January 25, 2005

January 25, 2005

C.A.R.E. Centre

DAY 221

 

Today was sunny and warm. Those of you who are following my blog must be getting tired of reading that. Too bad ! Go eat some snow ! NYAH NYAH NYAH !

Now ... the ongoing saga of Lorri's birthday gift for Joanne. I phoned the Escapees Mail Forwarding Service first thing this morning to speak to the lady who signed for the package on Friday, and who wasn't in yesterday. They used their online access to the UPS tracking system to verify that they had indeed returned the package to UPS yesterday morning. It showed as being scanned into the UPS facility in Conroe, Texas yesterday at 6:07 P.M.. I phoned the local UPS Manager. She tracked the parcel further. By 10:00 A.M. she had tracked it from Conroe, Texas to Houston, Texas, to Mesquite, Texas, to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on its way back to Amazon.com / Toys R Us. Fine ! Let it go back. Lorri can give Joanne a birthday present next summer ! At least now we all know not to have anything shipped by a private courier to a General Delivery Post Office address.

I forgot to mention on Sunday that we all learned, much to everyone's dismay, that Teddy is long enough to be able to reach a front paw over the front edge of the stove, when he stands against the front of the oven, and stretches. He stuck a paw over the front of the stove "reaching" for a pot cooking on the stove that smelled appealing to him. He burned a paw. We didn't realize his body and legs were long enough to enable him to stretch and reach that high. Singed cat hair sure stinks ! Stupid cat ! Have you noticed that my life seems to revolve around a stupid cat and a bad dog ? As I type this at 10:30 A.M. they are lying cuddled together in a sunbeam, slowly licking one another. Very sweet !

I took Bo for a lengthy obedience training session this afternoon. We're making progress ... maybe ... I think ... I hope. His attention span is so short, and he's so easily distracted. Keeping him focussed is difficult.

I spent a couple more hours this afternoon and evening working on the equipment inventory. Joanne helped me for an hour after she was finished her afternoon shift of preparing, serving, and cleaning up after supper. We've both exceeded our agreed upon "work hours" obligations. The WorkCamping deal is a fully serviced RV parking site for 16 hours per person per week, for the four and a half week period that we're here. Our obligations were for each of us to work 72 hours for the month of January. So far I've worked 74.5 hours and Joanne has worked 83.5 hours, on assigned work. I've also worked 25 hours and Joanne has worked 33.5 hours on "unassigned work" that the Centre's administration doesn't even know about. They have received "good value" from us, so I feel very little motivation to put much more effort into this equipment inventory nonsense. I don't want any more WorkCamping jobs, at least not for the foreseeable future. We've already committed to 4 months at West Hawk Lake next summer, and beyond that, I don't want to do any more of this "volunteer" work.

DSK