NSCS
Mood:  surprised
Now Playing: "I'm Not That Girl" by Idina Menzel on "Wicked"
I just got 3 e-mails from one of the current co-chairs for NSCS. One saying that I have been selected "most active" for winter quarter and the other saying that I've been nominated for board for next year. I went "huh?" on the active thing. All I did was go to the meetings. I couldn't make it to any of the actual events. As for the nomination, I was flattered but I sent him a reply saying I can't due to graduation. And even if I wasn't, I've had my fill of club board positions for one college expereience.

I Had To Ask, Didn't I?
Topic: Math Club
To make all the ice chests work, I went to Albertson's at like 7:30am to go get some ice. Imagine my surprise when I find that there are only 7lb bags left. Not a single 20 pounder was in the freezer. They had like 2 freezer doors stacked to about chest height yesterday around 2:30. Fortunately there was a high-up employee near by who noticed the water on the floor, called someone to pick it up and yelled to someone else if there were any more bags of ice. I asked if they had any more and they said yes so I asked for two. Phew, avoided that crisis.

So I put the ice in the chest (barely fit) and drive onto campus thinking there wouldn't be that many people there yet at 7:45. Wrong. I had to park in the sports complex lot and walk all that crap down. Fortunately, about half way there, Shannon saw me on her way in for the Democrat club and gave me a lift. Phew.

So I take some time getting everything stored in the book room and then go outside to check on the booth and try to decide what to bring out first. To my dismay, the wind had managed to blow half the tarp off and part of the screen. So I go back to the book room to get the staple gun. I also noticed that nobody was setting up next to us on the right. Fortunately, around this time, Jay shows up to help out. Then some Open House committee person shows up to talk to us about the electricity issue. Alright, I was a little short with her but they did screw us over on that by not notifying us and told her so. She said that for Open House, I have to allow some flexability. Anyway, they said they were working on getting electricity for some other club near us and if they can get it to work for them than they can get it for us too. Yeah, we were a fucking after thought but I said fine. During this conversation, the staple gun was refusing to work for me. Then some Open House Main Stage people show up saying we never signed a waiver to perform on Main Stage. I let Jay take care of that while I went back to the book room to get the other staple gun. Jay fortunately got the booth back together while I got some stuff out. And then we both we upstairs in the Math building to go borrow a table (since the ones under the stairs had already been swiped). We moved that downstairs and then I went to go pick up the pies.

Despite arriving exactly at 9, I had to wait a few minutes before someone could actually help me. He took me and the cart down to the bake shop to get the pies. They had apparently just started to put them in boxes. Good thing I got there when I did because they were putting them in boxes for 6. I said I needed them individualized so me and the guy had to actually make the 25 boxes, load them and label them. I left Lighthouse around 9:30. It was 9:45 by the time I got back to the booth. By that point, Rebecca and Dusti had showed up and the booth set-up was nearly complete for both spots. Between the fridge and the 3 ice chests we had out, we managed to get all the creams, one apple and one cherry outside with us. The rest of the fruit pies I put in the book room. I was actually excited because at like 9:55, people were already at the books and shirts and buying stuff.

At 10 when it became evident that no club was coming next to us, we realized how crappy of a location we were in. The Open House booths basically go in a U shape around building 38 and we at the top of that U with only two booths to our left and no one to our right. Bascially, we got the least amount of foot traffic. By the time people got to us, they had already eaten and were full. And because it happened to be the hottest day of the quarter, no one was interested in getting a sweatshirt.

Using a technicality, we lowered our price to be 1 slice for $2 or 2 slices for $3. Our technicality was that on the price sheet, I had said "slices of pie," not "slice of pie" so I could put as many slices for $3 as I wanted. No one caught us on it anyway. That only helped business a little bit. We tried to tag onto the Materials Engineering's free nitrogen ice cream saying they could get their pie a la mode. Around 1, I counted the pie money to be about $88. Shit. So Rena and I quickly made some $1 off coupons and I went out to advertise the pies to where the crowds were and gave out coupons. I avoided using the coupons when Open House people were around. I went back when I ran out to grab some more. There was some effect but not a lot. So I went out again. Around 2:30 I came back and had a break. Rena said that business had picked up. At 3, we were offically allowed to lower our prices so we took it down to $1/slice and started to sell whole pies. I even offered people to hit me with the pie if they bought the slice. I had one guy take me up on it. He bought 2 slices and gave one to his friend to shove in my face. It was actually kind of refreshing and the whipped cream was good. Then I went around with a lot of pie on my face to see if anyone else would take me up on my offer. I went back to the booth and cleaned up a bit and then Bridget came by. I managed to convince her to hit me with pie too. I cleaned up after that and then we started to take down the booth. Emily stayed for a bit and helped out. After that it was just me and Jay.

Wow, breaking down both booths took a long time. Two and a half hours actually since it was just the two of us. In the end, we had 2 whole apple, 2/3 apple, 5/6 cherry and one whole cherry left over. When all was said and done, I didn't leave campus until like 6:50 or so. I then went directly to South House to return Steve's cooler and to hopefully sell some pie. Andrew took a slice of cheery, Steve bought the whole cherry and Matt bought a whole apple. I gave Steve the 2/3 apple as a thank you for the cooler (okay, mainly because I didn't want to deal with it). So I took home a whole apple and 2/3 cherry. I was thinking about trying to sell some to my neighbors but my feel hurt too much.

So then I came home and counted up what we made. After taking $60 back that I fronted for change and the $140 it cost us to get the pies, we only made $74 today. We did make a lot at the book sale end but then again we had no way of knowing from what. [We interrupt this journal entry with some much needed sleep. zzzzz...And now back to the entry.] I'm pretty sure that we didn't sell any sweatshirts which is what we really needed to sell. In the end, we ended up grossing $499.50. I'll be donating 50? to make it an even $500. Which is good since that's how much I was expecting. Although I honestly think we would have done a lot better had our booth been almost anywhere than where it had been. Although if we can get everything donated for the social and only spend about $30 on the EOY BBQ, we'll just be broke instead of in debt. I'll have to get an official statement again on Monday and do these calculations with the real numbers.

Stupid Fucking Open House Bastards! or Do I Dare Ask What Else Can Go Wrong?
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: So not true music: "Perfect Day" by Hoku on "NoAlbum"
Topic: Random Rant
A little backstory: Open House requires that clubs selling food must either keep their food above 120? or below 40?. To comply, last year the Math Club brought in a mini-fridge and two coolers of ice to keep the pies in. The fridge of course required electricity which we were able to get.

This year, we again applied for electricity. Open House told all the representatives that unless they received an e-mail saying they didn't have electricity, we did. Jay, our Open House rep, never received such an e-mail. Only when Jay and I went to check in at 4 today, they didn't give us an electricity permit. I said that we should have it and the girl said we weren't listed but she made a note of it and would look into it and call us at 6...tomorrow morning. Without the electricity, we can't have the fridge in the booth to hold the pies. All we'll be able to have is our one guarnteed cooler with 2 pies and people running to the fridge in the book room to get pie slices. In other words, we're completely and utterly fucked if we don't get that electricity. I was about to walk home after setting up the booth but decided to see who I could argue with at the Open House office. I fortunately ran into the girl in charge of such things. She said that there was nothing she could do and that our rep should have been contacted. If the contact info wasn't up to date, that wasn't her fault. So basically, she tried to blame her oversight on Jay, who has received every other e-mail that Open House has sent out. I called Rebecca to let her know that electricity was definitely a no. She said that she got another cooler from Dr. Morrison and that he was going to ask his neighbor for one and ask other faculty members. Tami had said she would try to get one from her brother. I said I would call all of my friends to see if they had one. Fortunately Steve said he had one I could borrow. Of course, now we still need ice. I had bought a 20lb bag earlier today and put it in the department freezer. I originally thought it would be too much. Now it looks like it might not be enough. I did just fill up all 5 of our ice trays and took the ice from the three that were full and put that ice into baggies. Of course now I have to figure out how to get the cooler and more ice onto campus tomorrow. I could drive it on, but I would have to do that before 8 and without access to the department freezer, it would probably melt. I could walk, but...ow. I could take the bus but the first one runs at 8:44 and will only take me to Mustang Stadium (close but not quite close enough). *sigh* It's a big mess. We need to sell those pies. At least 8 of them. And we also need to sell those sweatshirts. 23 of the 29 remaining to be precise. Shit. We also need to sell at least 7 MAtheletics shirts, at least 30 M*A*S*H shirts (some have already been sold though) and more of the Fight Club and Friends shirts. Bascially we need to sell out of everything to really make money tomorrow. In other words, we are totally and utterly fucked.

We were also suppose to have an organized gathering at SLO Brew tonight from 5-7. Since I didn't even start to leave campus until 6:30, I said screw it as I would be home at 7. I went home, grabbed a diet Pepsi and hopped into the car and went to South House to get the cooler. I hung out there for a little bit trying to get the guys to join me for dinner. At 7:38 or so, Tami calls me, asking if I was coming to SLO Brew. I was surprised there were still people there. She asked if Math Club was paying for the appetizers again. I told her that we couldnt' afford to and I know I told a few people that we weren't doing that and we never said that we were in the e-mail this time. So I managed to convince the guys to join me at SLO Brew but we had to wait for Matt to get home. Then Matt had to shower and then we left. We probably got to SLO Brew at 8:15. No one from Math Club was there. Okay, yeah it took me a while to get there but I didn't expect it to break up that fast after hearing Math Club wouldn't buy anything. The good news is that I did get to have a nice dinner with South House and Shane, all of whom sans Leigh I haven't hung out with yet this quarter.

Rena had helped set up today and afterwards she asked me about the possability of a Yosemite deposit. I told her it wouldn't be more than $10. When I do finally get home, there's an e-mail from Randy saying that Rena didn't quite feel comfortable going and with a deposit being required she really doesn't feel like going. And therefore Randy won't be going either. Which would bring us down to 9. I sent an e-mail out to everyone, including Randy and Rena, if they would back out if they had to put down money. I honestly don't see why anyone would back out if they had to pay $10. I mean, it's a trip to Yosemite for only $10. You couldn't even get into the park for $10, let alone buy the gas to get there. And the campsite cost more than $10. I mean, $10 really isn't all that much is it? But basically, what it now comes down to, is that if two or more people say they won't pay, the trip is cancelled.

Math Club Finances
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: Math Club
Remember when I went through and did the finances for this quarter? Well, that starting balance is off by about, oh, $545 or so. Yeah, the Epicenter gives us full transaction reports that are kind of hard to read. See, what happened is that we got money for the Banquet through co-sponorship which they put into the account but as "ghost money," ie, it goes towards our balance but we can only touch it for Banquet and anything we don't use goes right back to them. So yeah, my final calculation previously was leaving Math Club with about $260. Now it's about $200 in debt. Great, just fucking great =P.

The "good" news is that we decided to not provide appetizers at SLO Brew tomorrow night so that should save about $30 and I recalculated Yosemite because I forgot to redo the campsite total. Although I did forget to put in the bear canisters. Anyway, after recalculating, I brought the high estimate down from $1000 to $900. Oh, and we got about $23 back from the sweatshirts so that would only leave us in about $50 worth of debt. Now, if we can get whatever we're getting for the social donated, we might actually break even. *crosses fingers*

Hypocrites!
Mood:  incredulous
When we were discussing the prices for the pies last month/quarter, Rebecca said that last year we sold them for $3 and had little signs saying "pi~$3." I was questioning it, thinking it was a steep price and saying that I thought we sold them for cheaper. Then we realized that we had the little "half off pie slice #2" coupons and that's why I was confused.
Then today we were discussing the pie prices and I said that they were $3 and we were doing 6 slices, possibly 8 slices since we discovered that we actually have about $545 dollars less than we thought. And all of a sudden Rebecca is saying that she thought $3 was too much and that she wouldn't have done $3. And I thought WHAT THE FUCK?!. And then Tyler was also saying that he thought $3 was too expensive too. "What the fuck!?" I thought so too which is why I was questioning Rebecca's memory of last year when we discussed it last quarter. Why does it seem like every decision I make is the bad one? Even if it's exactly what we did last year? ARGHHH!!!!!!!

The other hypocrites are my groupmates for Plastics. Tuesday we picked our topic and the day we will be presenting. Right after we discussed when we would meet to start working on it and decided that after class was a good time. We agreeded to start on Thursday.
I come to class to today and ask if we were still meeting. Darlene says she can't because she has to do some survey stuff at Farmer's tonight for Open House. So then I turn to Kim if she still wants to meet and she says that she can't because she also has to do something for Farmer's. *palmforhead,headshake* Did we or did we not 48 hours previously agree to meet after class today? Fortunately class got out about half an hour early so we quickly decided to just divide up the work and would update on Tuesday what we had done, if anything (we're all busy due to Open House). Oy vey.

Yay for distractions
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: "Love & Devotion" by Real McCoy on "Another Night"
I've busied myself for the past uhhh 2 hours or so with making the presentation for the Inter Club Council meeting for best small active club to use in 2 weeks. It's not funny or anything like Nick's was last year but hopefully people will vote by the definition.

Of course I didn't today for best website. But, except for one that was almost too technical, they were all pretty much the same so I voted for the one my friends were in. Besides, Leigh made me feel guilty when I was pondering ;-). Hopefully the clubs I'll be running against will be like the ones last year. "Hi, I'm so and so from some small just starting out club and we're pretty new so we don't have any money to do any events because it takes money to make money. So yeah, vote for us!" That was the gist of most of the competition last year. Or they only put on one or two events. Whereas we do one every week.

I'll take a morning like today any day
Now Playing: "Extraordinary" by Liz Phair on "Liz Phair"
Topic: Work
Today at work it was so dead it was so wonderful. I came in and there weren't any voicemails. I check the Remedy queue and there was nothing to work on except for possible user notification for a guy in Iraq so wasn't really sure about that one. I checked e-mail and there were only 3 messages: 2 delivery failures, 1 auto-reply from Tonia. During my hour and a half, there was one phone call and two wireless requests which came at the same time just before I got off. When I talked to Bridget later at the gym, she said that apparently it stayed dead today. She said she went in around 3 to check her e-mail and the people there said it had also been dead. The deadness allowed me to update the UNIX FAQ that Terri asked me to do last week.

Now if it can only be that dead tomorrow afternoon....

Well, I can no longer say never
Mood:  surprised
Now Playing: "October" by Evanescence on "NoAlbum"
Topic: Apartment
I went to put my watch on the bathroom counter and noticed something different. Julie's side was clean. Not all of it, just her half of the middle section. It was clean. I hadn't cleaned it. Which means she must have. I was wondering what she was doing for soo long in the bathroom last night. So now it's been once. Once that I've seen evidence of either roommate take any sort of cleaning product to any surface that didn't just have raw chicken on it.

Yosemite and Other Math Club Ramblings
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: "Here Comes The Flood" by Peter Gabriel on "Felicity"
Topic: Math Club
I found out on Thrusday from Eddie that some people were talking about not going anymore. So I sent out an e-mail saying that I heard a rumor of it and asked that if anyone was having second thoughts to please let me know. Tami replied that she was having second thoughts. Rena talked me Friday about her having second thoughts, not feeling welcome and the whole co-ed tent thing. I just got an e-mail from Dave saying he had to drop out due to midterms. That leaves 11 people, only 9 of which are, to my knowledge, committed to going. I guess I should actually drop that to 8 since even I don't want to go. Not only do I not want to go, I don't want the trip to happen. I mean deep, deep, deep down inside, I want more people to drop out. Enough to make me cancel the trip. Is that horrible of me? I mean, I'm a logical person and logically, Math Club should not take this trip. Quick math computations:
Starting balance for Spring: ~$1700
- ~$380 for jerseys: $1320
+ $908 from yard sale, car wash and booksale: $2228
- $1222.5 for sweatshirts and shirts: $1005.5
-~$140 for pies for Open House: $865.5
+ ~$500 from Open House: $1365.5
- ~$30 for SLO Brew event*: $1335.5
- $38 for mini golf event*: $1297.5
+ $250 from car wash*: $1547.5
- ~$60 for social*: $1487.5
-~$70 for drive-in event*: $1417.5
+ ~$400 from banquet ticket sales*: $1817.5
- ~$1000 for Yosemite trip*: $817.5
- ~$500 for our part of Banquet cateering*: 317.5
-~$50 for end of year BBQ*: $267.5
Okay, I had actually forgotten about money from ticket sales before I started going through it. But everything with an * is actually an unknown amount. I mean, I could be grossly over estimating how much we'll be depositing from Open House. Or with the rising gas prices, underestimating the cost of Yosemite. I mean there are a lot of factors here. But basically, the club will be left with very little money to work with for next year unless we again win the Pepsi Grant. I mean, I started at around $800 for this year and money is tight for us. Imagine how it will be for the next President. The only reason we took an end of the year trip two years ago was because there was an excess of funds. We could afford it then. We could just barely afford it last year (without the Pepsi Grant, I would have had only $300 some odd dollars to work with at the start of this year). And we can barely afford it this year. So logically speaking, we shouldn't take an end of the year trip. Something like an end of the year trip should be something more like a reward for some good fundraising, not a guarnteed event we start planning during the first few weeks of Fall quarter. I think it would be a better idea to try to make sure the Math Club becomes financially stable so it can have regular events and an annual end of the year Banquet. I mean, Rebecca was right about one thing last year: giving out scholorships and awards during UU hour in casual clothes over cookies sucks. It should be more of a ceremony to honor those receiving something. But it would suck more if we introduce this idea and then not be able to afford to make it an actual annual thing. As far as I can tell, there won't be a 3rd annual banquet.

All of Math Club has just become one huge headache. Previous years I looked forward to all things Math Club. Now I look at it as something I just have to do. A chore. Don't get me wrong, I still have fun at the events; Game Night was a blast. It's just the planning and making sure we can afford to do it and all that stuff. And my...my...I dunno, presence? Influence? Prestige? I can't find the word I'm looking for. No one has said it to my face, but I know there are quite a few people who feel that I'm a lousy President. Hell, I'm one of them. But I don't know how to make it better. It's too late now, but if only I knew what I did wrong aside from not being the overly ambitious and outgoing Rebecca.

When Rena talked to me, she said she felt like her ideas and values weren't being accepted. I'm not really sure how to put it since these are her feelings but that's about the best I can do to summerize. I guess I seemed not open to ideas. I thought I was being open to feasable ideas but I guess not. I absolutely had no intention of making anyone feel unwelcome and I feel terrible for making anyone feel that way.

You know how sometimes people ask "If you could change anything in your past, what would it be" or "Knowing what you know now, what in your life would you have done differently?" You know, something like that? Before this year, I had two things: 1) Running against Kate Cowen for Echad N'siah and 2) Leaving that one BBG event in anger which led to me going out with Chris. Perhaps had I run against Kate for N'siah and won, I would have been better prepared for this year or would have convinced myself to never be President of anything ever again. Or perhaps if I had lost (I like to think that that would have been unlikely), I wouldn't have had the delision that I could do this. But now I would amend my answer to those questions to include #3: becoming Math Club President. As in not doing it. But I do believe #1 and #3 to be intimately related. Actually, I might even back it up further to include not being a Math major. Really have to hate epiphanies for coming months, or even years later than when they could have been useful.

Club E-mails
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: "superxero1" by Linkin Park on "NoAlbum"
Topic: Random Rant
Do I send out messages about Math Club to people who don't care about Math Club? Yes. But they are Math majors so at least it's fucking relevant. I don't send out the e-mails to every math class. Not only would it be an huge hassle just to type all those up, but for most of 100-level classes (and there are a lot of them), the people in there aren't Math majors and therefore don't give a flying fuck what the Math Club is up to.

This one person from the Industrial Technology Club keeps e-mailing every IT class (all less than 20 of them) about doing things for Open House for the IT club. Plastics is a fucking general education class which means that at least half the people in the class don't give a damn about the IT Club and most certainitly don't want to help with Open House. So after like the third e-mail from this person I replied asking why I was getting the e-mails. She (at least I think it's a she) replied saying that they e-mail all the IT classes and that she can't just take one person off of her list. After receiving yet another e-mail from her, I again replied and suggested that she get a club account, gave a link for the form and make an alias of all the people who give a damn. Except I said it slightly nicer. But I did imply that her e-mails were spam to those in the plastics class for GE credit. I'm tempted to include her on the next couple Math Club e-mails just to give her a taste of her own medicine. What I should have said at the end was "If you are planning on responding, don't bother. I put a filter to just delete all of these irrelevant e-mails from you." I also should have brought up the fact that by e-mail just the classes, she's not necessarily reaching all the IT majors. I mean what if they're not taking an IT class this quarter? Then they would be "missing out" on all the IT Club dealings.

My point being that while we are both annoying people with all of our e-mails about club activities, at least I'm e-mailing relevant people. She could at least have the decency to do that.