~Sunday~ I got up at a little after 11:00, made my Scrabble move, and then put on a pot of coffee. After a few back-and-forth moves with Robert in the online Scrabble game, I toasted a Portuguese muffin, cut it in half lengthwise, fried two over-easy eggs, set one on each half of the muffin, broke the yolks to let them run on the muffin, and then topped them off with a little bit of syrup.
Lazy man’s French toast made with Portuguese bread. After all, I am half Portuguese and half French.
I had penciled in my calendar to go see MISHPACHA – Hanukkah Music For All at Quail Ridge Books & Music, in which an ex-professor from grad school plays, but I decided to hit the gym instead. I would have been going mostly to be with two of my friends who go to see it, but I really wanted to get a workout in today, and with another meeting from 4:00-6:00, getting one in before the gym closed at 7:00 would have been too rushed.
Once there, I did 45 minutes on the treadmill while listening to a podcast episode of Car Talk. I listened to another episode of Car Talk later in the day in which these short puns were shared:
- A little while a go, a guy’s entire left side was cut off. He’s all right now.
- A little boy swallowed a bunch of coins and was taken to a hospital. Later, his grandmother called to see how he was. “No change yet,” they said.
- I was having dinner at an Italian restaurant with Gary Kasparov, the world-class chess player, and we sat at a table with a red and white checkered tablecloth. It took him two hours to pass the salt.
- I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger and bigger. Then it hit me.
We had our second full group meeting of the team going on the Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trip to Thibodaux in March, and we did two team-building type activities.
The first one was called Round Robin, in which we formed two concentric circles, the inside circle facing out and the outside circle facing in, so that we each had a partner. Jackie, as the moderator, asked a question and then we had one-to-two minutes to answer the question to each other.
This was just a way to get to know each other a little better, and the questions included:
- What are you looking forward to doing over winter break?
- What is one of your fondest memories so far at NC State?
- Why did you choose to join the ASB trip?
- What do you like the most about doing service work?
- What do you like the least about doing service work?
- Who is one of your heroes or mentors and why?
For our second activity, we were each handed a stack of cards with values on them, with which we had to:
- Do a quick sort of the cards picking out the top ten values that resonate with you.
- From those ten, narrow them down to your top five.
- Put the five back in the original pile, and now pick out the top five that resonate with you when you’re in a leadership role.
- Put those five back in the original pile, and now pick out the top five that resonate with you when you’re in a follower role.
- Enter the five in each category onto a “Values Card Activity” sheet.
Here’s what my results looked like:
|
Fun |
Diversity |
Trust |
|
Loyalty |
Competence |
Diversity |
|
Independence |
Passion |
Fun |
|
Wisdom |
Fun |
Growth |
|
Diversity |
Teamwork |
Accountable |
After that, we discussed the following questions about the exercise with a partner:
- What ah-ha’s do you have looking at your 3 lists?
- What was the most difficult part of the Values Card Sort?
- Were there any values that appeared in all 3 sorts? What are they? What does this mean?
- If your values were different in each column, what does this mean?
- How do you “express” these values as a leader, in your day-to-day work, personal life, and spiritual life?
- How do your personal values impact your view of “work” and “teams”?
- Is congruency important between leadership and follower values?
And finally, we chose the answers to two of those questions to discuss with one other person.
We ended the activity by standing in one big circle and going around: 1) Saying our name, 2) Sharing our top 5 personal values, and 3) Sharing our answer to anyone of the questions with the entire group.
Other agenda items in the meeting included:
- Collecting everyone’s second payment toward the trip
- The team had an opportunity to discuss the H1N1 vaccine requirement. There wasn’t any discussion, and most people had already gotten it.
- Reporting on fundraising:
- Grace and Mallory received about 120 complimentary mini-subs from Jimmy Johns and sold most of the for a $1.00 each on December 4th during the Hillsborough Hike. They raised $100.39 for the group.
- We don’t yet have a report of our total take on our Applebee’s fundraiser last Thursday, December 3rd.
- We’re still waiting to hear back about finalizing the Whole Foods and Chick-fil-A fundraisers.
- Jackie reviewed the finalized flight plans with everyone.
- It was noted that our January retreat is still on for the 23rd and that we’re still hoping to do a half day at Wake County Habitat followed by half day of team building
- The team was reminded that all payments are due by January 31st.
I had a huge salad for dinner consisting of lettuce, onions, green peppers, celery and some garlic bread.
I played online Scrabble on and off with Robert, and I starting reading Three Cups of Tea, which is our next book for Mostly Social Book Club.