Christmas

We returned to Winston Salem a few hours ago and this is the local "scenery". Not what Carolinian's are accustomed to around here. Our co-managers said that no one would come to work here this morning, although the roads were clear. They had to drive out to pick up one of our employees but no one else would come in. Amazing !

We had a nice time up home for the holiday. We left right after work Thursday around 3:30 p.m.and drove to my son's place in Media, PA. We arrived there around 11:30. Our time was impeccable as my daughter's bus, in from Boston, arrived just before we did so we all got to Jay's house around the same time. We were all exhausted from a long day of driving (or riding) so we didn't stay up long to chat.

The next morning Jay made us breakfast and Linda, Becky and I headed out for my mom's house. I stayed Friday and Saturday night at my mom's. All of my family came to mom's house so it was good to see everyone. Saturday night I went up to my brother, Jim's house, to see his new evaporator that he uses to process maple syrup. It's a monster of a machine. It's twice as big as the one he used to have. With this one, he can do 225 gallons of sap and hour ! Wow... He currently has 2600 tree taps out, ready to gather sap for this next season. Last year, Jim produced 600 gallons of syrup....a down year from what he thought he'd produce.  This evaporator runs off fuel oil, whereas his previous one ran off of wood and needed to be tended to much more often to maintain the heat.

The other thing that my brother dabbles in, as a side business is his honey business. He has all of his hives "wintering" and hopes to have a better year of survival than last year. He lost around 70% of his bees last year, due to some unknown thing that is affecting many  bee colonies. He produces honey, candles and all sorts of by products. He takes all of his maple and honey items to different craft shows in the northeast during the fall months and sells them. He just finished up his season so he and his wife are exhausted and ready for some R & R.

Speaking of which...long days ahead. Since we took the extra day off for the holiday, we now have three, twelve hour days ahead of us before our co-managers come back to work. With that I'll bid you good night...Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and will have an even better New Year !

Button It Up....

Got to the campground to find that there is still snow on the ground, it's bitter cold and the water is frozen up at the spigot. We've decided rather than blow through propane the next couple of months and be worrying about the rig while we're at work...we're just gonna winterize it for a couple of months till the temps get a little better. I hate being cold and I'd have another full-time job tending to everything on our two days off to keep things thawed out, filled up and running smoothly. Not gonna do it....Would rather take the money we'd spend on the rig the next couple of months and dump it on our loan and pay it off quicker. So today I've spent time winterizing the rig....we'll go back to Winston tomorrow after I've dumped the tanks and finished up a few other things around here. Not sure if they'll pull it off the site or not. Hoping not..would be nice to have it in this spot when we come back in March or April. We'll see....

In work news, our boss got fired on Wednesday. Not surprising.... given the track record for regional directors (at least in our region). Linda and I gave him till the end of December. Turned out to be a little sooner than that. So that makes him the 8th one to bite the dust in the last year. The guy who has taken his spot is the east coast director of operations, which would seem to be a position higher up the ladder (as our boss used to be) so not sure that this is a good direction for his career to go in. Seems to be a challenging position that the last eight people haven't been successful at. (I give him till March)

 Linda and I got moved into the manager's apartment on Wednesday night, after finishing our work day. We'll work at getting things organized over the coming weeks. It's very nice and feels even more homey than our co-manager apartment. It is in the opposite direction of the dining room so we don't walk out our door directly into the dining room. We walk out into a hallway that is around the corner from the office. Our front door exits right into the front parking area, although we do have a corner patio area. In other words, we can duck out on our days off without getting cornered by too many people.

The community is starting to look a lot like Christmas. We had to order a tree stand for our 12' tree, as the previous one disappeared. That came in on Tuesday and the tree went up. It should be all decorated by the time we get back there Sunday. Lots of pretty decorations all around the community. We had a large choral group in this week to sing Christmas carols. It was nice but the management team didn't get to enjoy it much as we were tending to one of our residents who had fallen in the dining room. Turns out she broke her femur...Ouch !! She had surgery and will be out for a while, with rehab and such. My son, Jay broke his femur when he was 10 and talk about a painful recovery. After the surgery, where they pound 2 rods up the length of your femur, his poor little knee was the size of small basketball. Lots of morphine, TLC and another surgery to remove the rods and all was well. I feel bad for this lady....she has a long road ahead of her.

Next weekend we travel to Linda B's family Christmas gathering in Chambersburg, PA. We're hoping the weather cooperates since it will be a long road trip. The weekend of Christmas we're hoping to go to Philly to see my son and daughter (she's taking a bus from Boston to Philly) and then take my daughter up to my mom's. We have to be back to work on Monday so will spend Sunday on the road driving. If the weather is bad, all traveling plans are off and the tidings and good cheer will come in a Kahlua bottle and over the phone. We're wishing all of our friends, that we haven't seen in a while, a joyous and refreshing holiday. Some of you are finishing up your stint at Amazon and we've thought of you often, as you play "Santa's helper" this shopping season. Rest your weary bodies in a warm and sunny place this winter and get energized to work once again next spring !! Happy Holidays to you all!!

Quiet Here...

Hard to believe that just a couple of weeks ago this was the scene outside our rig. We had the table out, playing cards in our shirt sleeves, having a glass of wine and Linda with a beer....nice warm day. Today it was 48 degrees and tomorrow there's a 60% chance of snow showers. Brrrr!!

The campground is a ghost town too. We have a rig beside us, one on the lower tier but only a couple more than that. December rolls around and the wimps leave.....Hahaha.... Tried to button things up around the rig. Put the insulated water hose on so we can plug in the heat tape, if needed. I really hope we don't see any nasty weather here. I can live with temps in the 40's....just don't want to see the white stuff.

We are hoping that our apartment will be ready to move into when we get back to Winston. The new vinyl is down in the kitchen, bath, laundry room and entry way. The carpet went down on Tuesday. We're hoping the painting was finished up today in both of the bedrooms.  The new refrigerator arrived and the two new ceiling fans have been installed. We had to pick up a couple more switch plates today at Lowes. We'll have so much room we won't know what to do with it all.....

Our new co-managers have been training with us the last two weeks. They will now work on their own schedule and overlap with us on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. The floating managers, who've been there since Sept., will leave on Sunday. They  have been a big help to us but we're glad to now have co's so we'll have stability in our staffing. We're making some good headway at getting things running the way they should. Dwight and Julie (our co-mgrs.) seem to be a good match for us in helping us to get the needs of the community met. So far.....so good....