Thursday, Thursday, Thursday

For those of you not friends with my sister, I need to let you know that she is a closed captionist. She's actually very good and has a 98% accuracy rate. I don't know how it will be affected by the caption she typed this morning: Hard Cock Cafe.

Yes, my sister captioned the words Hard Cock Cafe for millions of deaf people this morning. I cannot properly convey how proud I am of her....LOL!!! She also captioned Snooki's Poop instead of Snooki's Pouf around Halloween. Brilliant.

This is the same sister I was referencing Monday when I posted a comment on FB about someone wearing a Batman Comic shirt to a loan closing and paying her closing costs with a Batman check. I would like to state for the record that there are no pictures of my mom pregnant with her. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Just kidding, Child....just kidding.


I worked on homework last night with the Juicy and she's still having issues with money. I don't know how to get her over the hump when it comes to counting money and identifying how much each coin is worth. I took all of the change I had and put it on the table for her to work with and I think it helped a little...but I'm not sure. She had Cocoa Puffs for dinner and I ate left over Blue Cheese Spaghetti - which she REFUSED to eat the other night. Last night she decided to try it and raved about how good it was. I told her that I don't make bad food and if she'd eat what I'd cook, she'd like it. She just looked at me like I was crazy. I also broke down and bought her a new iPod. We bought her a Shuffle for her birthday last year and told her that she had to be responsible and keep up with it - which she did. About a month ago, she opened up the car door and it fell out. She thought it fell in the floor board, but it actually fell in the parking lot. She's been stressed out that we will never buy her another one, etc. and I explained to her that I would. She really did take care of it and this was more of an accident rather than just not keeping up with her shizz. So, I bought her a Nano and put her music back on it last night. We also downloaded such hits as Kidz Bop 19 and Ke$ha. Yeah....we were totally rockin out. I also bought her this really cool wristwatch type holder for her iPod. That shuffle was just too small and even though the Nano isn't much bigger, at least it has a decent case to keep it in and hopefully keep up with.

I have had my iPod Nano since 2006 and it finally died. I broke down and bought an iPod Touch yesterday and I feel dirty and sleazy. It's like I'm cheating on my BlackBerry. I'm weird about Steve Jobs and Apple products - I think he's trying to take over the world! I refuse to have an iPhone....but that little iPhone Touch is pretty damn cool. I'm going to be strong, and resist the lure of the dark side.

I didn't feel any random sharp pains after my last blog post, so maybe I didn't piss too many people off :) I'm still thinking of ways CASI can maximize the efforts of the Board and the membership to light a fire under our organization's ass. Here are some of the thoughts I've had the past few days:

*Employ/Outsource our advertising needs to an Advertising Agency or an off-Board position - including the Terlingua Trails. The Trails seems very time consuming and if we can take that off of the particular Director in charge of it, then it would free up time for that Director to handle other issues.

*Hire an ACTUAL website hosting firm to re-vamp the CASI website. This could even include managing a comparable software to input cook off results, membership, etc.

*Set monthly or quarterly goals for the Board member in charge of memberships. Set up a budget and allocate so many dollars towards mass mailings of CASI info cards in order to get our name out there. Utilize EMAIL!!!! FACEBOOK!! TWITTER!!! Have the membership director work with the Advertising firm to maximize CASI's exposure and let more people know who we are and what we do.

Okay, so these thoughts pose the question, "Then what do the Directors do with their free time?" This is what you do:

You divide up the country into regions and assign a director to each region. That director is responsible for inputting cook off results, managing regional/area referee assignment and issues, being the point of contact for charities and cooks in that area and working with charities, referees and pods in their region to schedule cook offs.

Have the President, ED and Sponsor Chair work together with the existing and potential sponsors rather than it being one person's sole responsibility. Have the ED remain the point of contact for the directors in the event there is a problem that can't be solved by them or the membership at the regional level. This will eliminate more than one person doing the same job. For example - our current structure involves the ED, the Upcomings Director and random cooks, pods and referees when it comes to scheduling cook offs. Streamline this process and you eliminate tons of headaches.

*Once a cook off is scheduled, entered and accepted, EMAIL the cook off packet, rather than mail it, to the contact person. I know that doesn't eliminate the issue of getting tickets to the proper person, but it will cut down on postage and waste. Mailing a set of tickets would definitely be cheaper than the whole packet until we can come up with a solution for the tickets. Allow cook off paperwork to be submitted via email or fax and cook off fees to be paid via Paypal.

*We have job descriptions and a code of conduct for the BOD, why not an actual list of JOB REQUIREMENTS as well. There's nothing wrong with requiring business experience in order to serve on the Board. Nor is there any shame in seeking people outside of the CASI family to serve on the Board if they can bring knowledge, time and energy to the table.

If we free up our Board members from multiple day to day issues and let them focus on running CASI efficiently and marketing CASI effectively, we'll start bringing in more money for TICC, the Scholarship Fund and the advertising - which will pay for itself if done properly.

We can also consider an outside CPA to review the books each year as well....something so many of you know I've been harping on for awhile.

These are just my ideas and random thoughts and in no way am I trying to be critical of any one person or the job they do. But, I hate complaining without a solution and if I'm going to blog about my feelings, then I feel like I should make an attempt to be part of the solution rather than just running my mouth and not looking for alternate ways to do things. I wish more people would actively voice their ideas and opinions, but I understand why they don't. It really does seem like you're talking to a wall. Well, guess what - the only way things are going to change is if enough people look to better CASI through innovation, change and oh my God....RISK! It's not the end of the world if you try something and it doesn't work. Chances are, you might find an even better solution through failure.

I've got bean spices to mix. If you want a sample packet, let me know. I still need some feedback before I start selling to the masses. Good luck to everyone cooking chili this weekend. I'm going to hang out with my child tomorrow - it's Field Day at St. Joseph Caflic (as toothless Paige would say) School and get my hair did. Saturday she and I are going to go to a birthday party and Sunday I'm going to tend to my trailer and start getting her fixed up. Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the beautiful weather we're supposed to have.

I'll let everyone know if I get any sharp pains over the weekend :)

The Cadillac Cowgirl