(You better read this one quick before someone makes me take it down)

While everyone else was cooking out and watching fireworks last week, here at Ohio Wesleyan we were celebrating our favorite holiday, July 1 or New Fiscal Years. It was quite the soiree; it has taken us a full week to get everything clean, remove all of the farm animals from the building, and able to get Evan Corns '59 and Jack McKinnie '54 to get the lamp shades off of their heads.

Ah yes, the New Fiscal Years celebration, marking the end of the 2005-06 fiscal year and the beginning of the 2006-07 year. Late on New Fiscal Year's Eve, I was laying down with a killer headache on the Monnet Room couch- who knew that Dr. Huddleston was a limbo master?- when the Ohio Wesleyan Annual Fund Garden Gnome, Floyd (he is kind of like the Tooth Fairy, but male, unable to fly and kind of fat, and has the Bishop's face) came to me to let me know the Annual Fund's New Fiscal Year's resolutions (I know this is weird, but I couldn't make this up). He said to me:

"Jason Thompson, Assistant Director of Annual Giving, on this, New Fiscal Year's Day 2006-07, I, Floyd, the Annual Fund Garden Gnome, make the following resolutions:

1. The Annual Fund will gain weight. Yes, this year, I will raise my goal from $3.8 million to $4 million. In a time when being skinny is fashionable, I will hearken back to the days when more was better.
2. The Annual Fund will go out of its way to make life easier on its friends. I mean this: this isn't just fluff coming out of my mouth. I will make the gift process easier on my friends, the donors. I want them to like hearing more me, not be annoyed.
3. I, Floyd, the Annual Fund Garden Gnome, decree that you, Jason Thompson, will put more thought into the Annual Fund blog. I mean, seriously, how much crap can you write and still call it work and say it is Annual Fund-related? C'mon."

"But Floyd," I said, "this is all fine and dandy, but no one is going to believe that you actually appeared to me, let alone told me all of this great stuff. How will I prove that you exist?"

"Because I have brought you one of my senior pictures, young Jason. Now go to sleep." Then he punched me in the face and ran out of the door.

The next thing I knew, I woke up and it was daylight. I rubbed my eyes and Mr. McKinnie was already making Sauerkraut balls in the Mowry kitchen for lunch. I knew that no one would believe about Floyd, the Annual Fund Garden Gnome and the Annual Fund resolutions. No way, that is, until I found this picture on the coffee table beside the couch...

Grammar Issues
I have received some comments about typos and grammatical errors on this blog. See, the thing is, while I am a writer and I do know how to edit, this blog is a more stream-of-consciousness babbling from my mind to keyboard to the screen to the blog. If it was contrived, then it wouldn't be as interesting for you and for me. Besides, this blog is read all over the world, and if I can help some little German boy with his English grammar by misplacing a comma or misuse of the "affect," than I've done just a little bit more in the name of education, and that is what OWU is all about.