Telemarketing

I have had the wonderful opportunity to do my favorite part of my job--Dialing For $$$. I truly despise calling people and asking them for money, even when they have done it before. My goal now is simply to get it done and recruit enough people to do it next year that I won't have to. Over the last 3 work days I have made about 100 calls to past community givers and will continue the trend until I have reached them all. Oh yeah, I also have a family list to work through and have to call my boss every weekday to tell him our daily results. On a positive note, my misery is shared by my new associate who actually doesn't mind the calls. I have heard the siren song of dumping it all on him and sailed past it, but it really seemed like a good idea at the time. Alas, I could not bring myself to be such a bastard.

Otherwise life putters along here in Sheboygan. It finally rained here today after a week straight of every county around it getting dumped on by neat storms that I could only see on the Weather Channel radar map. For a while I thought that Herb (the President of Kohler) had a weather shield on so that he could play golf daily without rain. Actually he might still, I need more data.

I had the dubious joy of working out in the tropical weather this weekend at the OA Spring Conference (Conclave...). I am finally feeling a little less sore after that. We worked on building tents for the Gold Miners' Village. This is not as simple as it sounds. Each tent is a four man canvas wall tent that stands about 7 feet tall in the center and is supported by frames made of seven trees (about 2-6 inches in diameter and 15 or so feet long) that are lashed together with rope and staked down. It took a crew of about 12 people four hours to set 6 of them up and that was apparently quick. We were honored to have three full-grown snapping turtles as company while working at that site; all of whom had bad attitudes and did their level best to get in the way of progress. Happily only feelings were hurt in the encounter. The other fun project involved removing the old boardwalk and its log supports from the bog and replacing them. The logs thankfully stayed in the bog. However the old boardwalk parts had to hauled up a flight of 103 steps to be placed in a cart that was then wheeled to a dumpster to dispose of the wood. I am glad that I only was on that project for an hour before the projects ended for the day. Their ceremonies were alright but they need practice. The ceremony site however was awesome with stone fireplaces and bench sitting for guests. The fire was so hot that it was painful to stand within 5 feet of it. I was duly impressed. By the time I returned home that night I slept for 12 hours to recover.

On a completely different note... The Pistons are very disapointing thus far in the Finals. I really debated not finishing watching the games, but was drawn to it both times with the morbid fascination of watching a train wreck in slow motion. San Antonio is very good, but the Pistons can really play better (playing as a team, not missing the lay-ups, guarding players not the ball, etc.). They look like the rec basketball team I played on in middle school--all individuals on the court. Hopefully being on home court Thursday night will make a difference.

Hope all is well.