It was a busy weekend, one where I managed to pull an event together by the skin of my teeth.
Does your town have "Insert your town name Days"?
No?
Well, we do. We have "Insert your town name Days" around here. This is a community event that just about every town up around here in New England has. The "days" consist of a PTA cake walk, and ice cream social at a local church and another church does their pancake breakfast. Usually there is soccer sign up or basketball sign up, or a raffle for the local historical society, a band, and a bunch of other shenanigans.
Small towns have these "days" which are usually one "day" but let's not argue about that. Suffice to say, the Boy Scouts play a major role in whatever the town "Days" is. Our town is no different. Our Troop does a big assed barbecue. And I volunteered back in March to coordinate it. It also turns out to be our Troop's big fundraiser for the year. Last year, our "days" was canceled because of rain. this year, not so much.
We got food donated to us (if you live anywhere near Haverhill MA, I will extol the virtues of Haverhill Beef Company to you, and the fine folk at Fantini Bakery also helped out). Our Scouts and parents step up to man the grill, the cash register and do all kinds of good works.
We watched the forecast for weeks... it was perfect perfect perfect and then all of a sudden it was supposed to be pouring out on Saturday.
Absolutely POURING.
They had a rain date scheduled, but there was one problem. They didn't TELL anyone about the rain date, except the vendors. So the info that went home with the elementary school students, the announcement in the paper... not one mention was made of the rain date. Which was stupid. And it pissed me off. Because why HAVE a slated rain date and then not tell anyone about it. Dumbasses. But. Whatever. So they opted to go ahead and do it. Have it go on and ... move everything INSIDE (at the fire station) and run it indoors.
One problem -- you can't grill INSIDE the fire station.
Yet again, Troop 87 would be representin' in the pouring rain. it isn't a Troop 87 event if it isn't raining. I think we've all gotten used to this by now.
The night before at 11pm I'm on the phone with parents, people squabbling... "I can't believe they're not just doing it on Sunday!!!"
"I know, I know... but I'm not in charge so..."
"This is so stupid!"
"I know, I know... I fully agree!"
"It's gonna be BEAUTIFUL on Sunday!!! What the hell! Don't they know no one is going to come out on Sunday!!!!"
"I know," (insert sound of my head hitting the dining table), "I agree," (bang, bang bang).
It poured. It so poured. It was horrible. Everyone else was inside, but we were outside, and people eventually came out to see us. And our food started selling. And we were cranking out the goods. Sausages! with Peppers and Onions! Burgers! with or without cheese! Hot dogs!
My concern was that we'd recoup our costs of about $500. We did. We doubled that. We ended up clearing about $600.
And at the end of the day, that's not bad.
The boys were in good spirits, and that made everything much better. Our senior patrol leader is so much fun, I adore him. We had a great time, and he kept everyone laughing (including me). I had a great time, and while it would have been much nicer to do it on a nice, sunny day -- like today -- we had a great time. I love these guys. And it was time well spent.
Today I slept until 1pm. I guess I was exhausted. After the whole summer of Shakespeare touring, and then this event on top of things... sleep was well earned.
Major league football kicked off this past Thursday but today was the first Big Day of game play. And you all know that I love me some football, we watched quite a bit of it today (once we woke up) and then later in the day we went to get Jess' senior pictures taken. My friend Peter is a great photographer, and I didn't want a 3 hour studio shoot with hundreds of dollars of photos and prints and whatnot, so I asked him to do her photos. We wanted to do it at Winnekenni Castle, but there was a wedding there tonight. So we ended up at a playground, which was Jess' idea.
She didn't even WANT senior portraits done, but I told her that her parents and grandparents and Auntie would want them, so we had to do something. So the playground was fun, informal, but professional. Peter took a ton of photos and will send me the best to pick from. One will be yearbook worthy... and some will be just fun and silly and happy. And in the end, that's all I wanted. I love my girl. So if she wants portraits at a playground... that's all right by me.
On that note, I'm officially very tired. Putting up photos into Flickr and going to bed. Good night friends.
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