Thursday December 6, 2012

Thursday December 6/12  update #306

I was awake much too early this morning rolling more ideas around in my head about the excursion to Saraguro.  I finally got up about 6:15 to catch the gas man and refill two tanks so we won’t run out over Christmas.  Then I got busy and made some suggestions to a few people to see how we can salvage that trip.  It looks promising.

I had the camera set up for when Tom Thumb arrives and had the window open about 6 inches only.  Well Pancho decided that was an escape hatch and went over to the neighbour's third floor terrace and took his sweet time coming back.   The little devil tried it again later in the day too.

Today is a day we had been waiting for for some time, the Hearts Of Gold Gala fundraiser at Joe’s Secret Garden.  Almost everyone was dressed in Christmas finery and they were in a generous mood.   I was wearing my $2.52 Santa hat from Coral and was thrilled when Mark Anderson came through on my request to borrow one of his many Christmas ties which then garnered many nice comments.

We arrived a ½ hour early because H.O.G. wanted me to take photos of their decorations so they can remember to duplicate everything next year. 

Then I helped Emilie to greet the guests at the front door and to quarterback the selling of raffle tickets.   Emilie claimed to be bad at marketing and selling, but she did an amazing job.

I interspersed my duties of taking photographs with the selling of the raffle tickets and was genuinely touched by the generosity of some of the fine folks in attendance.

Linda Atkisson from Amigos made some incredibly beautiful cloth Christmas tree centerpieces that they were selling for $20.  Bella was the first person to grab one of those.

Before supper Richard Verkley, the founder of Hearts Of Gold, said a few words and singled out a few volunteers and I was shocked and humbled to be included in that group.

Supper did not arrive until 8pm but nobody seemed to mind because everyone was in a convivial mood and were happy to visit with everyone else.   The Beef Wellington was superb and the dessert delicious!

We had a lively crowd at our table with lots of interesting conversation from world travelers.  It was also interesting that we had three men placed in our room who had all undergone recent hernia operations!

I ended up selling a lot of raffle tickets so the HOG people were quite happy.    I also managed to take almost 100 photographs during the evening.

Joseph mentioned that they probably have to go to Guayaquil on Saturday so the Sea Bass dinner will likely be cancelled.   I am actually hoping they do cancel because I could use a weekend off.

Sorry that it has taken so long to process this blog.

That was today’s excitement.   Hugs to all.   Please see all photos at http://souvenircuenca.blogspot.com/