General Discussion & Chat: Coffee and.... For Wednesday Nov. 9, 2005, 1 by ViolaAnn

ViolaAnn wrote:
OK found the link on UMW. I guess I must have peeked at it around the time it was changed over, but I didn't really read it. Have now done so and am back to this one - 60+ messages already.

Reading while off-line; so I can't follow the links at this time. Does that plastic wrap method work for other tubers as well? (Now that mine are all bedded down).

Maria, glad things are going well with the trainer for Samson.

M5, I finally gave up on the big rose buds in my garden and pruned them back enough to be covered for the winter. It's been too cold for the last couple of weeks for any of them to open.

Busy day at the Food Cupbaord today. Started off with 1000 students from a high school that is about half a kilometre away making a human chain all the way from the school to the Food Cupboard. Then they started passing cans down the line. Of course a lot of them arrived irrepairably dented - enough so that the teacher at the door called a halt to the passage. but while it lasted, it was a great photo-op both for the school and for us. They have a toatl of about 6000 units of food. Some of it was slated for delivery tomorrow anyway and they will just deliver all that wasn't passed from student to student.

We got over 200 tax receipts printed, folded and stuffed into the correct envelopes, and we handed out food for 198 people (about 54 families). We are still doing referrals for the Christmas Exchange and Salvation Army toy program. The form is so complicated that it slows everything down. Last time I mentioned the Christmas Exchange, someone asked about it. Please forgive if I'm repeating myself, but I don't remember answering the question.

In Ottawa, the Christmas Exchange serves two purposes. It is a clearing house for families who will receive a Christmas Hamper, so that duplication is reduced. Some families will apply to more than one agency deliberately. In other cases, one familiy member will apply to one agency and another may apply to a different agency. And in some cases, social workers will apply on behalf of their clients, not knowing that the clients have already applied somewhere. The Christmas Exchange database, cross references the various requests to reduce duplication.

The Christmas Exchange also takes requests for vouchers to help families out with Christmas dinner. Most of our referrals are in that category and then we will supplement that voucher with a store voucher to be used for the purchase of a turkey and with what we call Christmas "treats" - seasonal type foods which are distributed on a per person basis.

Of the 54 families today, I have 29 referrals to fax in. Other families know they are receiving a hamper from somewhere and other families have to update their proof of address before we will make a referral for them.

At this time of year, we also contact the schools about Christmas food drives. Many will do drives that end just before Christmas and we have a local moving company which donates a van and a crew to go to schools and pick up the food for us.

balvenie - UMW is upper mid-west. A few of us Canadians follow it because the zone conditions are more similar to ours than parts of Canada are.

And sorry to say, I don't play cello, but viola. (You know the viola jokes?) this is the history of my new viola -
http://www.magma.ca/~fredrkng/Ann/Ann_viola.html

Ann

PS Pics attached are of the kids bringing in the food from Gloucester High School this morning.