PR Meeting, Denise's party

07.12.2007

So, now I'm in the hotel lobby after a completely exhausting day of Girl Guide public relations mumbo jumbo. I don't want to say that these types of bureaucratic meetings are pointless, but I have been to quite a few and don't seem to accomplish anything. Today I woke up at 7 a.m. after five hours of sleep. Not happy about that. My roommate woke up way too early and we were even too early for breakfast. Anyway, after a petit dejeuner of croissants and jam, I promptly find what look like worms in my tea. Tea that I already had a cup of and now it is too late. We sit down to brainstorm and come up with new ways to fix a failing and increasingly irrelevant (in the eyes of the majority) organization. This past summer, we had gone through "Transformation". A nice term for downsizing and eliminating bureaucracy on a grand scale. Which is a good thing, on paper. In reality, it involves a lot of change, which is hard for these ladies:

All very nice and helpful women, but I am increasingly growing weary of my responsibilities. Just as I was getting used to doing things the old way, I have to change and learn to do things this radical new way. Previously, Girl Guides was operated on a "top down" basis, the commissioner gave word to the province, the province directed the areas, the areas directed the divisions and the divisions directed the districts. *phew* Now, the commissioner is directing the provinces, the provinces are directing "Communities of Guiding", affectionately called CoGs. Who are the ad wizards who came up with that one? Anyway, yeah, I always did public relations for Ottawa area, but now I am doing "Display tool kits" and "Outreach" for basically CoG #28 and #29. *bow and curtsey* So, I guess that was productive, because before this meeting, I was basically floundering for half a year, not doing anything and taking a break and it was just starting to feel nice. We made some priorities, created some "to do" lists and hopefully we'll be seeing more media coverage of Girl Guides in the future.

ahem* thank you very much.

And now, I am waiting for Denise to pick me up to go to her Christmas party, details to follow.

So, Denise picked me up at around 7 p.m.

Then we picked up her co-worker Candace

Then we headed off to the Sobey's Christmas party, and got stopped by R.I.D.E. It was a little too early in the night for drinking so we told the cowboy-style cop that we were little angels and he said "That's the best answer you could have". Then we were off to the International Sports Bar & Grill, a typical suburban bar on Cawthra Rd. in the ouskirts of Toronto.

It was interesting to meet all these people that Denise had told me about, and I had some nice conversations with Alison and stuffed my face with calamari:

And here is Candace and a big fat drunk guy:

Denise had to study for her exam tomorrow, so she went home at about 11 ish. She dropped me off at the subway and I headed downtown to meet Chris and Ali.

They weren't there yet so here I am bored and waiting for them on a bench at Ali's place.

Then they got back from Insomnia (some sort of lounge) and I took a really bad picture.

Then it was time for sleeping.

Candace