884 Tuesday, Mapping

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Sign seen on the side of the road today, warning of road construction ahead: "... USE ALTERNET ROUTE".

I spent several hours this afternoon at the museum, mapping out routes to deliver the pamphlets. I had a problem last week with board members delivering pamphlets to sponsors without telling anyone - so I'd call someone to ask how many they wanted, and they'd say they already got them. I apologized for bothering them, and felt foolish. Somebody isn't communicating.

Today I discovered something worse. The gift shop ladies and I had counted and rubber banded bundles of pamphlets for sponsors, and the bundles were labeled with the name, address, and count. The bundles were in boxes under the bookshelves in the gift shop. I went to load them into the car today, and just by chance I picked up one lone pamphlet and looked at the tag with it. The tag said "count 30". Uh, where's the other 29? There were a few other loose pamphlets, and there was an orphan tag not attached to a bundle. It looks like someone helped themselves without even thinking about what all those rubber bands and labels meant. How stupid does someone have to be to do something like that? Or narcissistic?

So, anyway, I start delivering tomorrow.

The volunteer coordinator asked me to represent the museum at some big show in Yonkers, in mid-October. She said nobody else will do it, and that's what usually hooks me. But I really don't want to "represent" - I'm too shy for that - and I don't want to go to someplace in the city. I'll go to the airports alone, but anywhere else I want somebody else along. Somebody who knows where we're going. Luckily, I have something scheduled that weekend, so I have been saved from overcommitting myself.

When I went to Newark airport on Friday to meet Sister, I went down the parkway, and then straight across a highway into the airport. No fuss. There's another route that involves several different roads, one particular part where you merge into a multi-lane highway from the right, and then within mere feet you have to take an exit on the left. It's all very hairy. Every time I have ever gone to that airport when a male was driving or navigating, that's the way we went. On the way back to the airport on Sunday, I was telling Sister about it, and I said that's the boy route. We're taking the girl route.

I've found that to be generally true, that males will go through all kinds of gyrations to save the smallest bit of time or mileage, whereas women will usually take the straightest simplest route. (Generally, folks. Generally.)

Before arriving at the reception on Saturday, I had been told it was "behind a biker bar", that a tent would be pitched on the grass, and the grass bordered a pond. My expectations were not high, but I guess that was her purpose. She tends to downplay everything. I sometimes wonder if she really sees things the way she describes them.

Actually, it was beautiful. The "tent" was a semi-permanent white pavilion with multi-colored flowers twined around the ceiling braces (a bower!), and set on maroon smooth stone ground cover. The "tiny" dance floor was small, but it was stable and smooth, and at one point we had close to twenty people on it. The "grass" was beautifully landscaped, with paths through flower beds, flowers, flowers, and more flowers, gazebos, little arched bridges, those flower-covered arches over the paths (I forget what they're called), big old oak trees, and a dock on the "pond", which was actually a lake with white herons wading in the shallows and fishermen passing in boats.

I guess there's nothing else I am allowed to say about the day. Except that Sister, Niece, and I were very tired because there was a LOT of noise in the hotel parking lot Friday night, and we didn't get a lot of good sleep. I'd got maybe four hours sleep Thursday night, and Sister and Niece had traveled Friday. So by Saturday evening we were dead tired. Niece fell asleep in the back seat of my car heading back to the hotel that night. Sister and I heard a cell phone ringing somewhere in the car, and weirdly, we couldn't figure out where the sound was coming from. It rang over and over, and we couldn't find it. We figured it was probably under Niece, but we couldn't wake her up, she was dead to the world. I was cracking up - three blondes in a small car with a ringing cell phone, and we can't find it!