Mind Games 2012

It's finally official: Metropolitan Washington Mensa will be hosting Mind Games 2012. Yay!

I'm looking forward to seeing lots of people in Albany, NY for Mind Games 2011, and having lots of regulars then also attend MG2012 in the metro DC area the following year.

Dues Increase Approved

At the Nov. AMC meeting, the AMC approved increasing the annual dues to $63 (up from the current $59/yr). It seems to me like it would make more sense to rejigger the scheduling process of determining dues and approving next year's budget so that the budget is set first (figuring out what priorities are to be funded to what extent, what can be expanded and what to be scaled back on or cut entirely). Once the spending priorities are set, determine what dues should be based on that.

Back on-line

I just got back late Wednesday night from a wonderfully relaxing two-week vacation in Australia, completely removed from all e-mail and cell phone contact. What a great time. If you get the chance to go Down Under, do so. I'm in the process of catching up on e-mail and various Mensa-related items that are on my radar and will soon start back up with posting to my blog.

November's "LocSec's Loquacious Lode"

Available for easy commentary, my column as published in November's Capital M.


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Intermittently, we will receive a complaint about receiving an issue of CapM in what I like to refer to as crazy-late; this isn't just several days into the issue month because we got it to the printer slightly behind schedule, or the weather was uncooperative, or your postal carrier was just over-burdened for several days straight and things were just a bit wonky. No, this is receiving the issue of CapM several weeks late. When this happens, it is pretty much guaranteed that your local post office is at fault. To cover all your bases, please make sure to contact the ExComm first to notify us of the problem – after all, we'll let you know if it's the rare time that such excessive tardiness is our fault or if it's the post office. And if it's the latter, we'll tell you whether we have heard similar complaints, especially from others in your vicinity. If we think it's the post office's fault, then you will need to contact your local post office directly to attempt to resolve the issue. Prior experience in other chapters has shown that the post office is more responsive to the individual recipients of the mail moreso than the officers of a small organization that doesn't have any clout to influence their actions.

As you can see on the inside front cover, and as was mentioned in the minutes a few months ago, MWM has a new phone number, otherwise referred to as MensaPhone: 202-OK-MENSA (202-656-3672). MensaPhone is intended for several purposes:

1) Members can leave a voicemail for the ExComm: whether it is a question, complaint, issue to be addressed at an ExComm meeting, head's up about an event of interest, or the cancellation of a scheduled event after the CapM went to press;

2) Non-members can leave a voicemail and make inquiries about certain events, upcoming testing dates, membership criteria, or even requests for interview with their respective media outlet; and

3) The ExComm can notify the membership of last-minute changes of venue or cancellations. While this would have been a great option to have employed during our two major blizzards last winter, it was used effectively for the sudden change of venue for the September New Members Open House less than a week before the date of the party. If you need to cancel your event or if the venue needs to change, notify the ExComm via the MensaPhone (in addition to whatever e-mail you send out), and someone will update the outgoing message as soon as possible. While routine verification of whether an event is still being held should be done by the individual would-be attendee contacting the PoC listed in the calendar, when exceptional circumstances arise, such as blizzards, odds are you'll get lots of notifications all at once via this outgoing message. It's a great service, and best of all, it's free for all concerned!

In late August/early September, I created my own blog regarding both national and local Mensa items of interest. For those who are interested in contributing, go to boxmasterscorner.blogspot.com – and make sure to write to me with any pertinent Mensa-specific topics you would like to see addressed there. It's off to a gradual start so far.

National elections are coming up, and the petition period is still open for anyone who wants to run for any of the positions on the American Mensa Committee, the national board of directors. I encourage anyone with an interest in helping direct Mensa on the national level to consider submitting the necessary paperwork. Go to www.us.mensa.org/election for all the necessary information about submitting a petition candidacy (read through the Election Rules carefully) as well as for signing a candidate's online petition.  

Theatre Ticket Events Are Tricky to Organize

I knew that getting tickets for A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theatre was likely going to be a little difficult, but I didn't appreciate just how difficult it would be, let alone how difficult it must have been to run the Theatre SIG. Alas, despite best of intentions, the Tourist SIG will not be going to a performance of A Christmas Carol during December as previously hoped for (they appear to be sold out on the dates I was searching); I will need to set a date several months in advance with commensurate RSVP/payment-by date for December 2011.

Now to figure out what to do for December in its stead. Any suggestions? Anything that particularly matches the festivities?