Friday, October 13, 2006

Cheating

FYI, I nearly titled this "Heating" because my office is freezing and it's all a subconscious thing. But I'm not blogging about the temperature this morning, I'm blogging about cheating, so let us proceed.

I like to scrapbook. Honestly, sometimes I like having finished scrapbooks more than I like the process of scrapping, but since I'm not willing to pay anybody to scrapbook my life for me, if I want a finished album I have to do the scrapping. This week, however, I've been enjoying the process. Why? Because I'm cheating in a contest that doesn't start until tomorrow. Competition is apparently a great motivator for me (also evidenced by the 12 pages I wrote Wednesday for the KIA marathon, when it was announced that Wednesday was triple point day).

One of my friends is a Creative Memories consultant. Twice a year, in April and October, she hosts a day-long crop. April's crop used to be called National Scrapbook Day (it's now called something else that I can't remember, so I'll continue to call it National Scrapbook Day), and October's used to be called Croptoberfest (now it's called Great Gatherings, but the geeky word-play person in me will always call it Croptoberfest - heck, I call National Scrapbook Day 'Croptoberfest' just because I think it's a cooler word). Anyway, tomorrow is Croptoberfest for us.

We'll crop from 9 AM until 4 PM, have breakfast and lunch catered in, gossip, play scrapbook games, and generally have a great time. But the best part about the day, for the customer at least, is the opportunity to win free prizes. Complete a page? You get your name thrown in the hat. Have a good idea? Get your name thrown in the hat again. First to arrive? Use an idea in the Croptoberfest handout in one of your pages? Finish an album? Name goes in the hat. Every half-hour or hour, there's a drawing for little prizes. At the end of the day, there's a prize for most pages completed, and then a grand-prize drawing. Last time, I didn't win a single drawing until the end of the day, and then I took home the grand prize. That rocked. But as I said, I'm cheating.

The past two nights, I've been picking the colored paper I want to use with my pictures and cutting the letters for the page titles with my Quickutz system. These two steps take the most time of any page I ever put together. I've separated my pictures into pages and put the titles in an envelope with them, and tomorrow morning, when everyone else is deciding which pictures to work on, I'll be hard at work on my first 7 pages. Bwa-ha-ha!

Okay, so I'm being a horrible sport. But the thing is, everybody else can do this too. It's not against the rules to come prepared. And at this point, I need all the motivation I can get to finish my scrapbook. Mr. Honey says we can't take another vacation until the last vacation's scrapbook is complete. We leave in 2 months and 4 days for our next cruise, and I haven't even begun to scrapbook the port days from our last cruise. I'm behind. Way, way far behind. But darn it, I'm going to catch up this weekend. Even if I'm cheating when I do it.

But don't worry - I'm not that bad. If I win most pages completed because I cheated, I'll probably feel compelled to relinquish my prize to the next-highest page count person. That's the beauty of my guilt complex. Unless the prize transcends my guilt, of course. And unless my friend assures me I wasn't cheating, rather working hard to get more pages done in a more efficient manner. Then I'll take the prize.

Tune in Monday when I recount how someone out-cheated me and walked away with the grand prize, too. Karma's a bitch. :) Happy Friday!

Posted by Honey :: 8:22 AM :: 4 Comments:

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