The Polls are in...

... and the Scavengirthdayparty was a success.

Its funny how fast good days go by. Yesterday is all a blur now.

A good blur, though.

A blur of lots of laughter and excitement.

Getting things started initially was a bit stressful. From past experience in organizing things like scavenger hunts or treasure hunts, I have learned that the breaking point of the event is when everyone gathers together to divide into 'teams.' With a fair number of people - some of whom know each other, some of whom don't, some of whom get along with everyone, some of whom don't - the challenge lies in creating teams in which no one will kill each other and everyone will have fun. The catch for the planners/hosts of said event is that sacrifice may be necessary in order for everyone else to have a good time. The sacrifice may be in using yourself as the 'social glue' in a team that would otherwise be dysfunctional - being the glue means everyone else gets to have fun but it can be a precarious balancing act of willed tactfulness and self-control.

Yesterday, when the team organizing process started to get out of control I decided to go and hide in the kitchen until it was all over, cowardly leaving it to Colin and Sarah to get everything settled. It was decided to use the democratic method of names drawn from a hat and soon I was being passed a handful of team member names to hold onto. (Later I learned that the hat method was not as simple as it was meant to be due to some confuffle on our dear ninja's side. *sigh* Silly ninja.) However, democracy was soon forfeit as everyone began to barter themselves onto more desirable teams in which they would know more people or feel more comfortable.

I soon ended up on a team (and we won't say how) that was altogether desirable - one person I didn't know but wanted to know and two people I knew and liked very much and wanted to spend more time with.

Soon everything was settled and there was a mad dash for the door to put on shoes, grab coats, take instruction sheets... and the race began.

Whoops! I mean, there was no race! See, Sarah and I had the good fortune to participate in a scavenger hunt a few weeks back. It was a car rally style scavenger hunt - like ours was - but in this one you didn't need to get out of your car to get answers for the scavenging questions. This may have appeared to be a brilliant idea for the Hunt organizers, but in reality it was a huge pain as it involved slowly driving a car up and down streets with other cars honking behind you as you frantically scanned buildings for the answers to clues. And as the driver in that particular hunt, it was no fun at all because of the hell of having multiple directions yelled at one and having to avoid hitting other vehicles... you get the picture.

So yesterday's hunt was much more relaxed as the oh-so-smart Sarah had intelligently planned the hunt around a few key locations in Winnipeg so that we could park and leave the car behind and walk around for what we needed.

To be continued...