Family

We have had a wonderful week of family....First we drove to Logan's and Maureen's to celebrate the first night of Chanukah and also Logan's birthday. It was a wonderful evening with Brian's girlfriend, Katherine, also joining the five of us.....plus Logan's and Maureen's dog, Gus. Logan and Maureen prepared traditional latkes AND sweet potato latke's. Logan prepared a out-of-this-world brined chicken in wine sauce. Lots of laughter and yumminess. And Gus was great fun to watch as he played with his new toys.

Our second family event was that we had brunch with five of my cousins on Monday morning. Fred is the son of my father's cousin and we became acquainted with him and his wife, Lucinda, in the past year, through the efforts of Fred's geneology of my father's mother's family. We met their younger son, Leon, for the first time on Monday. Also joining us were newly discovered cousins, Abby and Ilyse. Abby is the grand-daughter of my great-grandfather's brother. They were in Boston for Abby to have a job interview. We had so much fun laughing and talking together. I am really thankful for Fred's effort to discover our family tree!!

And our third family event of the week was the Geoff and I drove up to Vermont to spend Christmas with his Mother who lives in an Assisted Living apartment in White River Junction. Logan and Brian drove up there, also, from Boston. We had a wondeful Christmas noon Dinner in the beautiful dining room at her residence. There was lots of joy and laughter.

And now we're back home. I work for two more evening shifts at the department store and then my retail career is over for this season. I hear that the day after Christmas is the worse day to work retail so tomorrow should be an interesting experience. :-/

Next week, we'll spend New Year's Eve at Gary's and Susan's, as we have for nearly all of the past 21 years.

Our next travel plans are to RV down to Florida for a month in ONLY TWO WEEKS!!!

There's photos of our RV in the snow and our family events on Geoff's flickr page - the link is to the left.

Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!!!

Ellyn's First Shift

I survived my first 5 1/2 hour shift at the big department store. Yes, I messed up the POS (cash register) many times but lucky fo me, it was easy to recover. Trickiest at the POS were the coupons which everybody was using. I never got to ask anybody if they wanted to open up a credit card because every customer used the store credit card.

Now the dirt....in my training, it was emphasized that a goal is to give the customers a great shopping experience. This turns out to be a difficult task. First, I'm working in a large department which is only staffed by me and, at times, a second person. And in addition to checking out customers, we have to empty the fitting room, put clothes back on the racks, and straighten out messed up clothing. It's tricky to put stuff on the racks because they are displayed by designer and there's a ton of designer nooks to search before find the home for each item. Second, a lot of things are going onto discount racks and we need to put each item on the correct discount rack. With all those tasks, it's pretty hard to great the customers to ask them what items I can help them find.

Then, there is the fitting room...I was pretty stunned how awful it looked - very dirty rug, old pealing paint, etc. It was quite a contrast to the name-branded sportswear we are selling. Do any of the store executives check out the fitting rooms?

As for me, I survived okay with only a 15 minute break. It is a long time to be on my feet flitting around putting things away but not a huge problem. The biggest problem was how warm it was - I'm tempted to bring in my thermometer as I bet it is nearly 80F. I'm certain people would buy more sweaters if it was cooler in there. :-)

As for my co-workers, they all seemed very intelligent and professional. I did find out that one of them has a day job, also. Uggh.

I work again tomorrow night and I don't find out the rest of my schedule until then.

Ellyn's Training

Yay! I passed my training for my seasonal department job. My assignment has been changed from petite to "better" sportswear. The training was all done by computer and a training POS (Point of Sale - what we used to call a Cash Register). I really like the thought that a major part of my job will be to give the customers a good shopping experience - which was a big emphasis of the training.

Much to my disappointment, we did not get trained on how to fold the clothes. I'll have to wait until Tuesday to find out my schedule. So, it looks like my seasonal job may only be for just over two weeks - at the most.

It's really interesting to think that I might have as much satisfaction (at least for a few weeks) in one of the lowest paying jobs as I did at my previous career. But I guess I already knew that it didn't take a big paycheck to get enjoyment and satisfaction from a job well done - I had already learned that from my volunteer work.

Newlywed Thanksgiving - 30 Years Ago

Thirty years ago, we were newlyweds and had just moved to Rochester, MN. The first big snow was Thanksgiving-eve, so we spent the day having fun in the snow and taking photos. After Geoff started the camera auto-timer, Ellyn gave him a bit of surprise and this memorable photo is the result: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geoff0522/180825324/in/set-72157594253501026/

Dead, Training & Florida

Three new tidbits from here....

1) Our attorney confirmed today that the deal with our buyers is DEAD as there is no way they can get a mortgage. Our realtor is holding an open house on Sunday.

2) I have my Department Store training on Saturday and it's supposed to take 6-8 hours. I wonder if they have scheduled more training time for learning how to run the cash register or how to fold the clothes. I think it will take me longer to learn the latter.

3) Our current decision is that we will travel to Florida for January - however, we have scaled down the plans to stay mostly at the beautiful but lower cost State Parks. This photo is an example of one of our planned destinations - Fort De Soto which is a county campground near Tampa.

Thanksgiving - Ingalls Style

We took a break from our home-selling saga to have a great Thanksgiving Week. After all, we do still have a lot to be thankful for.

The week started out with a day trip to visit Geoff's mom in VT. Her assisted living apartment is looking more and more like home. Mom now has more of her items from the Grand Rapids house thanks to Geoff's brother and his wife who traveled to GR to winterize the home. We're all now planning to get back there in July to empty it out so it can be sold.

Part Two of our Thanksgiving week was a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner at our friends' Marie's and Dave's home. There were 16 people and everything each person bought was delicious. The highlight was the perfect brined Turkey and the two stuffings that were each so yummy, it was hard to pick a favorite. We played the home party version of "What Do You Know?" which was a good hoot and then Marie and Dave sent us home with left-overs. YUM!

Part Three was our family Thanksgiving Weekend dinner at Logan's and Maureen's. Maureen's parents and sister were there as well as Brian and his girlfriend, Katherine. It was a great meal and especially great to catch up with Logan's "in-laws" as we hadn't seen them for a while plus it was a special treat to have Katherine join us for the first time. Of course, we finished the evening with a game - this time it was Taboo and the womens finished ahead of the men though we didn't make as much fuss about winning as we often do!

The weekend finished up with a Ingalls/Dubreuil trip to the Harvard Natural Science Museum on Sunday followed by a yummy Indian buffet. Then, Geoff and I went to our Storage Unit to sadly bring our exercise bike and a few other essentials back home as we are still here. The ride home was dark and rainy and there was tons of traffic on the Mass Pike - finally we got off it and made better time on the local roads until we got to I-84.

Now we're back in Danbury and looking for the silver lining of our home not selling.... we'll write about our success at that in a future post.