Not At This Hour

Dearest Rachel –

I found myself awake this morning in pitch blackness, and upon checking the time, saw that it was barely four in the morning. I did get to bed shortly after we got home from Sparks – relatively speaking – but I wouldn’t say that ten o’clock was particularly early, given this situation. So I tried to get back to sleep, only to realize fairly quickly that it was an exercise in futility. and then decided to check through my newsfeed, as well was going through my stats on this site.

That last decision, I won’t say was necessarily a mistake, but it was rather pointless. I happen to have a fair amount of people who read over your shoulder, honey, but at this hour, the site was essentially blank, apart from a message saying “no data available at this hour.” Which makes sense; who would have been checking to see if I’d written you anything new between the hours of midnight and four a.m.? Of course there wouldn’t have been any activity on the site at this hour; by later in the day, there will be visitors, but for now, one shouldn’t expect much.

And so it is with today’s letter, honey. There will be activity in the near future – at least, I certainly hope so – and while each thing might well merit a letter in and of itself when it comes to fruition, it’s going to be a while before that happens. In the meantime, all I can do is sit by the fire and point all the irons out to you as they slowly heat up.

For starters, I finally broke down and got that membership for the new dating app I’ve been debating about for the late couple of months. Since I’m not dropping thousands on a new computer setup – or even a few hundred on some furniture – this is going to be my one major discretionary expense for the month… unless it happens to actually pan out, and I wind up going on a date or two over the upcoming weekends. Good thing I got my fasting sessions out of the way, as that would be no fun, for me or her, to have to work around. As it stands, I’m texting a couple of people, but I’m not sure what to say to them, exactly. The one I’m chatting the most with is clearly not writing in her mother tongue, and it’s giving me second thoughts about her (that, and the fact that, on further inspection of her profile, she’s listed her religion as ‘other’). At the same time, I don’t know how to break it off, either; odds are, she’ll ghost me before I do… in which case, I might as well just let nature take its course.

While that hasn’t gone very far, at least the first night at Sparks seemed to go smoothly. I say “seemed” because my position has rather changed a bit, given the new award structure. The first hour or so saw me chasing around for something to actually do, as far as administration went. At least I have the attendance information I can keep track of (and in a format that’s much more easily shared among the leadership – most people use spreadsheets, as opposed to databases, which are much more specialized), although we were having some difficulty confirming which kids were or were not actually in attendance. At the moment, it may be that someone isn’t going to get credit for having been there last night, as we counted forty-eight heads, but could only agree on forty-seven names. Hopefully, this can get sorted out at some point, but for now, that’s an item left hanging.

The new incentive structure – where kids earn points for attendance, passing sections and bringing friends – has given me something new to do, however. Since the points are meant to be converted into “money” they can use to buy presents once December rolls around, I’ve volunteered to design the bills they’re going to be using. Turns out, Photoshop works a treat for creating an engraving effect, so I can take a photo of a leader and make it look like it really belongs on a dollar bill.

Of course, there’s so much more to assemble, and folks have to submit their pictures for consideration yet, so I won’t have the finished product for some time yet.

And this isn’t my only art project I’ve got in the queue. It seems that the state is planning on revising its flag to something more… flag-like, as opposed to the “seal on a bedsheet” concept that has been around since shortly before I was born (yeah, it’s of surprisingly recent vintage, itself). I have a few ideas, and I’d like to tell you about them, but I need to put them together – and probably submit them for consideration – before I write you about them. A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, and this, in particular, would be better off visualized than described. Until then, there’s no point in making a letter of the topic – but once I have them, I could easily go on at length explaining the elements I’m incorporating.

But that’s how everything is right now, honey; it’s all just getting started, and there’s no way anything will be put together in time to tell you about today. As for the day itself, it looks to be relatively ordinary, but without a whole lot more time to sit here and tell you about it. So I’m going to let you go with the usual request for you to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck – since, as you can tell, I’m going to need it.