Officially on furlough!!

I have the biggest grin on my face knowing that as of 11:00 am this morning I am officially off of work until Monday, December 31st! I do have a smidgen of sympathy for the two new-hires who were given the opportunity to work, and took it, during the break because they're still on probation and can't use vacation time. The town has to keep enough money in reserves to pay out our vacation accruals at all times so by closing town hall for two weeks and forcing us to use our vacation and comp time it reduces their financial obligation and puts the town in less of a financial crunch. And then there's people like me who are half way through their 19th year with the organization and have so much vacation time on the books that payroll is constantly emailing to use it or lose it. So I count on these closures to get my accruals under the annual limit (5 weeks of vacation). I know, it's a rough life.

When I got home today I found that Santa had visited early and left gifts for the "good" (and I use that term rather loosely, a la Mr. Janke) little girls and boys at our house. And in all of Santa's infinite wisdom he also left Wilson and my mom's gifts here too.

It appears he shipped them from his Yakima, Washington workshop. Probably packed from elves who are married to each other now because I hear that's how Washington rolls now...(I can literally see my mom's eyes rolling back in her head right now, ha!)

After much deliberation Chris finally decided it was time to pick our bumper crop of seven mandarins off of our "tree" (really more like a glorified potted bush) in the front courtyard. I dare say they're not hard to tell apart from the Goliath mandarins my boss, Craig, gave me last week.

 Seriously, they're like mandarin miniatures. At least they're super sweet and tasty, they just don't have a peel that literally falls off like Craig's mandarins do.

So, my first order of business as a foot loose and fancy free member of society is to find a white elephant gift for tomorrow's beer club Christmas party. Chris found some fancy beer at Ray's Liquor up the hill, but I still have to find something. I suspect my newly received 30% off coupon for B&N may come in handy for some kind of brewing recipe book. Good timing B&N, good timing.