Better than expected

Well, I went to IPTV on Sunday afternoon and was in such a rush I forgot to get my seat belt on. Fortunately the officer who stopped me was empathetic and let me go right away with just a warning.

And I was reticent at first regarding my volunteering as a phone answerer during IPTV's Festival Fundraiser (www.iptv.org), mostly because when I saw the shifts were 6 and 7 hours, I thought, "Crimanetly, I better be able to bring a book." I turned on the channel and watched for a bit and I just saw people sitting at the phones waiting patiently, no one was doing anything else and I thought, "OMG, I'm gonna be bored out of my skull."

On the contrary, volunteers are only at the phones for about 15 minutes, then the station returns to programming and you are free to do whatever. Fortunately, I took along another project -- the separating of pin and backing for the Iowa Donor Network (www.iowadonornetwork.org)

Anyway, volunteering for IPTV was my mom's suggestion, and true to form, she was the first one to call in on the 4-10 shift. A woman two seats down answered and, again true to form, my mom asked if she could talk to me. (If I were 14, I probably would have died of embarassment. Instead, the woman and I swapped seats and the other 25 volunteers or so, yucked it up for the rest of the night about it.)

I took quite a few calls, one even calling from Omaha. And because of the programming schedule, I was reminded of how much I like John Denver. Might have to get that CD they were touting.

The other unexpected thing...as I was doing the Iowa Donor pins, several other volunteers stopped by and I explained what I was doing and one gent, Norm Carlson a medical tech and there representing Sons of Norway, suggested I look into volunteering at Blank Children's Hospital or Amanda the Panda.

Not clear on what Amanda the Panda was, I looked it up on Google. (No, I didn't not google it because technically that's not a word ;P) www.amandathepanda.org WOW, how fitting! The organization is dedicated to helping grieving children and family members following the death of a family member. (I say it is fitting because as a child, my family lost my older brother Chris at the age of 7.)

So, I filled out the online volunteer form and within the day heard from the director. I'll be meeting with her and a couple of marketing interns on Friday, April 3 to discuss how I can help in spreading the word about the group and possibly helping out on a couple of events.

More later!