LONG DAY ... got to the convention center at 10am, after breakfast, where I ran into two people from my home church in SoCal) and a quick trip to a nearby Target (two-stories!) to get some groceries for my room. Took a free bus the 5 blocks to Target (my hotel and Target are both on Nicollet Mall, thankfully) and back, then took another free bus to the convention center to spare my legs. Went to a presentation on the Marriage/Civil Union report coming to this Assembly. Interesting presentation, until the Minority Report peeps shared their narrow views of marriage. Then it was just annoying.
Had lunch with a commissioner introduced by a friend -- nice pastor from the Northwest. Told me about a More Light/Open and Affirming Church opening in Olympia, WA. Hmmmm ........... ;-) Then at 1:30pm we had our first plenary session with all of the commissioners. Learned how to use our wireless voting gizmos, then voted on some boring stuff and heard some boring presentations from several boring groups who do not read my blog or even know I exist so I can call them all boring.
Our free group "dinner" consisted of some fancy appetizers, no main course, and no booze. No booze? It was bad enough not to have an actual dinner, as advertised in my commissioner schedule. But no booze?!?! Look, everyone knows Presbyterians drink. In fact at 11:30pm last night when we finally got back to my hotel, the bar was crammed with drinking Presbyterians. And yes, I was one of them. Look, the line for the elevators was around the corner. I couldn't stand that long, so I sat in a comfy chair that just happened to be in the bar area. Then the nice server came by and asked me if I wanted a drink. I couldn't be rude, could I? So, to be polite, I ordered a Cosmo. And then, since it cost $10, I HAD to drink it. Sheesh.
But I digress. After "dinner" we went back to our plenary session (plenary means all 700+ commissioners) to start the LONG process of electing our moderator. There were six candidates. Each had a 5+ minute nomination speech made by 6 passionate nominators telling us why their candidate was the best. This was followed by 6 speeches from the actual nominees, also each 5+ minutes. (Two of them sang part of their speeches. I did not vote for them, though they both had lovely voices.) If you do the math we are now past 8pm after an hour of speeches. Then comes the Q&A from the commissioners, which was to take another hour. Until someone moved that we give them 90 minutes since there were six commissioners. Oy. Motion passed. So now we are looking at least until 9:30pm until we can vote. Except the Q&A starts late for various reasons -- among them, getting comfy chairs for the six of them to sit in on the stage. So it doesn't start until 8:30pm'ish.
Finally we start voting sometime after 10pm. Only our new high-tech wireless voting gizmos aren't working right. Or maybe the Presbyterians using them weren't working right. So after two ballots (the winner has to get 50% or more of the vote to win and no one had that much by that point) they start to try and figure out the gizmo problem. They have us do some more sample voting. Question: Did you eat dinner tonight? I voted NO. If they had asked me if I ate appetizers with no booze, I would have voted Yes. Amazingly, the Yes votes won. Guess what some people consider dinner varies.
But I WON the moderator vote! No, I'm not the new PCUSA moderator, but the woman I voted for during each round of voting finally ended up winning. She was one of the two white-haired women I was considering -- I mentioned them a couple of days ago. She got me with her answer on the gay marriage question (up until the gay marriage question, the Q&A was a snoozefest of the highest order). Four of the candidates stuck to the heterosexist party line of defining marriage between a man and a woman only. Sooooooooooo dark ages. But our new moderator, Cindy Bolbach said:
“Who poses the greatest threat – Larry King, who’s been married seven times, or a gay couple [friends of hers] in Washington, D.C., who have been together for 62 years and who got married two weeks ago?”I heart her. Here is more about the election:
http://ga219.pcusa.org/news/2010/7/4/cynthia-bolbach-elected-moderator-fourth-ballot/
By the time we got out of there it was too late to catch the bus back, so I walked back to the hotel and, well, you know the rest of the Cosmo story. Got into bed at midnight but could not fall asleep. Probably too wired. Maybe I should have had another $10 Cosmo? Finally fell asleep sometime after 1:30am, hoping to sleep past 8am at least. Alas it was not to be. My beloved called me at 7:42am.
So now here I sit, mainlining coffee, eating Lucky Charms, and catching you all up on the wonderful world of General Assembly. It's sprinkling outside, with thunderstorms due later. Wonder if that means the "Dinner" tonight (picnic on Nicollet Island with fireworks later) will be cancelled? Not that I'm going anyway. I will go to the Commissioner "lunch" at noon, then to my exciting committee meeting at 1:30pm. Then I'm coming back here to crash. Or maybe swim. Or more Cosmos. Who knows? Tune in later to find out ....
P.S. Yes, I missed the spectacular opening worship service. Everyone will tell me how great it was and how I shouldn't have missed it. I needed some "me-time." And a shower. And I had to blog!
