Jurassic Publications

My, my, my, It has been awhile, hasn't.  I don't quite know why, but somehow writing the posts for this blog gets pushed to the back burner.  Although, I did have a good reason why I didn't write my post, but of course, now I can't remember it.

Well I guess there's nothing else for it, but to go back in time and tell you what has been happening here.

Ahem....A long time ago, in a galaxy far, fa- Wait a minute, that's not quite right. I think I'm just too excited for watching Star Wars this weekend.

Lets try again.

So last week Monday was a good day for YAC.  They had their Holiday Get-together, and seemed to have quite a bit of fun.  The community service project they did involved putting together kits to make the Easy-Peasy Snowmen. You can find a copy of the instructions for that here.  They ended up putting together forty-two kits and donated them to North Central Health Care for their residents.

They were very appreciative of them.  YAC also did a white elephant gift exchange, some of the things that were given included a game called Ring Around the Nosey, and a High School Musical lamp. Ahhhh white elephant. Gotta love it. Since we didn't do much planning at the get-together, the January meeting will probably be just planning for February.

My Holiday Gift tree that I put together only collected four gifts, but that is definitely much better than nothing, and helped make the Christmases of four children better.  I think what I will make sure gets set in motion before next year is partnering with Salvation Army or Neighbor's Place to adopt a family, or to just collect more gifts.  It was a really short notice thing this year, so now I know for next year!

The Leadership Summit is coming along nicely.  We're in the final planning stages.  I admit I'm not doing much for it because I'm not on the Summit planning committee.  I was on the Focus Group committee and those are done with now, so I'm just getting my own stuff ready for the Summit, which includes making a poster for 4-H and trying to recruit adult volunteers.  That will be next week's project.

Since our 4-H Program Advisor is leaving, I've taken over some of her immediate roles until the position is filled.  Things such as running Hand's On Day which is next Saturday.  I've got alot to do for it, I have to organize all the rooms, make sure the instructors are ready for it and know how many they are expecting. I've got to make sure everyone has nametags and knows where they are going, and I also have to get myself and my own session ready.  I'm teaching two sessions.  The first one will be Basic Cake Decorating and the second one is Intermediate Cake Decorating.  Since I'm the Cake Decorating Superintendent for the County, I thought this would be a fitting thing for me to teach.  Since numbers have been down for the county in Cake Decorating, this is a good way to expose it to others who may not otherwise have an opportunity, and show them that it really is  not difficult at all!  This will be a hectic day, but worth it.

My weekends in January are filling up.  On the 19th is the Financial Wellness Conference.  I met with one of the active 4-H leaders and she now has a better idea of what she will teach for the session.  I am hoping this will go as smoothly as I hope it will, but we still have a few weeks to prepare for it, so I am sure everything will go fine.

Other things I have to look forward to is starting the Camp Planning process, and Prefair Music, Drama, Dance, and Demonstrations.  That will be exciting.

As part of our LEAN process in the office we are doing some rearranging.  Part of this meant moving all the publications from the shelves by my desk to the filing cabinets near my desk.  The Ag Agents took care of theirs and got about six shelves into three drawers.  The CRD Agent took about four shelves and magically put it into two shelves. I was moving the 4-H publications and got about nine shelves into eight drawers. Not as magical as the others, but still quite an achievement.

On a more personal note, I received this in a Christmas card from one of our foreign exchange students that we have hosted in the past.  All the way from Germany, and she still manages to find a way to skip me.

I'll get you back one of these days, Kim!

The next few weeks will be busy.  Hopefully I'll remember to post!

Until Then!

Time Warp

Yes, I realize Time Warp is not the name of a cheesy sci-fi movie, but it is from a cheesy sci-fi movie.  Plus it accurately describes just how this last week has felt.  I think it has to do with the holidays.  The closer they get, the more time just passes me by.  I realized on Saturday that I hadn't posted my blog for the week.  So here it is.  I will also try to post one this coming Thursday, but if I don't have anything to write about then I won't.  Well this past week has been a whirlwind of activity.

Last Monday we had our Staff Retreat.  This was quite a bit of fun because we played some games, and we got to talk about our personality evaluation results. We took the Disc Indra and the Teamwork tests.  My Disc Indra put me between Patient and Modest. The descriptions that went along with it, I felt were pretty accurate. Its possibly the most accurate personality test I've ever taken.  I think that is what I liked most about it.  My Team role was the Flexor, but on the side of Refiner.  This means that I have the ability to fill any role which needs filling, and pay attention to details.  The flexor role definitely fits me.  In the office I'm always willing to do what needs to be done, whether its creating a program from scratch, or running a program that has already been established, or even participating in a program as a student.  This has always been true about me.  When I played softball I was flexible between right field and catcher....not two of the most thrilling positions, but I never complained in either position.  In fact, I enjoyed being catcher, I was pretty good at catching those foul balls. In high school on the Curling team I got the Team Player award because my coach said that I played every possible position and never once complained about it.  I have always been one to just roll with it. My boss says that quality alone could get me far in Extension. I hope so!

On Tuesday it was back to business as usual.  The week was fairly normal and uneventful.  Wednesday was the building Christmas potluck lunch.  That was alot of fun because we got to meet and interact with people that we rarely see.  I met a bunch of new people and had some very tasty food. The rest of the week I worked on busy work getting ready for the YAC Holiday Service project.

One big development is that our 4-H Program Advisor is leaving so I'm taking over some of her work. I pretty excited for that.  It will give me some really great experience for when I'm looking for a new job this summer.

Hopefully I'll have more to say on Thursday.  I'll prolly talk about the YAC thing.

Until then!

2012: A Holiday Odyssey

So as I got to the office this morning, I realized that I had never gotten around to writing this post.  I got distracted by my own awesomeness.

But lets back up for a moment.  Let us go back to Monday and find out what happened on Monday. *wavy wavy wavy dream sequence wavy*.....Monday started out much like any other Monday. It pretty much stayed that way too. Actually it was a very productive day for me (which isn't to say that Mondays aren't productive).  In the morning we had a training on some of the ins and outs to Outlook.  After that I did some desk work for awhile, had lunch.  Then I set up the Holiday Tree in our office. It looks beautiful! Then I got ready for my webinar.  This was on Micro-blogging through Twitter.  I got some very helpful tips on how to network and make connections through Twitter.  I've already increased the 4-H twitter follower number from two to eight.  I hope to be able to get more than that soon.  I heard that Facebook was on its way out and that Twitter is now popular with teens.  I've yet to see the truth in that. Who knows? Maybe its true.  That was it for my Monday. It was very productive and very good for my workload.

Tuesday was another work day, where I just did a lot of desk work.  I also started reading the binder of curriculum that we got from the conference in Wis. Dells a few weeks ago.  It has some very useful volunteer training materials in it.  I hope to be able to implement some of them soon.  Too bad we just held leader training for 4-H. To be honest I didn't know it was coming up so I wasn't able to put something together for it.  Oh well, maybe next year.

Wednesday I went to Fanny Hill in Eau Claire for a conference about Tools for Engaging Youth. It was a two day conference that I was only able to go to one day for it.  I hope they got to the Engaging Youth part of it on the second day.  Don't get me wrong, it was a good conference, it just wasn't what I was expecting.  The first part of it was all about generations. We discussed four generations.  The Matures, the Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y.  We discussed traits and characteristics about them, and working styles.  We discussed ways to make sure the four can mesh and work together.  I see how this can apply to engaging youth, obviously, but as I fall into the category of Gen Y, I think I would have liked to have seen more information on the new generation, Gen Z.  (Food for thought: What comes after Gen Z?)  After that we talked about a program called First Impressions.  This is essentially an exchange program where you go into a community similar to yours and you spend about four hours recording your first impressions of the town, the other town does the same to your town.  They then write up reports and exchange them.  This is a good way to find out what you are doing well and what could use some improvement. Many towns all over the U.S. and world have done something like this and have had great success.  The best thing about this program is that it can be adapted to fit anything, a workplace, a meeting, an event, a store, anything really.  We are considering doing something similar in our county...but I won't say what. ;)

Thursday was my day of brilliance.  I wish I had thought of it earlier.  It would have given myself more time to prepare for it, but it is what it is, and we will see how it goes.  What I did was set up a Holiday Gift Tree in our office. Here it is:

Each of the mittens has a gender and an age range.  These are not attached to a specific child, but rather are left general.  The gifts that are donated with be distributed to the local Neighbor's Place and Kids Count (The program that hep the children of incarcerated parents).  If you would like to donate please contact me! 

*wavy wavy dream sequence ending wavy wavy*

That was pretty much my week.  I forgot all about writing this because of the gift tree idea.  My head just filled with ideas about it and I wanted to put them all into action before I either forgot them or before it was too late. So we'll see how successful this is.  My hope is to get at least fifteen donations.  That is my goal. Maybe next year we can partner with the Neighbor's Place or Salvation Army. Cross your fingers!

Next week we have lots of Holiday things coming up.  I'll try to remember it this time.