We had grand plans today, at my office. A few months back, as we were discussing what to do for the holiday season (no one was really in the mood to do a food drive again, and with only five of us, collecting donations can get really expensive before the pile starts looking more than just slightly pathetic), we hit upon seeing if we could volunteer at a local food bank. Since I’ve been the primary leader of this sort of thing in the past (the blame for the company-wide food drive we did two years in a row can be laid solely at my feet, for example), I poked around, fired off some emails to people (who never responded) and eventually found one of those sites where you can find lists of volunteer opportunities. I signed us all up to go serve lunch at the local food bank, and had several email conversations with the guy who was in charge of coordinating this. It sure seemed like everything was going along swimmingly. He even sent the promised email a few days before, providing the address, and instructions for how to get there.

So it was a bit of a surprise when we showed up at the food bank, only to discover that they had no record of our little group coming at all. And there were more than enough volunteers there already – so many that the woman in charge looked a bit vexed when she was trying to think of something, anything, she could have us do. Ultimately, we all agreed that it wasn’t meant to be for today, and that we would try to schedule the food bank outing for sometime later – perhaps in January. And this time I will coordinate directly with the food bank itself, instead of going through the volunteer site. Grumble.

The plan had been that we would all go serve lunch at the food bank, then go out to lunch as a group and then go home early. Since the food bank thing fell through, we went to an early lunch instead, and then back to the office. As I noted to my boss with a laugh, I’d already shut down my computer – and my brain – for the year, thinking I wouldn’t be back. Oh well.

Happy Holidailies!