The tail end of the NAGCR AGM: In several conversations, texts, and emails (and commentaries thereon)*
Texts from me to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay, 20:17, 24.8.19:
ME: At Venetian restaurant, but no green crabs in sight. Sad!
SOVAY: Bummer! I hope the rest of the Venetian food made up for it.
ME: It was actually surprisingly meh, but they gave us a very good price...
It's traditional to have a banquet after the actual business meeting; on this occasion, we calculated that catering was going to be too expensive AND prohibitively complicated, and settled for trying to find a restaurant that could take a reservation for 80+ people. We wound up at Filippo in the North End, which gave us an entire gigantic second-floor room, but served us what was frankly cheap, boring Italian food. I guess we should have gone with the private room at the Asgard, or whatever our backup plan was. Still, nobody complained, they didn't gouge us TOO severely on booze (and see above on second-floor private room, price etc.); and the company was good. We Boston folk ended up semi-accidentally dispersing ourselves among the various tables, and
chatting with guests from away.
A parishioner to me, morning of 25.8:**
P: You're not usually down here for coffee hour at this point!
ME: Well, it's standing-room only...actually, not even standing room...in the tower, so I thought I'd come down, actually act like a member of the congregation for once, and help show off the mini-ring.
(Everyone wanted to do service ringing.)
Me to E.H.***, while sprawled on the stairs up to the antechamber to the ringing room that afternoon:
ME: Why am I so frickin' exhausted?
E.H.: Because you've been working like a dog all weekend? ...And so have all the rest of us?
(Accurate.)
Me at some other point that afternoon:
"OK, maybe Cambridge major from the 6 wasn't the best choice for the first thing to ring after I've rung nothing but a miniring all weekend!"
(Cambridge is probably the most difficult method I can be said to know, and I'm still learning it. Involves a lot of dodging, i.e. swapping places rapidly, which is tricky on large bells. Like the 6 at the CotA, which weighs a bit over 10 cwt., i.e. over half a metric tonne.
It wasn't a COMPLETE disaster, though, and by that point we had abandoned any plan to impress the congregation or visitors, and were doing what was basically an extra practice.)
Email (addressed to me personally, for no readily apparent reason) from some ringers from Raleigh, 2 Sept. 2019 :
Just wanted to thank you and all the other organizers for a wonderful time in Boston and environs last weekend. The organization was impressive and you must all have worked very hard. Please convey our thanks to your ringing colleagues.
I post this because it's just the latest in a series of personal conversations at the AGM, and emails after (though why they keep emailing me, I have no idea.) For us, or at least for me, it is easy to focus on all the things that could have been better done, better organized, more fun, or cheaper; but the overwhelming response from everyone ELSE was that we rock hard and so did our BellsCon!
* And yes, this post is over a week late. Life's been busy, ok?
** I THINK this conversation happened. If it didn't, let's pretend it did.
*** Fellow Boston ringer: handbell enthusiast, ex-Steeplekeeper, and at the AGM Feastocrat for Friday plus in charge of various other things.
Texts from me to
sovay, 20:17, 24.8.19:ME: At Venetian restaurant, but no green crabs in sight. Sad!
SOVAY: Bummer! I hope the rest of the Venetian food made up for it.
ME: It was actually surprisingly meh, but they gave us a very good price...
It's traditional to have a banquet after the actual business meeting; on this occasion, we calculated that catering was going to be too expensive AND prohibitively complicated, and settled for trying to find a restaurant that could take a reservation for 80+ people. We wound up at Filippo in the North End, which gave us an entire gigantic second-floor room, but served us what was frankly cheap, boring Italian food. I guess we should have gone with the private room at the Asgard, or whatever our backup plan was. Still, nobody complained, they didn't gouge us TOO severely on booze (and see above on second-floor private room, price etc.); and the company was good. We Boston folk ended up semi-accidentally dispersing ourselves among the various tables, and
chatting with guests from away.
A parishioner to me, morning of 25.8:**
P: You're not usually down here for coffee hour at this point!
ME: Well, it's standing-room only...actually, not even standing room...in the tower, so I thought I'd come down, actually act like a member of the congregation for once, and help show off the mini-ring.
(Everyone wanted to do service ringing.)
Me to E.H.***, while sprawled on the stairs up to the antechamber to the ringing room that afternoon:
ME: Why am I so frickin' exhausted?
E.H.: Because you've been working like a dog all weekend? ...And so have all the rest of us?
(Accurate.)
Me at some other point that afternoon:
"OK, maybe Cambridge major from the 6 wasn't the best choice for the first thing to ring after I've rung nothing but a miniring all weekend!"
(Cambridge is probably the most difficult method I can be said to know, and I'm still learning it. Involves a lot of dodging, i.e. swapping places rapidly, which is tricky on large bells. Like the 6 at the CotA, which weighs a bit over 10 cwt., i.e. over half a metric tonne.
It wasn't a COMPLETE disaster, though, and by that point we had abandoned any plan to impress the congregation or visitors, and were doing what was basically an extra practice.)
Email (addressed to me personally, for no readily apparent reason) from some ringers from Raleigh, 2 Sept. 2019 :
Just wanted to thank you and all the other organizers for a wonderful time in Boston and environs last weekend. The organization was impressive and you must all have worked very hard. Please convey our thanks to your ringing colleagues.
I post this because it's just the latest in a series of personal conversations at the AGM, and emails after (though why they keep emailing me, I have no idea.) For us, or at least for me, it is easy to focus on all the things that could have been better done, better organized, more fun, or cheaper; but the overwhelming response from everyone ELSE was that we rock hard and so did our BellsCon!
* And yes, this post is over a week late. Life's been busy, ok?
** I THINK this conversation happened. If it didn't, let's pretend it did.
*** Fellow Boston ringer: handbell enthusiast, ex-Steeplekeeper, and at the AGM Feastocrat for Friday plus in charge of various other things.
OK! A few people are sticking around through tomorrow night* so they can go to handbell practice, but mostly everyone's gone home and the bells were rung down at 5, so I am declaring BellsCon to be over!
(And nothing broke!)( Read more... )
(And nothing broke!)( Read more... )
Yesterday I worked from home all morning, then hauled butt into town for the AGM, where I
- Adjusted the AC
- Brought the Visitors' Book down from the tower, on the (accurate) assumption that the tower was gonna be a mob scene later
- Helped unload a ringing simulator built out of 2x4s and weighted wheels
- Let in two German tourists to look at the church
- Helped E.H. put All The Food into various fridges and other spaces
- Helped unload, and then later set up, a miniring
- Bought beer for the picnic
- Met/Hung out with various awesome people*
- Directed various attendees as to where they were supposed to go
- Served as doorguard for a bit
- Said evening prayer with [Church Regular]--not AGM-related, though going on at the same time...
- Rang on the miniring--though unfortunately nothing exciting.
- Dealt with various crises. (Or in one case, attempted to deal with it but was too braindead to actually deal with it effectively, so our wonderful co-Conchair figured out a solution.)
- Had late-night Thai food, per usual, exc. with about five times the usual number of people...
- Had the person who'd nearly been my houseguest drive me and my ACTUAL houseguest home. Yay, almosthouseguest! I hope that the Berkshires are good to you.
Today everybody is on the Cape, at a tower which is lovely in every way but where I have been many times before; so I am at work.
Also, I have just realized that if this is a con, I should just accept that con-things apply, namely that
I am going to spend this time: Eating too much snack food, skipping meals, eating meals twice, possible drinking more booze than is wise, definitely drinking too much coffee, trying to use coffee as a substitute for sleep, taking a "You can sleep during Lent" attitude, not exercising properly, trying to lift too much weight, and spending more money than would perhaps be ideal.
* Somebody who I didn't recognize, from some tower I'd never been within a thousand miles of (Vancouver?), swore she knew me from somewhere; which might be, or might be the same sort of memory-playing-tricks-on-you that caused me to think that I knew a former Boston ringer from Arisia, when in fact she'd never been...
- Adjusted the AC
- Brought the Visitors' Book down from the tower, on the (accurate) assumption that the tower was gonna be a mob scene later
- Helped unload a ringing simulator built out of 2x4s and weighted wheels
- Let in two German tourists to look at the church
- Helped E.H. put All The Food into various fridges and other spaces
- Helped unload, and then later set up, a miniring
- Bought beer for the picnic
- Met/Hung out with various awesome people*
- Directed various attendees as to where they were supposed to go
- Served as doorguard for a bit
- Said evening prayer with [Church Regular]--not AGM-related, though going on at the same time...
- Rang on the miniring--though unfortunately nothing exciting.
- Dealt with various crises. (Or in one case, attempted to deal with it but was too braindead to actually deal with it effectively, so our wonderful co-Conchair figured out a solution.)
- Had late-night Thai food, per usual, exc. with about five times the usual number of people...
- Had the person who'd nearly been my houseguest drive me and my ACTUAL houseguest home. Yay, almosthouseguest! I hope that the Berkshires are good to you.
Today everybody is on the Cape, at a tower which is lovely in every way but where I have been many times before; so I am at work.
Also, I have just realized that if this is a con, I should just accept that con-things apply, namely that
I am going to spend this time: Eating too much snack food, skipping meals, eating meals twice, possible drinking more booze than is wise, definitely drinking too much coffee, trying to use coffee as a substitute for sleep, taking a "You can sleep during Lent" attitude, not exercising properly, trying to lift too much weight, and spending more money than would perhaps be ideal.
* Somebody who I didn't recognize, from some tower I'd never been within a thousand miles of (Vancouver?), swore she knew me from somewhere; which might be, or might be the same sort of memory-playing-tricks-on-you that caused me to think that I knew a former Boston ringer from Arisia, when in fact she'd never been...
So this next week is going to be very interesting!
I mean, it was going to be interesting anyway. At work, our VP&Director, my immediate supervisor, and our...effectively CTO, even though that's not her title...are all going to be on vacation from my department, even as we all grapple with a Massive Proposal Deadline, a sudden spate of new projects from the NSF, the fact that we're moving to the other end of the building in a month, and the assortedfallout flow-down effects of all of this.
But that's just a small bit of what's gonna make it interesting for me.
Because, while I am officially in the office next week... I'm not actually gonna be in the office for more than about 60% of the time. And even when I am, my brain's not going to be.
Because next week is BellsCon! OK, technically that's "The Annual General Meeting of the North American Guild of Change Ringers", but let's face it, it's a whole bunch of people with the same somewhat obscure interest getting together for a long weekend to Do That Thing A Lot and hang out together.* ** So basically, a con.
(With a business meeting thrown in.)
( So: Scheduling! )
I mean, it was going to be interesting anyway. At work, our VP&Director, my immediate supervisor, and our...effectively CTO, even though that's not her title...are all going to be on vacation from my department, even as we all grapple with a Massive Proposal Deadline, a sudden spate of new projects from the NSF, the fact that we're moving to the other end of the building in a month, and the assorted
But that's just a small bit of what's gonna make it interesting for me.
Because, while I am officially in the office next week... I'm not actually gonna be in the office for more than about 60% of the time. And even when I am, my brain's not going to be.
Because next week is BellsCon! OK, technically that's "The Annual General Meeting of the North American Guild of Change Ringers", but let's face it, it's a whole bunch of people with the same somewhat obscure interest getting together for a long weekend to Do That Thing A Lot and hang out together.* ** So basically, a con.
(With a business meeting thrown in.)
( So: Scheduling! )
