Venue and Schedule Changes and Other News!

Hello all,

Well, we had a great time last night meeting and also had a couple new attendees! Welcome!

This will probably be a bit long again, so please bear with me. :)

We did talk about changing venues, etc., and have decided the following:

Starting Friday July 18 (the next DL Athens meeting), we will be meeting at Little Kings starting around 6:30 p.m. Little Kings' address is 223 W. Hancock St.

Thereafter it will be the first and third Friday of every month, at the time and location mentioned above. We decided not to meet on Friday July 4th to allow us to celebrate Independence Day with our families or other loved ones since a bunch of us already have plans to be out of town then.

We decided to move the start time back to 6:30 p.m. because in our discussion it was brought up that some people don't get off of work until later and can't get to the bar very early. I know 6:30 p.m. is still maybe a little early for some folks, but thus far we have ended up staying at the bar literally for hours. I am confident that this tendency will only be continued and extended even longer on Fridays. So, don't be shy if you work late and tell your friends that work late to come on down. No doubt we, or at least some of us, will still be there at least three hours later or so.

Please note that due to a glitch, or perhaps to my ignorance, while the website has been updated, it incorrectly displays the next meeting as this Friday, June 20. I have tried to correct that but have been unsuccessful thus far. I have sent an email to the webmaster asking for help in fixing this. So please make a note, just to be 100% clear, there is no meeting this Friday, and the next meeting is Friday July 18. Hopefully this detail on the website will be corrected very soon.

While I have gone to the trouble to put these changes on the website already, and while these changes were arrived at via a democratic discussion at last night's meeting, they are not necessarily written in stone, so to speak. What I mean is, if you were unable to attend last nights meeting, or even if you were, and if you would like to share your thoughts about the changes in venue and schedule, please do not hesitate to email us. We hope that the change will be good for everyone and if not we want to know.

Other news:

1. Considering that Tom and Holly and I will all be out of town on the 4th, it is quite possible that some future meeting date will find us in the same situation. Therefore, I think it would be wonderful if we had one or two more co-hosts, if there be anyone interested in volunteering for that. There are very minimal duties for that and pretty much anyone who has attended thus far would already be qualified to step on up as long as he or she be willing. If you think you want to be a co-host just let us know. The main thing is being there for meetings and familiar with the DL organization to help orient new folks, as well as willing to receive emails sent to the Athens, GA DL either via the email address or the contact form on the website, and to potentially respond to the same. (Yes, all three of us get emails sent to athens@drinkingliberally.org ). Also, considering that we so far consist of two gentlemen and one lady, any female volunteers for co-host would be *especially* appreciated, although any and all volunteers are welcome, much appreciated and will be accepted.

2. Even if you don't want to be a co-host, you can help out by telling your friends to come and encouraging other people to come in general. There are all kinds of ways to do this, I'm sure you all can think of creative ways to do that. If you want to volunteer to do something specific to raise our public profile please do not hesitate to let us know. The Drinking Liberally website, http://drinkingliberally.org , has plenty of resources to help with this.

3. As you all no doubt know, AthFest is this weekend. This would be a great chance to spread the word about DL Athens. (Thanks to Margaret, Brandon, and Emily for this great idea!) If you know you will be going to AthFest, and want to help brainstorm via email (or other means) between now and then about ways to help spread the word, then let us know. We could probably come up with a small handout to give people, but reply to this message if you want to work on this with us.

4. There is now a DL Athens group on Facebook. (Thank you Holly.) If you are a Facebookista, and you know you are, then check it out if you haven't already. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=22037004313

5. If you haven't noticed yet, you may want to take a look at the new DL website. All chapters, including ours, now have our own page on the site. These messages are archived there in blog format. The site for the Athens DL is: http://livingliberally.org/drinking/chapters/GA/athens .

That's all I can think of now. I know that is really long and I know I tend to write a little more verbosely than I probably need to, so I am sorry for that and I thank you for reading through all of this. Have a great rest of the week and a great AthFest weekend!

-Patrick
Drinking Liberally Athens
http://livingliberally.org/drinking/chapters/GA/athens
athens@drinkingliberally.org