......In Marina del Rey....

Conditions at 5:30 am - partly cloudy and 0*
Expected later - mix of sun and cloud and 4*

Brenda heard from Bernie last night and he was in Marina Del Rey. He had a 13 hour layover in Los Angeles and was wondering what to do with all that time. He's not into visiting the stars homes, so he wasn't sure what to do with his time. But it sounds like he found something to do. I've only been to one beach in L.A. - Redondo Beach, but there are some amazing beaches in that part of California. Whatever it is, it's a warm, sunny beach, so in Bernie's words "It's all good!"
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I was so happy yesterday to be back driving the shuttle. The day went so much quicker.
I drove one little girl over to the vet college and she was quite chatty, and very animated. Turns out she's from Tucson, Arizona. She is so excited about the upcoming winter. She's never lived anywhere that has snow in her life so she is just so looking forward to it. I told her we'll ask her again in March and see how she likes. But she loves Tucson, and is looking forward to going home for the Christmas break and seeing her family. I was curious about what would bring her all this way to go to school and she told me that it's hard to get an interview at vet schools as they take such a limited number of students each year. Of those she did get interviews for, she liked this one the best. She did have an interview in Guelph but liked the people here better and felt this school had just as much to offer. She's met two people in Arizona who came to AVC and they claim it was the best four years of their lives. She likes the smaller class size - only 60 to a class where other schools have well over 100 in each class. So she was quite an interesting young woman. She had a travel mug with her with snow designs on the outside and mentioned as she got out that she needed to get a coffee. I laughed and told her I didn't think she needed any more caffeine, and she agreed but did say that she is normally a bit hyper. But she was a lot of fun and I'm sure we'll see her again, as this is the start of her 4 years on PEI. That's what I missed about shuttling - the interaction with the customers.
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The Christmas season has officially started. Yesterday we had two small bushel baskets of apples dropped off with a gift card, from Apple Auto Glass - one for sales, and one for service.What a clever idea and so much healthier than chocolates. I suppose this is just the start of many more treats to come.
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Tonight is our pot luck supper at the school. I made little boxes of chocolates for everyone in our class and a little hand made Christmas card to go with them. It really was a fun group and we all had a great time. Tonight will just be a time to sit back and relax and watch the other groups - the guitar class, the fiddlers, and the belly dancers.The scrapbookers will have their books on display and the quilters will have their projects on display as well. Unfortunately we don't have anything to put on display. Maybe we should do cake and cookie decorating next year then we could do some artificial cakes and put them on display.  That might be a fun thing to do, but I'd need to take some courses first as I'm mostly self taught and could use the pointers. I'll ask the class tonight and see if that's something they might be interested in doing next year. We could bake cakes and cookies as well as just decorate them.  The prep for that class would not be nearly as intense. I think I was inspired by the photos that Brenda sent me of Meghan's creations she's made at her class.
Nice job, Meghan! I'm sure the folks in your office are much appreciative of your talents.  Looks like a great fundraising option for your office. Lots of people don't bake anymore and will willingly pay for something so pretty and I'm sure very tasty.
Several years ago we were  at a fund raiser in Guelph and they had a cake auction at the end of the night. A lot of restaurants and bakeries in the city donated beautiful cakes for the auction. Lloyd being Lloyd, bought the first one, bidding it up over $40  and that started the ball rolling. From there they went for huge amounts and he was the one pushing the bidding but I think people just didn't want to see him go home with all of them so there was quite the bidding wars going on. But it was a lot of fun to watch and fortunately we only had to take one home. ( I think we were going somewhere for supper the next night and that was our contribution to dinner).