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Chief Thorn sat at her desk with what she had penciled in on her schedule as the 1st Morale and Recreation meeting. 

“Sir, I’m an old hand at this sort of thing but I’m open to ideas, seeing as we are starting from scratch I think we need to schedule some regular events for the crew to get behind. I always like to use a monthly or bi-weekly idea for events that will be ongoing. Special events I have always felt should be something a few months apart. For now everything how’s on the board and we can whittle it down from there.”

“That seems logical to me, Chief. Being a Vulcan my idea of fun may not be the same as the rest of the crew so I will have to go off of suggestions from my fellow engineers.” The young Vulcan ensign picked his PADD up from his lap and started to read.

“An intramural boxing tournament, intramural basketball league, intramural tug-of-war, game nights, movie nights, a running club, trivia nights, something karaoke I’m not sure what that is exactly, a casino night.”

A middle-aged human woman in a science blue tunic wearing the rank of a petty officer looked up from her notes. “I have many of the same ideas on my list though I do have one suggestion of softball, though I don’t think we have the room for that one onboard.” she shrugged her shoulders.

Chief Thorn sat nodding as she took notes and the events appeared on her office’s view screen. “Hmm, those are all doable. Sporting events should be on a rotation for a set amount of time, the rest of the items can be regularly scheduled events. Shall we start with the sporting events first? a Set a schedule and rotation before we form a small committee that will run the league?”

“Yes, that is logical… Hmmm, team events?  It looks like my list only had two suggestions.”

“Yes, Basketball and tug-of-war. I’m kind of partial to a good game of handball myself. Let’s say we add that one to the list that gives us three leagues. hmmmm softball,” she looked it up on her PADD.” yes that one is always good but I think you’re right I’m not sure that our holodecks are large enough.” She tapped her fingers on her desk. “However, I remember when I was young another game much like softball called Wiffle Ball. Same rules but the equipment is different and space needed is more doable on holodecks the size that we have.”

The Vulcan looked at his PADD. “Logically speaking, looking at what is required I think the tug-of-war league would be the easiest to set up so that should be where we should start.”

The two women nod. “That makes sense” as they too looked at their PADDs.

Chief looked at the view screen and the four sports listed, moving tug-of-war to the top of the list. “To set up a schedule, can we agree on a four-month league length, one month for practice and three for the actual event.” She pulled up a version of the proposed schedule on the view screen on a calendar of events. “So, what should we place after the tug-of-war league?”

The Vulcan looked at the screen and then at the four events listed.” would it not be logical to just go in the order we have it listed? Tug-of-war, Basketball, Handball, Wiffle Ball.”

The petty officer nodded. “That works for me.”

Chief Thorn filled in the rest of the schedule in that order. “There we go. Oh and Commander Rigras has already procured the trophy for the winning department in the intramural sports to win and display in their section and then they defend it in the next league. She is hoping it would set up a ship’s tradition that would help with morale onboard.” She stood and went to the secondary office/meeting room joining her office and retrieved a wooden box, carrying it back in both her arms. She placed it on her desk and opened it. “I present the Dragon’s Egg trophy, to go to the winner of each league season and defended in the next. The losing department passes it onto the winning section if it is not them.” She opens the box and inside nestled in a well-designed piece of burled wood is a clear resin-like material egg inside of which are a sleeping baby gold and green dragon. “The commander worked with the engineers on DS47 to create this for us, what do you think?”

The room was silent as the two others just looked at the newly minted trophy in front of them.

They spent the next hour or so going over and setting up the actual league and competition schedule for the first season, it was decided that the tug-of-war competitions were to be held on Friday nights weekly and would be held in the Dragons Wings promenade areas help bring the crew together. It was also decided that Petty Officer Tamera would lead the intramural league committee that would be responsible for setting up and running each sporting events season.

“I think that is a good start for the M&R committee. “Though I would like to add something to the schedule to be monthly, that we could start upon completion of the first part of the upcoming mission. I was thinking the other day of what it must have been like on old Earth when they used to go to something called a drive-in movie and I was wondering how we could recreate that on the Dragon.”

The two others quickly start typing and reading from their PADDS.

“Could we not use the promenade area for something like this? Maybe using the Holographic projectors already in place to show a movie on the large wall space”

“Yes, yes that could work.”

“Chief, I see that the Drive-in died out, in use, after the 1980s or so. But I see that something else was done that is very similar. They called them Movies in thePark. I think something more along those lines would be better suited to us. After all, the promenades are set up to be large park-like areas.”

The Vulcan Ensign looked at Petty Officer Tamera, as he continued to read about these movies in the park from old Earth entertainment history. “It makes the most sense, logically speaking, to go down this path of thought. I would agree to this event.”

The chief snapped her fingers. “That decided then, our first monthly event will be a Movie in the Park to be held on one side of the Dragons Wings promenade. Hmmmm I’ll put this one together as I have some ideas on a couple of old Earth movies we could play that night to start things off.”

A couple of hours later two view screens in the WatchTower go active. One displays a rotating image of the Dragons Egg trophy asking which department will be the first department to win the trophy and advertising the start of the intramural tug-of-war season. The second screen advertises Movies on the Promenade. Underneath this is displayed two versions of old-fashioned movie posters the one on the left is for “Grease” and on the right is “Blue Hawaii” with a brief synopsis of the movie underneath, the play time of 1800 above the left and 2000 above the right. Advertised for the upcoming Saturday night.