Holiday Drive-By Food Drive

I had to get up really early and drive up to Lake Tahoe to work the hotel departures for the group that came in on Monday. One of our stranger weather phenomena is that despite it being another couple thousand feet higher in altitude, it's warmer up there than it is here in Carson City. The lake is so deep it never freezes, and so helps moderate temperatures somewhat. And then, it's been quite still so we get a temperature inversion thing going on where the coldest air sinks down into the valleys.

When I got home, I bundled up in about four layers of clothing and my Santa hat, and spent the afternoon outside the Governors Mansion, volunteering for the Share Your Christmas Drive-By Food Drive. It ran from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. and there are always lots of volunteers and simply tons of food donated.

The Mansion has a circular drive in front, so cars pull in, volunteers take the offered bags of food, and the car drives out. Off to the side, others are sorting the donations and loading trucks. Our town's collection goes to the local domestic violence shelter, so there's another crew at work there, unloading the trucks and filling the storage shelves. There are also drop-off spots in Reno and farther south in the Carson Valley that go to other area food banks. One of the local TV stations does news reports throughout the day; the schools send their choirs to sing (elementary students are so cute; the high school singers are simply amazing). Temperatures never did get above freezing, and it snowed lightly off and on all day, but there was an almost steady stream of cars coming through the entire time I was there.

And tonight, the bathtub drain thawed out so we could take showers again. Hooray!