Busy, busy week and dodged a bullet...

No posts for a while.  I have been very busy.  It is making the winter fly by and I am so happy.

This past week was the first session of GriefShare and the resuming of regular meetings of the Parkesburg Lions Club.  Since I am a co-leader of the GriefShare sessions, I have had more responsibilities to get that set up and running.

I had a lot of copying and printing to do in order to have everything ready for the first session.  The sad thing was that we had close to three inches of snow that day and it was supposed to stop mid-afternoon.  It did not, but the roads seemed nice enough that we decided to go ahead and have the first session.  Only three people braved the snow and bitter cold, but the three of them were excited to be there and looking forward to the experience, so we were happy that we did not postpone the session.

Following that I had to quickly switch gears and deal with Lions.  Being secretary this year, it really seems that I am the one who actually runs everything behind the scenes.  The club is struggling.  We are not alone, many such organizations are ceasing to exist.  We usually have around 10 people at a meeting of the 25 'active' members.  Most of our members are aging and with the daytime temps and wind giving us a feels like temperature of 0 degrees or below, several of the regulars decided not to come out.... I do not blame them!  We usually have a catered dinner from a lovely local market but not having regular meetings for awhile, we did not get in touch with her until late.  When she gave me the menu she included a notation that if it was less than 10 people, she would prefer that we use a different caterer.  I can understand that as well.

So, we ended up with 6 wanting dinner.  I contacted another member and we decided that we would do a soup and hoagie dinner.  I made the soup, one I wanted to try but made so much I did not want to make it just for me.  So I made a BIG crockpot full of soup and some brownies.   I also bought the drinks and a couple of sides like coleslaw and chips.  The other two ladies I deal with called about the hoagies and made the order and picked them up.  We ended up with seven for dinner.  Going forward, if we have less than 10 people for dinner, we will open at 6:30 PM and members can bring something on their own or just come to the business meeting at 7:00 PM until we get more active members or the temperature warms up.

Yesterday was church and I was invited to go out to lunch at the home of a church family.  It was very nice to have dinner in a home with people that you know, but not very well.  I got to know the family a little better as well as the other guests.  I am with a group that has dinner out every Tuesday.  We go to local restaurants and dine together.  But being out in public, it is not nearly as intimate as being a guest in someone's home.

Then I came home to prepare for today's storm.  I topped off the windshield washer fluid in the van and the truck and made sure that they were cleaned off and working properly.  With all of the spray and salt from the roads, having a working wiper sprayer is very important.  I also placed the wiper blades in an upright position so they would not be ice glued to the windshield.  I made sure that both vehicles were starting well and ready to go.  Finally I ran my generator and got it connected to the new plug that I had installed this summer.

As I went to sleep last night the rain had started and there was a lovely layer of ice forming on the vehicles.  I fully expected to hear my fan turn off during the night when we lost power.  But I woke this morning to 35 degrees, light rain and no ice on the cars.  It has been at 35 degrees for most of the day and as I typed this, it went up a degree.  There were some slushy, slippery spots when I walked out to get the mail, but it is not the major ice storm that could have been.  Whew,,,,, dodged that bullet.  And more good news, the storm that was predicted for Thursday is going to be a 'no show' too.  And according to my weather guys, there is nothing in the pipeline that might turn into a storm, so there may be a breather for a week or so and it might not be the 40 inches of snow that they predicted for the weather.  Fingers crossed but we still have a lot of winter to go.  February can be very cold and snowy!!!

Getting ready now for more GriefShare, Lions in two weeks, and on the 24th the OBX ladies are coming here to sew, sew and laugh in Camp Parkesburg!!!