{"id":14405,"date":"2016-05-15T19:34:19","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T00:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=14405"},"modified":"2016-05-15T19:37:52","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T00:37:52","slug":"ymca-strong-community-champion-social","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=14405","title":{"rendered":"YMCA Strong Community &#8211; Champion Social"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/26788496106\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"   title=\"IMG_1509.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7613\/26788496106_eb609173e9.jpg\" width=\"500\" class=\"pic\" height=\"375\" alt=\"IMG_1509.jpg\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Since I doubled my pledge to the YMCA (pretty much giving up all of my paychecks this year), Brian and I were invited to our first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/media\/set\/?set=a.1310415278986433.1073741903.206031502758155&#038;type=3\"  target=\"_blank\">YMCA Strong Community Campaign Champion Social<\/a>. The social is basically an event to thank and recognize the donors and supporters of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wichitaymca.org\/support-y\/donate\"  target=\"_blank\">Greater Wichita YMCA<\/a>. We&#8217;ve never been invited before so I&#8217;m think you have to donate at least $1,000 to get on the guest list. <\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s kind of a nice, unexpected perk. When I committed to pretty much not earning any money from my Zumba side-gig at the Y this year, I didn&#8217;t know I was going to be invited to a cool social. I just figured I was helping to make YMCA programs available to those in the community who might not otherwise be able to afford it. <\/p>\n<p>Brian wasn&#8217;t exactly thrilled when I told him last year about the level of commitment I made for this year. Even though he&#8217;s not putting my YMCA paychecks in our checkbook register, we&#8217;ve been counting on it as a source of &#8220;magic&#8221; money. It&#8217;s &#8220;magic&#8221; in the sense that when your checkbook register balance dips below zero, you&#8217;re not really overdrawn because your &#8220;magic&#8221; money has you covered. Then periodically, like every three months or so, he rebalances everything and moves a portion of the &#8220;magic&#8221; money to our savings account. <\/p>\n<p>Because I doubled my commitment from last year, there&#8217;s pretty much nothing left of my YMCA paycheck which means little to no &#8220;magic&#8221; money coming from that source. We wouldn&#8217;t have felt it if I was still teaching seven classes a week but I dropped to just teaching on Saturdays and Sundays almost two years ago so I could be more involved at work and not have to worry about looking for subs when I have to be out of town. That was a decision I made, which I still stand behind, because it makes sense for me professionally. There&#8217;s no way I could be part of the current project I&#8217;m on at work and still teach all of those Zumba classes during the week. Anyway, I am adding two more classes each week this summer (Aqua Zumba outside in the waterpark) so I can at least contribute to the &#8220;magic&#8221; money fund for a couple of months. That should pacify Brian until I drop back down to just two classes a week again in the fall. <\/p>\n<p>The whole &#8220;magic&#8221; money thing helps us out but I&#8217;m not too bummed about not having it. We weren&#8217;t really counting on it so I feel like we&#8217;re actually putting the funds to better use by helping others in the community and that, I think, is magical.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/26728827862\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"   title=\"Untitled\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7405\/26728827862_102a6724b1.jpg\" width=\"500\" class=\"pic\" height=\"375\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script> <\/p>\n<p>The social was actually great. I&#8217;m not sure why Brian has this look on his face. LOL. I guess this is the same look Brian gives me whenever I ask for his approval to donate money to various causes. <\/p>\n<p>My YMCA paychecks may be my money but Brian and I are partners so we always make decisions together. This approach works really well for us and we actually end up making better decisions, for the most part. <a href=\"http:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=13663\" >There was that one time that we were a bit impulsive and ended up buying a puppy from a live auction<\/a> so it&#8217;s not completely fool proof. At least we decided on it together so we can&#8217;t point fingers. <\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/26217986723\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"   title=\"Untitled\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7496\/26217986723_f6d19cfe7e.jpg\" width=\"500\" class=\"pic\" height=\"375\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The best part of attending the social was running into my former coworker Cody and his wife Lacey. I haven&#8217;t seen Cody in ages. We used to run into each other a lot at leadership conferences and other work meetings but I hadn&#8217;t seen him since he left the company last year. It was a nice surprise running into the two of them. He is one of those easy going, cheerful people who&#8217;s fun to be around. I really miss seeing him at work. <\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I have the champion social to thank for this chance encounter. If we don&#8217;t see each other at all this year, at least I&#8217;ll have the champion social to look forward to next year. Hey, maybe I&#8217;ll even see you all there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since I doubled my pledge to the YMCA (pretty much giving up all of my paychecks this year), Brian and I were invited to our first YMCA Strong Community Campaign Champion Social. The social is basically an event to thank and recognize the donors and supporters of Greater Wichita YMCA. We&#8217;ve never been invited before [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1340],"tags":[2665,2667,2666,2664,240,943],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14405"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14415,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14405\/revisions\/14415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}