And the Holiday Season Begins...

This week is a busy one for me. Tonight is hand bells, of course. Tomorrow night is my monthly IMA meeting. This month is the federal tax update meeting so I’m hoping the presenter is a good one so I don’t fall asleep. Sometimes I wish I could just leave after dinner but I can’t since it’s part of my job to pay the bill at the end of the evening. Luckily the meeting this month is at the Darboy Club, a venue we’ve been to many times before and one that I’m familiar with. It’s great that as an organization we’ve been trying to branch out and try new venues. But as the Director of Meetings it makes my job a little more difficult when I try to figure out how the place handles their invoicing. I can generally depend on finding a bartender who can point me to the right person. But last month the entire staff seemed to disappear after dinner was cleaned up. I couldn’t find anyone and the office lights were on, but no one was home. It took me almost ten minutes to track someone down (and I had to sneak into an “employees only” area.) Ugh. Anywho, attendance thus far doesn’t seem too affected by the Thanksgiving holidays or hunting. Wednesday will be a pretty boring day and I’m afraid probably one of the longest days at work this year. Thursday I’m attempting to do the whole turkey thing for the first time. I’ve got a 12-pounder and I bought a roasting pan and rack (on sale! with a rebate! and a coupon!) so I should be good. I’ve also got some other good things on the menu (squash, potatoes, stuffing) although as of now I’m not sure if it’ll be more than just Adam and me. Yay for leftovers. Friday should be pretty low-key. I’ll need a haircut but I’m not sure if I want to brave Black Friday shoppers to get it. Saturday we’ll be putting up our Christmas tree. We’ve changed our mind two or three times as to where we want to put it but hopefully we’ll be decided on that before we get everything up. Sunday the bells play at the 11AM mass and then we’ll be heading to Sheboygan for my dad’s anniversary shindig. All in all a busier week than most but it will keep me out of trouble.

At the Paalman Thanksgiving dinner last Friday we drew names for the annual Secret Santa we do. I got the same person I had last year and Adam’s gotten the same person three years in a row now. Oh well. Now we just need to figure out what to get them all. Outside of that I don’t have a lot of shopping to worry about. I’ve already gotten the stuff for the little boy we “adopted” through my job and we’re waiting for the tree to go up at Convergys to pick someone from there. I’ve got Adam to think about and I hope to get some pictures out in time for the holidays. Although we haven’t even gotten around to getting a wedding picture up at our house so you can tell I’m kind of procrastinating a little. We don’t plan on doing the annual letter/card thing this year since most everyone should already know what went on. I suppose I’ll still send cards to immediate family and anyone else who sends one to us but I don’t think a mass production is necessary this year. We’ve bugged everyone via USPS enough for one year. :)

The Christmas season doesn’t look to be shaping up to be a particularly busy one. There’s the hand bell concert on December 9th (at 4pm! At St. Mary! Come to it!), Milprint’s holiday dinner on the 13th, the IMA Christmas party on the 18th, the Van Rooy Christmas party up in De Pere on the 22nd, hand bells playing at the (ten o’clock) midnight mass on Christmas Eve, and the Paalman Christmas sometime in the afternoon on Christmas Day. That’s about all I’m aware of right now (although I’ve been bad about responding to email about the Dodds Christmas…Sorry!) And this year Adam won’t be Santa at all. Since he doesn’t work at Walmart he doesn’t have to deal with that and this year his grandmother says all the grandkids are old enough that Santa doesn’t need to visit during the Christmas party. The end of an era I guess. I’m sure he’ll keep the suit around just in case he needs to pull it out again some day.