Wednesday, July 23, 2008
A Day in the Life of the Wren’s Nest
Posted by: Amelia // Category: Failed Attempts at Looking Reputable, Nonprofit Management // 2:09 pm
9:30 am: Arrive at the Nest. Eat peach cobbler left over from the family reunion for breakfast. Classy.
10:00 am: First tour arrives, comprised of 4 and 5 year olds. Take approximately 11 minutes to seat them.
10:03 am: A woman who frequently sleeps in her car in our driveway requests a quick tour of the house when Lain asks her to leave.
10:05 am: Same woman walks to the front door and enters– in a nightgown.
10:28 am: The children flip out when we enter the library. They can see their bus through the window. Excitement ripples.
10:30 am: A gaggle of little girls leave the window to tell me they like my shirt over and over. Target audience = reached.
10:39 am: Aforementioned sleepy woman returns and asks if I can jump her car. I blink repeatedly in response, then send out Lain.
10:45 am: Children are released outside to run in circles.
10:46 am: One little girl is held back from playing, due to her refusal to wash her hands post-bathroom trip. She cites her parents’ (probably false) “no hand washing” policy.
10:46 am: Make mental note that this girl is gross.
10:52 am: Donald arrives to tell stories, wrangle cats children into the storytelling garden.
10:54 am: See folks in the parking lot, direct them to the front porch for their tour. Man asks, “Do you have to go on the tour?”
10:55 am: I reply, “Well, no, you don’t have to, but we really don’t have much else to offer.” The man acquiesces with, “Oh, alright.”
11:15 am: I answer the door and begin a tour for people who, when asked if they’re familiar with Uncle Remus and the Brer Rabbit stories, reply, “Oh yes, we love the movie”. This is not the best sign.
11:24 am: As I speak about the artifacts in the room, one woman interrupts to tell me that she bought the DVD of Song of the South on our website (note: nope).
11:26 - 11:34 am: Over and over again. Tour continues.
12:04 pm: Review Wren’s Nest Publishing Co. submissions, be happy I was never one of those teenagers who wrote poetry about the pain of an over-privileged childhood.
12:44 pm: Lunch! Seriously, Turkey Slawich from Elliot Street Pub, I would kiss you if I could take moment away from devouring you. Which I can’t.
12:56 pm: Realizing we have nothing to blog about, Lain and I decide I should blog about our day. Commence blogging.
1:15 pm: Lain watches video about recent use of the term “tar baby”, helpfully says “Maybe you shouldn’t blog about our day today”.
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I blink repeatedly in response, then send out Lain
Now that’s funny.
I only sent him the Kerry tar baby note at noon EST, and your post was enlightening anyways. Good luck with the Publishing Co. submissions folks…
[...] — The folks at the Wren’s Nest take us through their day, including the woman in the nightgown who sleeps in her car and parks it in their driveway. [...]
That sounds like the best day ever, far more exciting than mine. You should have the woman in the car write a guest blog, I am very interested to see what she has to say.
The women in the car in the driveway- I wonder what is her story.
I know - I am very interested to hear the women in the car’s story too. And when do you announce the winner of the Wren’s Nest Publishing Company’s submissions?
p.s. I saw The Wren’s Nest in the AJC on Monday and I got very excited - It was a great article and even got to highlight a little on how much you guys have done.
“12:56 pm: Realizing we have nothing to blog about, Lain and I decide I should blog about our day. Commence blogging.”
This is my favorite post of yours yet.
So how are y’all “fooling” with the blog? Is that “subscribe” link new perhaps?
Joe, what I had started to do was update our software. It sounded pretty easy, so I gave it a try. Turns out it was pretty scary, and I thought I’d pretty much lost all of our information. Luckily, I’d backed everything up, so we’re cool now …or at least back where I started.
That said, yeah the RSS thing is new but it won’t do what I want it to do (have text next to it, be at the top of the right hand column). Basically, I’m waiting on our web people to fix things as I have proved incapable of doing so.
Anyway, my apologies for a slow week of blogging, though we’re of the “if you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t bother” school …so maybe you should be thanking us for not opening our big mouths.
You have web people? Who knew!?
I did, thankfully!
Lampe-Farley, a small marketing firm from Decatur, does our day-to-day marketing work. That includes this web site. They developed the web site with my (hopefully occasionally helpful) input, while Amelia and I developed the content.
They also converted our blog into CSS so that it is seamless with the rest of our site.
I use a program called Coda to update our site with mainly housekeeping type stuff–typos, small updates, etc …but a lot of the time my very basic knowledge of html doesn’t get done what needs to get done.
God I miss you.