Busy Week

I have been going since Friday and this is the first night that I have expected to have nothing on the books. I could have written yesterday when I had nothing, but after the busy week, I needed a break.

So, what have I been doing? Last Friday we had a technical meeting that up until this year had been a quarterly occurence. It normally might run a little longer than the scheduled 8 hours but last Friday, it went 10. I did stay about 9 hours but as I had plans that evening, I had to split. My parents had come down to watch my nephews and there was a quarterly craft show called Depart-ment that was scheduled for the weekend. I asked my Mother if she wanted to come along and she did so I had to run up to my sister's house to pick her up and then drive to Chicago for the show. It was pretty cool. Being a craft show, everything was handmade (more or less) There was embroidered clothing, jewelry, pillows, toiletries, purses, and other such stuff. My mom found a necklace that she liked and I found a scarf/boa for one of my sisters for Christmas.

Saturday, I ushered at the Goodman Theatre. I thought that I was going to see A Christmas Carol, but we ushered the show in the smaller theatre, Black Nativity. While it wasn't the play that I had expected to be seeing, it was still very good.

Sunday, I went to my sister's house and played with my very active nephews. While I don't mind playing with them, it is very tiring, especially when they start getting rough.

I was going to go to a fundraiser/happy hour/Christmas Party for One Brick and Operation Gratitude. Operation Gratitude is an organization that provides Christmas gifts to deployed service members. This was very important to me as a veteran. I remember when we were over in the Persian Gulf during Desert Shield how good it felt to be remembered. There was a letter writing campaign to any service member and during the Holidays we were inundated. It was great. I had forgotten some stuff at my sister's house on Sunday and I was going to be busy on Tuesday, so I was going to have to run up there. This left me thinking that I really didn't want to go down for the Happy Hour but when I got home and checked my email, I saw that I had received a confirmation email for the event. I decided to go and I'm glad that I did because I got to see several people that I haven't seen in quite awhile. I was sorry to hear however of the impending death of the first volunteer organization that I had belonged to, Social and Service Chicago.

Tuesday was the Volunteer Appreciation Party for the Chicago Bicycle Federation. It was at a restaurant called Orange which is a very unusual brunch restaurant. We had frushi (fruit sushi), fruit, and french toast kabobs. We receved a gift bag containing the latest issue of Time Out Chicago, an Orange menuzine, a water bottle, and a gift certificate for a free burrito at Chipotle (Yum!!). We also celebrated the volunteers that did the most for CBF.

Yesterday was going to be a CBF volunteer managers meeting but that was canceled until next month.

I plan to be very busy in the next week as well. My friend Guy may come down, I am wrapping gifts for The Childrens' Place, we have a group Christmas Party, a group Christmas Lunch, a company Christmas Reception, and a book club meeting, and this is what I can remember at the top of my head. I am sure that there is something else that I am forgetting that I want to do. We will see when we get there.