meetings

This week has been full of meetings.

Really, what week isn't?

I think of my sister, who has too many playdate meetings and entirely useless work meetings. I think of my brother, dealing with horrendous federal government meetings. And he blogs about them, so I get to experience it too. Since I have their examples, I feel blessed in my life to (mostly) only attend meetings that I actually want to. Most of the meetings this week were good:

Tuesday, Dale and I skipped town to go to the Farm Credit Canada Forum entitled "Big Ideas for your Future" That was actually useful, in my humble opinion. Yes, I was sick (I have the 10 day cold - I think I'm on day 6 now), but it was indeed nice to hear positive things about agriculture. It was interesting to hear the Wealthy Barber and his take on today's financial markets. And cool to hear Rex Murphy in person. Then we rushed home to pick up the kids (we had left them at the neighbours' with a babysitter) and celebrated birthday number one this week.

Today I drove to Portage La Prairie to find out about new chemistry offerings in Plant Health from BASF. Again, I was sick, but coffee is great for the cold, although nasty on the GI tract. But, the speakers weren't bad, and once you take out the obvious need for a chemical company to sell more stuff, the products may actually have a fit on the farm. And, with any luck, we'll be doing a yield trial on one of their products this year. I made it home just in time to go to Sparks/Brownies/Guides/Pathfinders, which was fun. I couldn't shout, which probably made it fun for the kids too!

But, Wednesday I felt awful. Fortunately, I didn't have too much on the slate. I could have sent Dale to the rink with the girls except that finally, the co-president of the Figure Skating Club called her first meeting. I had also promised to clean out the locker so that the Atom Provincial teams can use all the lockers this weekend. Actually, the same co-president had been told that we were to do that, but she didn't tell anyone. So when the organizer came up to me to ask when we were going to do it, I just suggested Wednesday, as I was running out the door when he asked.

Anyway, I went to skating, dropped my PDA on the concrete, dumped my peppermint tea on the locker floor while I was cleaning it out and eventually went to the meeting.

I guess I should have listened to my sister and stayed home. The co-presidents convened this meeting to ask who could go to a meeting on March 10th that is to deal with a potential lottery/raffle opportunity. The committee looking for the partner in this raffle/lottery thing already stated that it was for capital expenditures or special projects, of which the figure skating club has none. I pointed that out. We need money to pay the bills, which is, unfortunately, not in the criteria.

The other item on the agenda was another meeting (that the co-presidents can't attend) on March 24th to deal with funding opportunities through Sport Manitoba. Which, I suspect, is more for "disadvantaged" athletes than for continuation of the club.

The point is, this could have been accomplished with a two sentence e-mail. One sentence, if the writer was eloquent. Hit reply all, find a delegate, and let me stay home.

I don't wish this plague on anyone, although I have threatened to cough on anyone else who returns fundraising chocolate bars unsold. Perhaps I should extend the threat to people who call ridiculous meetings!