Musicals, Costco Trips, and Tours!

This past week was stressful, insane, and amazing... doesn't make sense, right?

Monday morning I was down at the CDC [Child Development Center] at 7am, only after realizing that CD cases work well as ice scrapers. I am a Mesa, Arizona native, and I generally walk to work from my barracks room. Unfortunately the CDC is on the other side of the base, and that morning just happened to be FREEZING cold. The meeting was very productive, the children will be presenting a Musical on May 1st to help promote the April Child Abuse Prevention Month. We went over specifications of the event, created a flyer design, and then later in the day I reserved the theater for them from the Theater Manager FS2 Paone.

All afternoon Tuesday was spent out of the office! Hurray! Ken, one of my supervisors, and I went into town to run some errands. We had to get a lock box and microwave for guest housing, butter for the CDC, and six boxes of fruit snacks to stuff the 0-3yr old Easter Eggs with. I had an enjoyable afternoon, we had In-n-Out for lunch, then since COSTCO was our last stop we enjoyed their chocolate dipped ice cream bars. Mmm-Mmmm.

Friday I had a meeting with Avis, the guest housing and club manager. We went over the daily specials and events for the club and how we should market them. I left with four specials to create flyers for. I went home 1hr early from work because I would be working Saturday.

Saturday morning I met with the Chiefs of the HS (Health Services) "A"- School Class at 7am. All of the students arrived by 7:30 and we were carpooling to San Francisco 15min later. We drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and arrived on Pier 33 at 8:45am. I talked to one of the Park Rangers, explaining we were from the Coast Guard base and had a behind the scenes tour set-up. Unfortunately, the Ranger we had set-up the tour with didn't show up on the pier, the loading crew was nice enough to let us board the 9:30 ferry (since we missed the 9) and we were headed towards "The Rock." Once we arrived our Park Ranger met us, evidently there had been some miscommunication early on about the meeting place, everything worked out and we enjoyed a 2hr private behind the scenes tour of Alcatraz (and yes- that includes places featured in the movie "The Rock")! I went as the official MWR representative, my duty was to take pictures... I have 160 that will be placed on the TRACEN Intranet by the end of this week.

HS Class 02-09 -- "A" School

Last view of Alcatraz.

I felt incredibly lucky to be apart of this tour. It was great to see the students cheer when the Ferry Captain said "Alcatraz Tour Boats are all Coast Guard approved," and then see the rest of the people on the ferry nod or clap their hands in appreciation for the Coasties. One of the students even got to drive the ferry, turns out the Captain was a Coast Guard Auxiliary Member.

NOT TO MENTION the fact that all I had to do in order to go on this tour was pay the $29.99 (tax free on base) for my CG hoodie, and offer to take pictures! =)

Next week is going to be BUSY... Last minute Easter event preparations, and then the actual event.

Marketing & Brainstorming

This past week seemed to drag on, I think it was because for the second week in a row I spent the majority of my time sitting at my desk (which I DO NOT enjoy).

I did go around base on Wednesday taking down the St. Patrick's Day Celebration Flyers and replacing them with the upcoming Texas Hold'Em Tournament Flyers, it was nice to be walking around, especially outside in the sun.

Thursday was the most productive day: The entire afternoon was devoted to our Marketing and Brainstorming Meeting for the Consolidated Club. I was put on the spot asking to take notes on the big screen, and showing the calendar I created. I wasn't worried, I can type fast enough and am really comfortable with editing the calendar. Below you will find a snapshot of our ideas:

[click to view larger]

I am proud to say that the following were my ideas: Hospitality Night, Flip a Coin Night, XBOX Olympics night, and themed nights. Since the meeting they have already decided to use the Flip a Coin Night. I even got to think up the names for the two nights! April Fools Day - "Fool's Flip" and Tax Day= "Tax Trick" Instead of getting 10% off on a drink, they will be using it on their beer pitchers... heads will be full price, tails will be $1.00 off.

I'm off to bed, I have a 7am meeting with Mrs. Cooper (director of the CDC- Child Development Center) regarding the April Child Abuse Prevention Month Event.

I hope you all have a great week!

Slower Week - Marketing

This week was fairly slow, which I was extremely thankful for considering I have been really sick. Pretty much my entire office is, I was one of the last people to catch what has been going around for the past month.

The majority of my week has been focused on the marketing efforts of our events, I created three more flyers:



Of these currently only the St. Patrick's Day one has been hung. This week I will hang the Poker Tournament, and the following the Easter one. I have also been working on the Harlem Ambassador's promotion. My boss taught me how to put pre-made posters through our copy/scanner/printer. So the posters now have all of the information for the game and tickets on it. They will be hung the first week of April.

I had a meeting with my potential Easter Bunny volunteer to make sure the costume fit him, which thankfully it did! I also have student volunteers to help stuff baskets, and hide Easter eggs. This event seems to be coming together very well, although I am still waiting on one box from the Fun Express company- Easter novelty toys and egg hunt bags.

This Tuesday is St. Partick's day... don't forget to wear your GREEN!

Nor*Cal Basketball Tournament

Earlier today the championship game was played and I can proudly say that the TRACEN Cutters team placed #1! Yay for the home team. Yesterday I ran the 3-Point Shooting Contest and helped Roy with the Free Throw Shooting Contest.

• I was responsible for player sign-up (writing their last name and team on a master list)
• Both Contests had three rounds, I had to count the points scored.
  
• For the 3-Point: They had 15 shots total, 5 from 3 locations on the 3-point arc, made within 1min. The first 4 at each location were worth 1pt the 5th worth 2pts. Round 1 had 20 players, Round 2 had 5, Round 3- 2.
• For the Free Throw: The first round consisted of 20 free throws, the second 30, and the final 50. Round 1 had 20 players, Round 2 had 4, Round 3- 2.
• It was fun and stressful at the same time because I knew I was in charge of the scoring, and if I missed one, that could cause a player to be out.

Today I helped facilitate the Championship Game, at the end of the game Mr. Sturla surprised me by saying my name in the "Thank-you" list. Then I got to help the Master Chief pass out the 2nd and 1st place trophies!

I had mentioned previously that I have been placed in charge of the Easter Events. This past week the majority of my order came in. I am missing a box of eggs, and a box of novelty toys, if they don't come in soon I will have to call the company. I also realized I need to order bags for the children to collect the eggs with, so that will be done as soon as I can get another purchase order from the budget department. Luckily I am friends with the Morale Committee due to meetings and the Snow/Ski trip, and a few of the members have offered their students as volunteers for basket stuffing, egg hiding, and I even have an Easter Bunny!

I want to revisit a previous blog prompt:
Have you experienced conflict with a co-worker or employee? Have you witnessed conflict? How did you handle this and what would you do different next time? What did you learn about employee relations from this experience?

This past Wednesday we had a MWRMT meeting, the topic of the meeting was to revisit the mission and vision statement of the MWR, as well as create new guidelines for how the meetings should be conducted. Every time I would make a comment, or add input to the discussion, one guy would make belittling comments towards me. Instead of confronting him directly and making a huge scene during the meeting, when it was my turn to add an idea for the guidelines I said: "To not make hostile comments, or rash decisions because of feelings." Then the next person added: "Do not make derogatory comments towards others." Needless to say after the meeting a few of the other team members came up to me and said I did a good job of sticking up for myself, and mentioned that he is like that a lot. I don't like people who are so prideful that when their idea isn't the one accepted they simply won't accept anyone else's and do their best to tear it apart.

I better get to bed, I haven't been feeling well lately... hopefully I can keep from getting completely sick.

Lake Tahoe

Yesterday I helped to run the MWR Morale Trip to Squaw Valley and Granlibakken in Lake Tahoe, CA.

It was a VERY long day, I was down at the departure location at 0530 placing reserve signs on seats, loading the bingo game and prizes onto the bus, and finally checking in the passengers and getting their cell phone number (just in case we needed to contact them in event of an emergency). The bus pulled out promptly at 0600, one of the missing passengers ended up running after the bus right as we started, we were nice and let him board.

The ride there went smoothly, I helped pass out breakfast (danish, juice/water, napkin), then collected the trash. We had 11 Starbucks giftcards to award as prizes with our bingo games. I took turns with my boss Ken calling numbers and keeping track, amidst making jokes to keep the "B 14, B14" from becoming too extremely boring.

We dropped half of the bus off at Squaw Valley, I had to mark off those passengers on my list so we knew their location. From there the rest of us went to Granblibakken Snow Area (15min drive), once we arrived we* unloaded the bus and began to set-up our area on the lodge's deck. I was responsible for cooking the chili and hot dogs for lunch, luckily I had about an hour to get ready before the lunch rush.

At 1130 we served the Granlibakken group, at 1200 the bus returned from Sqaw Valley and we served them lunch and they left for Squaw Valley once again. Squaw Valley is a typical ski and snowboard area green-black runs, it was the home of the VIII Olympics in 1960. Granlibakken is a family centered area with 2-3 green/blue runs. The biggest draw though is their play area, for $9.00 p/per ($7.00 for our group, military discount) gets you unlimited access to the snow hill. They have discs and sleds available. My boss gave me 3hrs to enjoy it!



I also took pictures with the MWR's government issued camera (I'm so glad I didn't break it!) to document the trip for the intranet. Around 1600 we* began cleaning up and loading up the bus. We took a group picture, then loaded up the bus and headed to pick up the other half of the group at Squaw Valley. Once we had loaded up there, I took a final headcount and we were on our way back to TRACEN.

I was responsible for running the movies on the way back, we watched Evan Almighty and A Night at the Museum (The movies had to be PG because of the younger children on board). We made a stop for dinner, and arrived back at base at 2145. After unloading Ken, Nate, and I had to unload all of the MWR gear at the office. I finally got back to my room at 2215.

Once my head hit the pillow... I was out!

This next week is going to be full of meetings and briefs. I know of five, then Fri-Sun is the Nor-Cal Basketball Tournament. Talk about B-U-S-Y!

*Side Note: It is really cool for me that when we were unloading the bus, the Coasties and their families didn't just expect us to do it all for them. It was a joint effort, we had guys carrying ice chests for us, the bags of charcoal, and the propane stove. It may have been because we provided the trip for free, (including lunch) or just the type of people we were with. But either way, it was really refreshing to see the initiative and community effort that took place.