Keeping posted

I don’t really know how long it’s been since I last posted here, and I don’t suppose it matters much. Sometimes I don’t post because nothing important has happened recently. Other times I fail to post because too much has happened and I simply lack the time or energy to do it. And of course, the most crucial of all, sometimes I simply don’t write because I haven’t written in a while and I don’t know what people have missed out on. Lost time won’t come back for wishing, so I’ll just pick up as if I never left off in the first place, begging forgiveness all the while.

The National Outdoor Adventure Summit came to PTC this week. To be honest, I have no idea who these people were. They didn’t need us to take them anywhere, so most of what we did for them was to keep the classrooms clean and stocked with coffee and snacks. The vendors, however, made things tricky. Whoever we had here had a lot of clout in the national office, and vendors came out on Saturday to try to make their products the next big thing for the BSA. They sent literally hundreds of boxes ahead that we had to store, then find, then store again in a closer location, then take out. We had to find ways to keep them accessible yet out of the way of the Summit itself. It took some doing, but the event was a rousing success.

And then we got hit by a meteor. Brian called us all aside and told us that the national office had decided to eliminate the positions of Director of the Training Center and PTC Registrar. Long story short: Brian and Rachel were getting the axe, but in a polite way. Both were offered two options: “promotion” to the national office or retirement. Brian took the former, Rachel still seems up in the air about it. What do you say to a guy closer to your dad’s age than your own when his whole world gets ripped apart? What do you say to the next guy when he feels like he’s looking down the barrel of the same gun? Nobody’s told Greg exactly where he fits into this whole mess except the vague explanation that he’s in charge. Our general manager is slated to get back and tell him on Monday: over a week after the announcement. Great comfort there.

In strangely less morbid news, our annual haunted house is up again. I’m not generally a fan of spook houses – for some reason I have a problem with people jumping out at me as I wander from room to room knowing they’re going to do it and getting scared anyway. In all seriousness, though, the place is a rousing success. I haven’t been through, though I’ll be working in it tomorrow, but I hear that it has a room called “the asylum” where a crazy girl screams at people, possibly after jumping out of a refrigerator. There’s also a maze, designed so that a single person can jump the same group several times. And finally the “kids’ room” manned by Owen’s kids (I can barely pronounce Owen’s last name, let alone spell it) and Amanda, singing creepily and calling on passers by to “play with us”. Sounds like a creepy factor of seven and increasing.

Philmont seems to marry its holidays fairly well. One of our duties this week is to man the spook house, and another is to put up Christmas lights. Cait, Jess and I have had some glorious fun playing around on the roof of the assembly hall while Anton frets like a mother hen. We take frequent breaks on days like this, since we really have no reason to rush, and do things like play in the sparse snowfall or bury Anton in leaves.

I know that there’s at least one of my loyal readers that’s going to hate me for saying this, but it makes Philmont feel like the home I remember it being. There’s no hate here, and if there’s anxiety, we know it will pass soon enough. We work, we play, we spend time together and apart and we dread the knowledge that in four weeks we have to say goodbye.