I am feeling pretty good about my ability to run the Shelter. The Case Manager deals with the residents and keeps me informed. Sometimes she asks me my opinion. There are three interns who help her--social work students. There is a volunteer who has come in all this week to answer the phones and do any tasks I come up with; he even changed a light bulb for me. I get the phone calls that are too complicated for them to answer, so I can talk to people about poverty and homelessness and how they can help. I am still doing the assistant director jobs: paying the bills and the staff, submitting reimbursements for grants. I don't think it takes 25 hours most weeks. The interns run errands for me: buying groceries and other supplies. I still make bank deposits myself. They are keeping up with a database of contributors and writing most of the thank you notes.

Yesterday I met with a man at Manning Brothers (a restaurant supply store--fun to browse in) about buying a commercial dishwasher. When I attended the ServSafe training about food safety, I decided we really needed one. Our residents are not washing the dishes in a way that will definitely kill germs. They also use a lot of paper plates and plastic silverware, which I want to stop. It will cost about $4000, but we have 2 $1000 donations and the Board has approved spending the difference.

The Maytag repair man came because one of the washing machines wasn't working. He said it was most likely that people were using too much detergent. A front-loading machine only uses about 3 gallons of water and needs less than a tablespoon of detergent, sometimes as little as a teaspoon. ($65 for the trip of course) I pass that info. along to the Case Manager and she makes sure the residents know.

The rest of the day I spent working on the filing system and reading old emails on the Director's computer. I am slowly working on transferring some of my information from one computer (the Assistant Director's) to the other--like my Contacts and Calendar.

Ray had a Democratic Committee meeting and he needed to prepare the Treasurer's report, so I waited at his office to rush him home at 4;30. He did the report and drove back to the meeting and I stayed home alone. I talked to my children on Skype though, so it wasn't really like being alone. Amelia and I are gradually making the reservations for our trip to Galicia--I leave a week from today!