Tis the Season...Almost

Everyone has their own timeline as to when the "official" Christmas season begins.  A lot of stores have decided the middle of summer is the time.  Some say the day after Halloween.  Most however deem the start of the Christmas season as the day after Thanksgiving.

In some cases though, it takes time to be ready to start the beginning of the Christmas season.  For instance, the lighting of the tree in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square; the tree doesn't just magically appear the Friday after Thanksgiving.  In reality, it takes days of hard work positioning the tree in the middle of the square, adding all the branches to fill it out, and adding thousands of lights

Even before the work begins at the square, the tree has to be chopped down, loaded on a semi truck and readied for it's trip to the square.  It's not just a "ho hum", (or would that be "ho, ho, ho hum in this case?), trip though, not in the least.

Nope, once the tree, (provided every year by Stimson Lumber in Forest Grove, Oregon), has reached downtown Portland's streets, the slow procession of festivity begins.

Portland police block the streets at each intersection of 6th Avenue, and provide a motorcade for the two semi's bringing the tree.  In front of the semis is a marching band playing Christmas songs.  And who but Santa himself is riding shotgun in the truck carrying the tree.

You'd think, as adults, those working in downtown Portland wouldn't get overly excited about watching a Christmas tree go through the streets at about 5 miles an hour; yeah, you'd think that.  However, there are those who still think it's pretty cool to watch, especially when it goes right by your office during your lunch time.

Those adults are the ones who go outside, and take pictures of the procession; or just watch, so they can blog about it.

Yep, you guessed it!  The following photos were taken by my co-worker, Doug Baker.  Thank you Doug for taking these so I could watch and write about it!

(Click on the photo for a larger view.)

3D Fun

Well, the holidays are behind us, and it's time for everyone to get back to their normal routine.

For those who took vacation during the holidays, it may be a bit rougher to head back to work. While co-workers held down the fort, those on vacation were able to set their own pace for the holidays. No getting up early, no having to dress for work; none of the average things one does daily.

Because of this, one would think it would be best to let the returning employee(s), ease back in to their schedule; not true! The longer someone has been gone, the better it is to snap them back into reality as soon as possible!

For example, one of my co-workers, Doug, (I wrote about him in a previous post, when his bear ran away), took the last two and a half weeks of the year as vacation.

Where we work, a lot of the time those last two weeks of the year can be really, really busy; so one person gone can make a difference. Luckily, this year was an exception to that rule, and our department wasn't overloaded too much. Not that Doug can escape that easily though!

That's where the "3D Fun" comes in to play. "3D" stands for "Doug's Desk Dilemma". Rather than bore everyone with details, I've supplied photos of Doug's desk, beginning the day after his vacation started:

At the end of every day, if something had been changed, I took a photo of Doug's desk:


It was a lot of fun, even though the boxes did come back to bite me. Someone ordered an item that was in one of the boxes; and we had no idea which box it was in; so we had to lug out a bunch of them to find what we were looking for. My cube is on the left, showing how many boxes had to be moved.

Once we were done looking, all the boxes were put back into Doug's cube; though they didn't all go back in the same way they came out. No big deal though, just added some tape, and the job was complete!

For those anxious to know the outcome of Doug's Desk Dilemma, the following video was shot the morning of Tuesday, January 3, 2012; Doug's first day back to work after his long vacation.


Despite all that was done to his desk, Doug had it put back in order within 45 minutes! He's still missing one of his carts though; it's been hidden in our department.

Thanks once again Doug for being such a good sport!