b’s blog

Wow, it’s been awhile since I wrote on here! It was a busy week. The cat’s away so of course the mice are playing. Worked really hard the last days leading up to Christmas break here. Mainly damage control/maintaining the ship until the leaders are back again. Didn’t do much in the way of taking care of my customers. I had my trusty mentor for that.

Speaking of cats, I’m house sitting for a friend. Her cats are fun to watch and I like getting them catnip for Christmas and watching them get high.

Somehow I got very busy although I wasn’t shopping for many Christmas presents for people I ended up buying a lot. I think I got in that shopping mood after a couple of short trips. The real plan is to prepare a list of items to purchase instead of just going to see what grabs you.

Gingerbread house making was EXCELLENT this year, as always. This year’s turnout was huge! About 13 people all showed up with lots of brilliant ideas for their buildings. Special tools included a dremel courtesy of Paul, and Sara and Charlene even brought their own walls made out of Rice Krispie squares. Buildings included an igloo made completely out of marshmallows, trojan bunny scene, a nightclub, tropical house, the pentagon, robot building and a tower. Pics are on facebook. Last 2 mentioned buildings shown here:

I went for Christmas dinner with Team Chiang’s family on the 24th. And they invited Ian and I to Brekkie on Christmas Morn. Doug and Auntie Amy are very good cooks! Thanks for everything!

Merry Christmas readers!

This morning Charlene and I delivered presents for Santa’s Anonymous. We got there an hour after opening and there was still a huge lineup of volunteers outside and around the building! We managed to get good parking located in the actual parking lot and stood in the long line. Although the line was long it was fairly fast moving. You choose a particular area you’d like to deliver in and then decide how many packages you’d like to deliver. The usual size is 10 packages. We had “gift porters” to help carry the packages to our car. You bring back the ones that are undeliverable so that they can try again later.

We plotted our route and head out! Christmas carols on the radio, bopping to the music, singin our lungs out, hunting for houses. All good fun. There is some danger involved as well with icy sidewalks/stairs/roads. One point there was synchonized slippage on some road ice as we walked towards a home.

It seemed to be popular for families. Lots of parents and children doing this as a family outing to show their children about generosity, etc.

Three hours later and a good deed done! I think we should do this as a group thing next year. All the volunteers were happy to be there and very welcoming.

Charlene and I went to the Santa's Anonymous drop in Gift wrapping campaign today and found out that they are so far ahead this year that they didn't need anyone this weekend. It's great to hear that they had enough ... [Continue reading this entry]

I started volunteering tonight for the Sally Ann's Kettle campaign. You recognize the people, they've got vests and jingle some bells when you donate money to the kettle. Sometimes candy canes, stickers and calendars are handed out when you ... [Continue reading this entry]

It's funny that I call it the annual winter potluck because I didn't have it for 2 years... Last year was a Chocoholic buffet, the year before I was in Melbourne. But this one was pretty small but good. 7 ... [Continue reading this entry]