A day in the life

Reasons why I sometimes feel as though I have gotten nothing accomplished....

Yesterday:

The morning starts off relatively well.
go to the office, planning on catching up on paperwork.
answer emails
talk with the organist/choir director about the big rededication of the organ weekend festivities (evensong and recital)
talk with the administrator about next year's calendar (donated by a local funeral home), an energy survey for the diocesan ecological commission and sundries
confer with the secretary about the day's duties...

all the while, the local Red Cross is setting up for a blood drive in the parish hall which means also taking over the hallway where all our offices are located, the meeting room by the main office and the library...

Then...

Up comes the organ rebuilder from the cellar looking for the choir director/organist. I tag along because it doesn't sound good.

Nope.

Moisture from the flood in June 2008 and the recent flood of this past August has caused the water-based glue in the bellows come undone which means that the bellows are leaking air, therefore not having enough air pressure to maintain tuning; also the turbine which runs the bellows then works hard and wobbles. The wood on the bellows also has warped. Upon further inspection, we see that the main crossbeam (wooded but the equivalent of an 'I' beam) is damp from water leaching up from the damp floor (which has a sump pump and gravel).

Back upstairs to wait for the administrator to tell him the good news.

We do that, he gets on the phone to the insurance company.

Meanwhile, the representative from the company that is going to do our photo parish directory arrives so I meet with a parishioner and him for half an hour.

Then it's off to the kitchen to schmooze with the women of the parish who have supplied the goodies for the blood drive canteen (our parish has a reputation we have to maintain).

I check with the Red Cross people and they agree that I probably shouldn't donate even though I had an appointment because I have some weird cold (in the larynx, not head).

For the rest of the afternoon, it's shuttling back and forth between the parish hall (chatting with parishioners as they donate blood and with the women staffing the canteen) and my office which sometimes gets blocked off by card tables put up against it and the people lined up waiting in the hall to have their history done.

Finally at 5.00 the sexton arrives so I turn things over to him.

And off I go home feeling as though I really didn't get much accomplished even though a day in the life is more than pushing papers on one's desk when it comes to parish ministry.

+

Meanwhile, I think I have been passed onto the next level of mechanical complexity: for fourteen years I struggled with cranky furnances. Now I get to deal with THE BEAST as I call the organ since it keeps rearing its cranky head with one problem after another.

[photos later]