Saturday, Saturday…
Variety, they say, is the spice of life. Yesterday was spicy hot.
I had too many last-minute preparations for a seminar I gave in the morning. I got up at six to work on those. I hit the shower with my head still working out those details along with how I was going to present the seminar.
When I got out of the shower, I discovered I hadn’t rinsed the conditioner out of my hair (What’s all this goo?) then I broke the frames of my tri-focals while cleaning them. The left lens is now a free-floating entity.
Okay. Life goes on. I have three other pairs—all bi-focals of differing prescritptions—so somehow I’ll manage until Tuesday or Wednesday with those.
My ride showed up right on time at 8:15 to take me to the seminar.
The seminar, “Cyber-Ministry 101: Form and Content”, subtitled “A catalyst for learning” is to get churches out of the ruts of thinking a web site is a big, hairy monster that needs lots of money and committees to make it work, and to adjust priorites from how it looks to how it works.
The method was presentation, hands-on exploration of a dozen or so sites then group discussion and critique of those sites.
As such, the seminar required a companion web site. I started it at 8:45. Fortunately, I had the handouts for text, first thing in the morning I’d made thumbnails of the sites we’d critique and I had Web Studio, my new instant web site product. I uploaded the handouts and thumbnails and had a working web site by 9:15. Fifteen minutes to spare!
The seminar went flawlessly. Over 20 people from 18 churches showed up—including a lovely little skater-punk twink who you’d never peg for a church webmaster. But I digress…
The Associate Executive Presbyter and I played tag-team bullet points for the first half-hour. This armed our participants with a dozen or so good things and pitfalls to look for.
We sent our charges off, in groups of three and four, to the seven computers we had in four different offices. This proved to be the best part of the seminar. The reactions of the participants moved in waves across rooms. I could pretty much tell which sites they were looking at just from what I heard through doorways and down the halls.
The discussion was incredibly lively when we got back together for the last half-hour. You just wouldn’t think that you could get so many people so excited and enthusiastic about church web sites. It blew me away. I learned a lot from them too.
And many business cards and handouts about web hosting and Web Studio went home with happy participants.
Then it was zoom up Winton Road to the library. I help open the joint on alternate Saturdays and you don’t ever want to experience angry, anxious library patrons kept waiting at the door past opening time. It’s not pretty.
It’s been since May that I’ve opened on a Saturday and I forgot to empty the front bookdrop. No injuries or fatalities. Life goes on.
My favorite thing about Saturdays is all the kids. I love working in the “J” room when it’s filled with toddlers and middle-childhood kids. It’s just so cool with them all running around and excited and shit.
They seem to take to me too. I think it’s because I spend 90% of my time in there either sitting in the tiny little-kids chairs while sorting my cart, or crawling around on my knees shelving. It’s the only way I can get close enough to see where I’m supposed to put the damned books.
Even when the older kids ask me questions, I stay down on my knees unless I have to walk very far. But I do rise when I need to assert a bit of authority. Still, I usually start with a “Yo! Dude! You’re frightening the grown-ups.”
As for infants, I always take it, when the opportunity to play peek-a-boo presents itself.
I completely crashed when I got home. The fatigue of burning the candle at both ends for three weeks, the adrenaline rush of the morning seminar and fun all afternoon at the library took it’s toll. I was in the door at 4:15, in bed by 4:20 and dead to the world by 4:25.
I’d set the alarm so I could catch the bus to the meeting. I gulped down a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of water before the ten-minute walk to the stop on Park Ave. I looked both ways and never saw oncoming traffic when I crossed Goodman and almost got myself run over.
It wasn’t until after the bus came from Goodman instead of Park that I figured out the music I’d heard all along the way was from the East End festival. The bus had to detour around it. That meant another dash across Goodman to flag it down on the other corner.
No Web Boy at the meeting. Damn. Well I just know I’ll see him another time.
My sponsor, as you may recall, is a semi-retired art professor. He goes to every opening no matter the media or location. He’d gotten the day wrong and arrived for the hanging on Friday and dragged me to the opening after the meeting. “You’ll love it”, he promised.
Well, dragged me to the opening isn’t the right phrase. It was an opening to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Krudco, the local skater-punk gear shop. He more or less kept me reined in.
The highlight of an evening filled with delicious skater-punks, was when he asked one, “Well what do you do? How to do you make money?”
“I’m a male prostitute.”
“Great. Let’s get going!”
Everyone within earshot exploded in laughter.
“Oh man,” cried the skater-punk, slapping his forehead and retreating, “I can’t believe how that backfired.”
