'Tis the Season

I have two callings in the church.  I've mentioned one before - teaching the Laurel class which means I get to teach Sunday lessons to the girls who are 16 and 17 years old.  Mostly that is a good experience and I do love the girls.  They are wonderful.  It reminds me of all those years I taught high school - only these girls have a desire to do what is right.
My other calling is one I've had for a number of years - since February 2007 in fact - that of being the stake website administrator.  It used to involve a number of other responsibilities to keep the website updated with personnel changes but primarily my job was keeping the calendar up to date.  Each fall I would begin to hyperventilate waiting for the first draft of the calendar for the following year and as soon as I received it I would begin the process of posting all of the meetings and temple trips and athletics and special events, as well as the school calendars and other details.  Some years were more challenging than others because of last minute changes and corrections and additions and occasionally my attempts to enter details in small spaces led to gentle requests for more words - Bball had to become Stake Basketball for example.  I figured that after six weeks of bball every Thursday it would be understood but apparently not. 
I kept track last year and the entire process took over 60 hours to enter, not counting the corrections that happened after the final final calendar was submitted.
And then...(cue ominous music)...progress.  Salt Lake came up with a great idea to abandon the classic calendar and move on to a new improved version.  It is a great idea.  The old (classic) calendar was all one layer and looked like a Word document.  If you wanted to see everything going on in the stake it was great because everything was visible.  However, if all you needed were the events that pertained to your family's situation (only temple and stake meetings for example), then it was difficult to read.  So SLC developed a "layered" calendar with as many layers as a stake might require and each member has the option to click off any layers that aren't significant for his or her life.  (You don't like athletics?  Not involved with YM or YW? Click off those calendars.  Easy) It's a great idea for members - a huge improvement in many ways.
But for the stake website administrator (me) IT. IS. A. NIGHTMARE.  Instead of just opening each date on the calendar and posting all the events for that day, each event has to be analyzed, assigned to a specific layer, posted and then saved before I can go on to the next event.  Instead of working for an hour or two and chronologically posting events, this new improved calendar (which is still being tweaked for programming errors) takes a lot more time to post.  A lot.
The good news is that as of tonight I think we have selected all the layers we will need and have given them appropriate names.  Next I need to pick the colors for each layer.  On the trial version last spring I picked PINK for stake athletics.  There's a long story behind that but let's just say it made me feel better at the time.
So. The time has arrived to begin the process for the 2012 calendar.  If between now and December 31st I seem tired or distracted or crabby, just know that I have a very good reason for those feelings. 
And those girls I told you about?  Some of them just stopped by and brought me cookies.  Like I said, they are wonderful.