Snow!

This past weekend was the DIME weekend away, again in Aviemore, and it snowed!

Let's get quizical.

Saturday evening was one of my stressful nights of the year - the DIME Quiz.

Our annual fundraising event is a bit tricky because you never know at what level to pitch the questions - too easy and everyone gets them, too hard and no one has fun. The winning team this year got 62% correct, and the top 6 teams were within 10 points, which was a good spread I felt.

There were the usual squabbles about my answers, and were they right, or fair.........probably not, but that answer is the only one you can get a mark for!

The quiz raised a nice pile of money to help fund the activities of the next year, including, no doubt, a contribution to our trips and weekend away.

My head hurts.......

This evening I have been getting ready for the DIME quiz next weekend. This is our main annual fundraiser for a youth group in Edinburgh which I became involved in when a student over there and can't quite escape from.

Tonight involved putting all 112 questions onto powerpoint, together with a slide with the answer on, set to appear on a click, as well as finding necessary pictures for some rounds, and editing 25 music tracks for various bots of the quiz (can't say too much about where they are for). So after an evening of Limewire, Audacity, Powerpooint and google, my eyes and ears hurt and I seem to have dehydrated myself.


The good news is that tomorrow is teh DIME Leader's social, so we all go out for a meal and such like. Should be fun.

Tying up loose ends

Today has been a day of tying up loose ends.

• Adding the weight loss progress ticker to the top of the blog, to monitor my attempt to lose 2 stone in just over 2 months.

• Playing badminton with Butcher Boy, after last weeks session was canceled due to him being a bit rough after a night out.
• Buying my next months worth of multivitamins
• Picking up some more stationery supplies
• Ordering the next batch of books I keep putting off
• Tidying up the blog look, with the about me finally updated.
• Deciding which songs will be in the music round at the DIME quiz.
  

Now to do some actual Uni work.

I see numbers, floating before my very eyes

Today I was helping out the people who run the primary groups associated with DIMe and auditing their account which takes in donations, children's camp fees etc, and pays out for the Primary groups, the camp fees, the trips and office expenses and such like.

Now I can see numbers before my eyes, but after 7 hours with bank statements, receipts and such like, we got the account to balance for 2006-7. So that's sorted for another year.

Now I just have the DIME accounts to complete and get to the Team leader by Sunday.

If it's Tuesday, it must be Edinburgh

Another Tuesday, another trip to Edinburgh - my 3rd in 8 days. This time was to setup a presentation about the work of DIME and the Primary groups. In principle it should be really easy - connect laptop to Data projector and voila it's ready!

Sadly due to people forgetting about an email I sent them, the data projector had been borrowed by someone else, and I couldn't get my laptop S-video port to output in colour, so the presentation was in black & white on a TV - not my finest technical moment.

A line of red lights....

On our way back from the DIME weekend, we came round a corner on the A9 to see a line of red lights winding across the valley as far as we could see. These roadworks, to do with the construction of anew roundabout, had delayed us about 20 minutes coming north, but this queue looked much much longer.

Half the traffic seemed to be heading up a narrow road up the hillside to our left, so after looking at a map, Rachel decided to give it a go. We followed as part of a constant line of traffic down this single track road (the drivers coming the other way were pulled over and looking very bored with it all), before coming to a junction and choosing to rejoin the main road at the new roundabout, with only a short (15 minute) queue to get through the traffic lights at the contraflow.

All in all we had saved about 75 minutes, and were not far behind the bus with the kids on by the time we reached Perth.

DIME Weekend

This weekend was also the DIME weekend up at Aviemore. We had great weather- a bit damp on the Saturday, but not enough to stop the activities, and clear cold weather on Sunday. I managed to escape having to go on the bus, and instead met two otehr Leaders at Perth, and went up by car.

I was with the S1's as a Dorm leader, which we knew would always be slightly challenging as they are youngest, and not so acquainted with being away from home. They were, as expected, a wee bit hyper when they arrived, and despite best efforts to run the energy out of them, they still were a bit disruptive at bed time, so much so they didn't get their bedtime story.

Saturday was despite the rain, a good day. I was running the craft bay and we made stress balls, using salt and balloons. this was a great idea and I wish it had been mine! The kids also had options to decorate photo frames or make Hama bead creations, so all in all it was more of a quiet hour amidst the adventurous activities outside.

On my free session, I went with the S5-6's on the ropes course, and was beaten in the forward rolls game and probably most of the others, but we had a laugh with the Leaders looking almost as silly as the kids at times. However, Rachel and the blu one videoing me crawling through a net tunnel wasn't very nice, as I hardly look my usual composed sophisticated self! Then they went off into Aviemore for a coffee and I stayed on site with the younger ones.

Our Saturday night film was Monsters Inc, which I haven't seen before. The Tattooed drinker recommended it by text when i asked him what it was like. Given that he is a gore / horror fan, i did wonder what we were about to unleash, but was pleasantly surprised - it is a great film, though I do worry about agreeing with the Tattooed Drinker on anything!

The Sunday was a nice clear day, and while the kids played games, we tidied the centre, so that just after the kids left, we were finished and on our way. We stopped for a nice coffee at House of Bruar on the way and looked at the necessities of 'country living'. In hindsight, I think the main necessity is money.

I'm back

The last week has been quite chaotic, but a lot has happened that I want to write about, so I will do my best to catch up this week!

The first and most unusual piece of news, was the birth of a baby boy to some friends of mine today. Although they are a wee bit (4years) older than me, they are the first friends to have had a baby which has made me feel old. Mother and baby are doing well, and I;m really happy for them, as they strike me as perfect parents!

Now it starts to make me worry that people I think of as 'my age' are having children, and have proper jobs etc. I always knew that doing Medicine as a post-grad would involve some sacrifice, and self-denial, but at times in the past year it has seemed like I am giving for no feedback.

Anyway, I'm tired after the DIME weekend, where one of the themes was on sacrifice......but more on that story later.

Holidays and friends

This time I had to kill the time from 1pm-6.30pm (when my DIME Team meeting was due to start) so i looked up a few old friends in Edinburgh and toured the coffee shops. First up was Dr A, who was one of the medical students who intercalated on the same course that was my honours year for my BSc. he has just started as an FY1 and was telling me the joys of his rotation compared to some others who work for weeks on end without a break etc, then have 2 weeks off.
It is quite worrying that in 2 years I could be in the same situations... very worrying!

Later in the afternoon I met the blu one and magrat, and we went for coffee before the DIME meeting and had a couple of ideas which I will work on. As usual the blu one needed lots of espresso, and some headache tablets.....

The less said about the DIME meeting the better really, but as normal I left with a long list of things I think I need to sort out, including a Treasure Hunt to organise and a Ceilidh to organise. Magrat kindly gave me a lift to the station so I got home not too late (in the rain!)

I still haven't yet got hold of the Harry Potter book - WHSmiths at at teh stations I passed through didn't have any!

Child protection

Hmm I am today toying with issues of child protection and IT. At DIME some of the older kids wanted a thing where they can communicate with leaders online, kinda like Bebo.

Thats fine except:

1. Bebo is open to the world and their wife and thats not conducive to kids telling you things that they might tell you at the group on a Thursday
2. Most leaders who are on Bebo also have their friends on Bebo and that interaction may not be for the best
3. Child protection - we cannot eb seen to be communicating 1-1 with under 16's without some way of recording messages from both sides. Even in the 16-18 group it's tricky.

So I think I have a solution - its basic, and less graphically pleasing than bebo, but it allows messages, file uploads, discussion and such like, all recorded by the 3rd party supplier.

Now maybe I should do some Uni work.

Charity Finance

I was looking at the Just Giving website as it appeared in a link on a friends email. I was looking to see if there is a way to streamline the giving of money to DIME (a SU youth group I do the finance for). At the moment, donations have to be given to us in the form of cheque cash or a normal inter-account transfer. We are not in ourselves a registered charity, so couldn't use Just Giving, since they take their commission out of the Tax reclaim - for every £10 you give, they take about 95p and you still get £11.25 for the charity. Also the charity has to pay administration fees of £15 a month to the website, which might be a small amount if you are a medium-large sized charity, but not if you are a small one.

Looks like its back to the Ceilidh's, cake sales, treasure hunt quiz nights and bank robberies to raise money then.

Rant time

Why oh why oh why is this country so crazy....

We took DIME to the Time Capsule today. We did swimming in the morning and then ice skating in the afternoon. This was all good fun with no mishaps, and I was even told that my skating has improved since our last visit there 4 years ago. In between swimming (swallowing half the pool and being dunked/splashed for an hour) and skating (wobbling round and crashing into the side boards) we had lunch.

Lunch
I can't remember how much we paid for lunch, it was small bottle of juice a burger and chips. The two main rants I have about this were that the burgers were lukewarm (held on hot plate) dried, tasteless and had no salad in the bun at all. The chips were ok. They gave us diet juice as part of their healthy option. So basically the meal was at best mediocre, and several kids left theirs. At the side of the burger was a coffee area, using Costa's name, cups and beans. This coffee was just like you would get at a Costa anywhere in the world.

So North Lanarks council have no issues with providing decent quality fresh muffins croisants and good coffee, but the rest of their food output is fried from frozen, with no salad and served up dried and frankly disgusting. So the kids spent their money on sweets and crisps. It is crazy.

Photos
Worse came when we decided that we might want some pictures of the event. Not the swimming, but the ice skating. There were large signs saying we needed to ask at reception. I sent our TL to go and ask. He came back with a nice big form in which I had to list my details - name, address, telephone number; my organisation, my position in the organisation, my reason for taking the photo(s), what use would be made of the photo(s) and would I benefit commercially. You might think from this that I would then be allowed free reign to take pictures round the ice rink.

Oh no!!!!I then returned the form to the centre manager, who after 5 minutes said we could go down early and take a group picture but must have the camera away before the public came through. We complied and then got our skates on and went onto the ice. Its craziness. Even the social worker present agreed that it was madness.