Monday 8/10/2020
Started with a run, although stopping on the way out at 7:10 to wonder if I should hang around until the meal cart volunteers showed up at 7:30. And decided not to. When I got back 45 minutes later, meal service was perking along; so, ok.
At 10:30 it was time for the monthly residents association meeting. I gave my one-sentence Treasurer’s report (“There have been no transactions this month so the balance is the same as last month, $974.71”) and later, at #8 on the agenda, reported on the program to get volunteers to relieve the staff of routine jobs. I urged everyone to look for the sheet of job categories in their mailboxes (Marcia had distributed them yesterday afternoon) and summarized them.
Through the rest of the day I alternated between fielding emails and phone calls from people wanting to volunteer for something; setting up signup sheets for various activities; and doing little bits on the model car. The signup sheets, using slottr.com, work well, but each sheet has a URL of the form slottr.com/sheet/nnnnnnnn, ending in 8 or 9 digits. If you get one digit wrong, you either end up with a “page not found” or even worse, you end up on somebody else’s sheet. So I not only prepared the sheets, but also made bitly.com short URLs for them, so the meal delivery sheet for next week is at bit.ly/CHMD02. Much easier to communicate and less likely to be screwed up by elderly fingers.
One of the volunteers for dinner delivery called me to say she was not feeling well, but she left a message for Marcia as well, and Marcia emailed that she would cover. Just the same I went down at 5 and chatted and took one cart myself.
These sheets are ephemeral, they will be dead URLs in weeks. But for the record, here is a screen grab of one.
It’s been quite impressive the number of people who’ve jumped in to take part in these programs. Marcia is collecting names for some gardening tasks, I’m collecting names of people interested in, of all things, distributing newspapers at 5:30AM, and other tasks. Makes me (and I think everyone else) feel that this place is not just a warehouse for seniors, but an actual community. (It certainly helps that most of the population is retired professionals. Even as sometimes-feeble octogenarians, they are self-motivated and independent.)
After the RA meeting I went downstairs and watched staff member James as he processed packages. This is the next big volunteer gang I will organize, starting tomorrow.
Codgerville 