What did you do at work today, Lauren?

Well, funny you should ask...
I slept through my alarm, woke up an hour after planned, rushed the morning routine, and ended up a bit late for the work day (not an issue, it was a self-imposed "expected arrival time").

When I got to work, I learned that I will be taking a troupe of kids I've never met to Washington 4-H's Teen Conference... so I had to fill out a bunch of forms, go through registration, deal with how to have an existing grant pay my registration fee, and try to figure out what will be expected of me as a chaperon at such a huge event. It turns out that I missed the tele/web-inars last week that told me everything I needed to know (back when a parent planned to take the kids before her own daughter backed out and she changed her mind about leading the other kids - fair enough). So, I know that I missed detailed and important instructions, sign-ups for duties, and descriptions of my workshop obligations, but it doesn't look like I can sort that out until I've arrived with the kids on Sunday morning... oh, by the way, it's this weekend. Let's see if I can find the time to burn a few CDs that all the kids (and also I) might enjoy for the 6-hour drive there... and then the one back again.

As I was filling out that field trip paperwork, my other boss came in and informed me that I'll also be having to drive a bunch of Master Gardeners on another field trip on Wednesday (all day) because it turns out that we were misinformed about the county policy pertaining to who can drive our van (we were told any volunteer could with our permission as long as they'd completed training... this is not true... only employees can drive the van if they've completed training for it). We got a stern talking to from the county's Risk Management Officer after the plant sale when she arrived to buy plants and saw us breaking said rule. Oops. So, I had to swap phone duty from Wednesday to Friday to clear myself as a chauffeur instead.

Then, I got to answer roughly 20 e-mails from panicked Master Gardener interns who received e-mails from me last week reminding them that they have until this Thursday to complete all of their online quizzes and final exams or they won't be able to get certified. Sadly, when I told them what our grade book was still missing for them, the online program hadn't fully updated all the assignments they'd completed... so I told them that they were missing things they'd already done (I just hadn't received that information yet because of a glitch is the system). So, panicked, they all wrote me trying to figure out what to do about all these missing assignments - luckily, it had updated, so all I had to do was go into each person's grade book entry, verify the list of completed items against our records, and write to either assure them it was good or that they still hadn't done it correctly. Blagh!

Then, moments later, the e-mail server went down for maintenance for the evening...

So, it was time for me to start another assignment that appeared moments after I arrived in the office: cutting out 56 paper horses to be used as part of a craft project at a meeting tonight that I have nothing to do with. The person in charge just didn't have the time to get such a laborious task completed (so glad I'm around to help). Many of the pages of paper I'm cutting out are covered in glitter... and now my whole being is covered in glitter, as well. Yippee.

I guess I've been saying for weeks now that I just wanted to do SOMETHING at work other than stare at a blank computer screen and wait for the phone to ring for 8 hours. Perhaps I should have been more specific... mostly about how many exciting events should occur in one day.
That's all for now.
Big love.