OA weekend Sundays have three distinct of which the first is to wake up at a time before you ever should and be forced to be fully composed in front of children who’ve just gone through a possibly life changing experience. The combination of fatique, disorientation, and putting on an air of composure will probably be the closest I ever come to being hung over.

The second part is suffering through a 150 minute lodge meeting while the kids elect new lodge officers. Normally this takes a while, as it did this year but for an entirely novel reason: the Ajapeu #33 operating procedures require anyone elected to receive 1/2 the submitted votes, in the case of this not happening, the vote’s reheld with a 2 person run-off that should theoretically guarantee someone getting in. This time, an unusually large number of kids wrote in either “blank” or some non-sense name that even with only two people running, no one person got half the votes cast. The Lodge Adviser had exceptional coolness when faced with this and after the 3rd try, I think the kids got the gravity of the situation. Part and parcel with this are the election speeches, my favorites being those who simply shit talk their predecessor or those that fabricate facts. Lodge participation, brotherhood conversion, and event attendance is on the rise with the only real concern being that event prices haven’t kept up with costs yet each person wanted to make the lodge “more like it used to be”.

The final part is going home and simply faceplanting to recover from the weekend. I wanted to do this but my pillow, comforter, and even comfy shoes were located in Tucson. I’ll make up for this by simply staring blankly at the wall for two hours when I return to my Tucson host’s house.