It is a truth universally acknowledged that Nature abhors a vacuum.

In our family, that truth has a corollary: we abhor an empty flat surface. And that works well enough most of the time.

But we’re about to do something we haven’t done for a very long time – host a visitor for a few days. A visitor who isn’t even related to either of us. And who probably doesn’t have to see everything that’s found its way to a formerly-empty flat surface.

So we’ve begun a clearing and organizing project. And by “we”, I mostly mean Diane so far – she has taken on the challenge of getting all of the travel souvenirs we’ve accumulated in the past few years off of flat surfaces and into folders, envelopes, and files. With labels.

It’s a lot of work! And it required finding an unused empty flat surface to use as a staging area – about the only thing available was our bed!

 
Of course, that particular flat surface has to be cleared at night, but we’re motivated to deal with it instead of postponing the task (which is how we filled up all the other flat surfaces).

My turn is coming, of course. I’m lucky, though – there’s less material of sentimental value in my stacks of stuff. Anybody interested in a partially completed Immunization Consent Form?

I’m not sure if I’m happy or annoyed that both Toastmasters and Shir Hadash observe the same fiscal year, but it does mean that I’ve been busy today getting ready for the transitions which will happen on Thursday.

I got a request from the Toastmasters District Director to help the Webmaster team redo the email forwarding for the new year, so I sent a note with instructions (and an offer to help if needed).

At the club level, I made sure the new Treasurer, VP Public Relations, and President have the information they’ll need to deal with our web host, and I pulled together the paperwork to give to the new Treasurer (my term as Treasurer ended last year, but I never got a chance to give the stuff to this year’s Treasurer – I’m sure she didn’t miss having to keep track of it for a year).

And on the Shir Hadash side of things, I started organizing the first Ritual Committee meeting of the new year, as well as sending the High Holiday Honors information to our Interim Rabbi so he’d know what we’d done in years past.

Despite spending most of the day glued to the screen, we did manage to get a couple of walks in, so here’s Lily Du Jour: