My last few days

Saturday night I was one of five judges for the Toronto, Ohio Christmas parade. Besides it being really cold, it was fun. The parade was being taped and televised on a local cable station. The judges stand was set up on the back of a flatbed truck right beside where the cameras were set up. So when the performers got to us they stopped and did their routine or whatever right in front of us. There was a little girls dance group, some tumbling acts, a really awesome pop-and-lock type dance group, a karate school, three bands, three fire stations and their trucks, twelve floats, an old-school Harley biker club, a group of high school kids who had chopped/welded pedal bikes into some really interesting designs, the football homecoming court, all followed up by a super float with Santa. Toronto is a pretty small town, but they go all out for their holidays. It seemed the whole town was out for this thing. It was a good time. On a side note, the cameras were directly across from my bank so I got a lot of free advertising. Nice!

After the parade, we had our company party. It was kinda strange sitting in the lobby of the bank eating food and drinking beer. All under the watchful eye of the security cameras and the technicians on the other end. I bet they live for this time of year and people having parties at the bank. Hoping some people get drunk, maybe a fight or two, some dancing on the counters, that kind of stuff. We had nothing of the sort. We did a gift exchange, ate some cookies, and just sat around and talked for an hour or so. I have a really great group of tellers. In my years of working in banks, I've had the misfortune of working with some really worthless individuals. This group of ladies does not fall into that category. We all headed out around 9:30 and probably everyone went somewhere else to get their party on.

Yesterday, Ell and I headed to the local tree farm and got our Christmas tree. I grew up always having an artificial tree, and she grew up sometimes not having a tree at all. So we decided when we got married we would always have a live tree. I know, I know, tree hugger me killing a living thing. My justification is trying to plant at least one or two new trees every year to replace the oxygen givers. Anyway....... I went to church last night while Ell stayed home and tried to sleep off the migraine she woke up with. When I got home, our friends Andrew, Lyndsay, and Brad came over to help us decorate the tree. We got a little crazy and decided to make it as gaudy as we could. We put every ornament we had collected over the years on the tree. The tree has no empty spaces on it anywhere. It's pretty funny looking. To really complete the white-trash look, we cut the top of a beer can someone left at our house (since goodness knows the beer-snob I am ain't gonna drink beer out of a can,) and put it on the top of the tree as our star. It's classic! I may try to get a picture posted, but don't hold your breath! :-)

We finished off the night with the traditional watching of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. If you've never seen that movie, you have to rent it. No, buy it. You won't be disappointed. One more thing happened that was kind of funny. Our new kitten we found at the Street Fair, well she smelled the pizza we were eating and jumped up on the table. Someone saw her and yelled at her and she got freaked out and stepped into/dumped a whole thing of garlic sauce all over herself. The poor little thing was covered! Ell and Brad tried to clean her off, but she was still all greasy this morning. The other cats were "cleaning" her all night too. I felt bad for her but it was sooooooo funny!