Zion's Paperboy

{or, A Look at My Day}

My calling is my current ward is Newsletter Coordinator. In other words, when the ward newsletter comes back from Kinko's (or wherever they have it printed), the copies are brought to me. I am armed with a list of ward members, divided up into delivery routes, and a big box of plastic bags used to hang the newsletters from ward members' doorknobs. The aforementioned list also has the names of the people who will actually be making the deliveries. My job is to divide up the newsletters - making sure that there are also adequate hang bags for each route - and get them to the delivery people in time for them to make deliveries on the afternoon of the Saturday before the first Sunday of the month.

(I will also be updating the list according to who moves in or out during the month, but that's not directly related to what I did today.)

The newsletters were waiting for me when I got home from training the newest bunch of recruits on Thursday night. What was not waiting for me was the delivery list. That list was given to me on a diskette, but I gave it back to the bishopric for updating after I finished up last month. So Friday after classes, I called the bishopric member that I report to on the matter, and he said he didn't have the disk. He recommended that I call the executive secretary. I did so, and he said he didn't have the disk either, but he would make me a new one. So I picked up the disk on my way home from work last night, and I was in business.

So I woke up this morning at around 6:30 and printed up the list. (No, I didn't set my alarm; that's just when I happened to wake up. Kind of a shame, really, since I don't have to work on Saturdays any more.) I started dividing up the newsletters and bags and organized them for delivery. Then I threw on a baseball cap, fired up the Dreadnought, and made the rounds. I was done by 8:05.

By the way, did I mention that when I got out the big box of hang bags, the diskette was in there? I'm a dork.

At that point, I had to drive to the call center to pick up my paycheck, because like a cornball (Quornball?) I left it at work last night. I chatted briefly with Theron, the other manager, about what we had done last night and what was left for him. Then I made my way back across town to the credit union to put my check in. I got there 15 minutes before the drive-up window was open, so I came home to take care of a couple of quick things.

I made my way back to the credit union a bit after 9:00 and put in my check. Then I drove down University Avenue/500 South/400 South (if you've been here, you know what I'm talking about) and stopped at Smith's to pick up a few groceries. I prefer to shop at a smaller, independent store a little closer to my house, but they don't carry what I was looking for. Besides, Smith's gives students a 5% discount at that location - which makes things cost only slightly more than they do at Dan's.

From there, I got on the freeway and headed to Flying J on 2100 South. Yes, it's out of the way, especially considering that I'd been within half of a mile of it when I stopped to pick up my check earlier. But gas there is significantly cheaper than it is where I live, and the Dreadnought's 25+ gallon tank makes it worth the drive. I spent $45 and got just under 25 gallons of gas in it. Yeah, I was pretty close to empty. But hey, I haven't put gas in it for almost a month.

Then I came home and started a load of laundry, without which I'd have been a little limited in what else I could do for the rest of the day. Once that was going, I slapped one of my Rush mix CDs into the kitchen stereo and started in on the dishes. It took about an hour. It seems like I'm forever doing dishes in this place. It makes me wonder sometimes if anyone else in the house even knows how.

In the midst of finishing the laundry, I started writing out checks for bills and balancing the checkbook. Once I found out how much I had to work with, I ventured down to Dan's and did my real shopping. For the curious, Saturday afternoon is not the best time to try to maneuver an '89 Suburban through a crowded supermarket parking lot.

And that pretty much brings me up to now. I found out that I'm going to be assisting with tomorrow's Sunday school lesson (again, I'll talk about that in a separate post), so I have some reading to do. I'm also going to be talking to Brian in a bit about gaming. He's running a campaign for the OGC (Ogden gaming consortium), of which I'm becoming a semi-full-fledged member next week, so I need to find out what will expected of my character. And I really ought to start studying for my calculus midterm next Wednesday.

And the road goes on.