My, what strange weather we are having. Last night was positively balmy, and today we're having freezing rain. I've decided to get cozy with a cup of hot cocoa and the Digital Twin Oaks Policies (DTOP).

All new members get 52 New Member Hours. They're for getting trained on tasks without depleting the budget of areas, for taking on little projects that you're excited about, etc. I was using mine to arrange the children's library in Degania, but I lost my energy for it after the earthquake undid all my hard work. What to do with them now? Well, I realized the other day that I would like a more thorough understanding of Twin Oaks Policies. We have a lot of them. They're collected in the Digital Twin Oaks Policies, a massive pdf file containing all the most current policies. I talked with Ethan, my new member liaison, and asked whether he thought I could use my new member hours to read policies. "YES!" was the answer. So now here I am, cozy and warm, reading policies for labor credit. My life is pretty great.

I realized that I wanted to read policies during my participation in our annual budgeting process. I volunteered to be a member at large during the budgeting, which means that I got to sit in and weigh in on discussions of area managers' budget requests. We're running a very complicated place here! There are tons of domestic areas to fund and worry about, and the purpose of each is sometimes unclear. What is the difference between the Mental Health Care budget and the Mental Health Team budget, for example? One budget was overspent this year because it's been going toward some project-- should this area even be funding that project? Questions like that made me realize that I really don't understand policy enough. Oh dear! What to do? Clearly I should read a lot.

In other news, Keegan is using his new member hours to read books about the care of cattle. He has even been drawing cows so that he can practice labeling their parts. Now that's dedication.

In other other news, I am participating in a philosophy club here. Previously, our format allowed me to slack off and do the reading the afternoon before we met. However, we have just agreed to a format change that now requires me to take notes and actually understand things. Hurrumph. What is this, an actual educational experience? I thought I was living on a farm here. (I kid, I kid.)

Keegan seems excited about setting up informal-ish educational experiences for people here. He established the philosophy club. Just this past week, he hosted the first meeting of a Latin class. He says, "it was extremely successful and everybody in the hammock shop was talking in Latin." It's true. People were talking in Latin in the hammock shop.

To balance out the work I'm doing with my brain, I obviously need to do more work with my body. I have therefore intensified my hooping. I hoop almost every day now! I have this lovely light hoop that I can play with for hours without getting bruises. How exciting. Even Keegan agrees that hooping is fun.