Recycling in the Rain

Apologies for the lack of posts this past week! On the heels of multiple Thanksgiving Celebrations throughout our church, the headquarters of the Bibliopolis Recycling Fundraiser reached a crisis point, and it was imperative that we go the recycling center before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Since the center is closed on Monday, that left today to take care of business, but as those of you at Gracepoint Berkeley church are aware, this morning we had much needed rain.

But my crew was dauntless and determined. There was a light drizzle as we loaded all of the bags into the NV (Thanks, Uncle Joe!)

filled up the back of the NV

We filled up the entire back two rows, and the trunk space too!

We thought maybe the line at the recycling center would be short since it was raining, but it seemed some other people had the same idea. 🙂

that's a lot of bottles and cans

We confess that we tried to make the pile look as big as possible. Does it look impressive?

Once we started the actual work, that’s when the rain started coming down pretty hard. And we needed all hands on deck, so unfortunately, I have no pictures (or potential B-roll) for this portion. But I think we made quite an impression on the neighborhood recycling regulars. We got to tell them that that it was for a fundraiser at our church. And the young man working at the center very kindly lent us an umbrella.

Thanks to so many of your uncrushed cans, we were able to make quite a lot of money using the machine, but that did mean putting each one in individually. We went the weighing route with the rest of the cans, plastic bottles, and glass (thank you, Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider!).

Interestingly enough, the rain stopped just as we were finished recycling. We played informal “Price is Right” to guess how much money we made, and we were all very surprised when we saw our receipts.

It was an hour well spent during a week vacation from school — we raised another $90.61 for Bibliopolis!

Reading Snapshots: Breaking & Entering Edition

The other day, I got a text message that read: “Breaking into Bibliopolis after hours!” It was accompanied by this picture. I must say it was wise to include this picture, since it did blunt the whole “breaking into” part. Some of the Bibliopolis patrons will be aghast, “Michael has his shoes on!” but I’m sure his dad carried him onto that green chair. 🙂

At least Stephen’s reading The Jesus Storybook Bible!

Happy Monday!

Narnia November & NaNoWriMo Begin!

narniaNovember 1st kicks off Narnia November! It’s not an official thing, but I’m hoping it becomes one. The challenge is to read as many of The Chronicles of Narnia books you can this month. It’s open to all ages across all Gracepoint churches, not just Gracepoint Berkeley church. I know November is a busy month, but there’s also Thanksgiving Break, and for some school districts, that’s a whole week of no school! So I think it’s possible.

It doesn’t matter in which order you read the books, whether the one that starts with The Magician’s Nephew or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I personally like the latter, which is the order of writing/publishing, but no matter. The point is the reading. The last time I read the series all the way through was in 1997, so I’m definitely due for a visit to Narnia.

PrintNovember 1st also signals the official beginning of National Novel Writing Month. This *is* an actual thing, and the goal is for participants to write the novel they’ve always meant to — and the novel needs to be 50,000 words (or more). There is a Young Writer’s Program for NaNoWriMo, in which students can set their own word goals for their novels. I’ve participated (but not completed) several times with different classes over the years. This year some of the 7th and 8th grade girls of Bibliopolis and I will be participating. We’ll see how far I get in my masterpiece. I have the best title and concept ever, but it’s the rest of it that I can’t seem to do! This might be a quantity over quality type of deal, since the goal is to just write. But even if we don’t finish, we’ll challenge ourselves to write more.

Will you be participating in Narnia November? In what order do you read the books? Which is your favorite of the series?

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