let them go.

On the other hand, people who are program managers for our events just go off and do whatever they feel like, and only really let publicity do its job when they either want something, or let something fall through the cracks. The program manager for the tsunami concert felt that he just didn't have the time to work with publicity, so he went out and did his own. The program manager for the latest event asked one member of the publicity committee to do the tickets, and instead of telling that person that there was someone on the committee who does tickets, she did them. Long story short, we ended up with two sets of tickets for this one event, and the person who is supposed to do the tickets is dropping off the committee.

Anyway, I've had enough. I already dislike managing the projects I get paid to manage, and I've decided I don't need to take on more of that stress for free. I've advised the president, and of course she'll try to talk me out of it, but it's time to find another cat-herder.

Back to the Needles

Ahhh, back to knitting. I'm almost done with the first part of the Lion Brand Warm Winter Poncho, but I'm not quite experienced enough to be able to visualize what to do after joining the second ball of yarn. I'll take the whole lot down to one of the local yarn shops and see if they can help me make sense of it.

Once I'm done with tonight's blog entry, I mean to do a little more work on the Fiber Trends felted tote. I haven't started Fletcher yet because I need a little time, space, and quiet to think about the knitting before I get started. I can't really start a sweater while sitting in front of the TV in the semi-darkness with all that yammering going on. If I'm relatively unencumbered on Saturday morning, I'll start it then.

Hope on the Maple Front

Apparently some maple farmers would like to take Easter Sunday off, in spite of what tradition dictates for the last Sunday in March. The maple farm from which we buy our yearly supply of syrup placed an ad in the local fishwrap, stating that they planned to have their open house on March 20, one week earlier, so that they too could have a holiday. Greg and I will be there, of course. Now all we have to hope for is enough sunlight and warm weather for the sap to run.