I saw an article in the local paper stating the art gallery needs volunteers.  I went on-line and filled out a form, faxed it to them, and was called to come in for an orientation session.  I went to the art gallery on Friday, and said I was applying to be a volunteer docent.

A docent is a person who does the tours of the gallery.  Apparently they have a good roster of them, but they always need more as they do two school tours a day, Monday to Friday from mid-October to mid-June.

Being at this orientation for 30 minutes reinforced my strong belief I would not be a very compliant or good employee.  The volunteer coordinator, Renee, was explaining there’d be three half-days of training, one of which was to learn how to ask open-ended questions of school kids.

Then she said after the training we would watch her do one tour, and then we would be assigned to a seasoned docent and be their assistant.  After a while one becomes a lead docent.  I was sitting there thinking of my Master of Education degree but said nothing.

I’ll do their tedious-sounding training, and then hope one day to be able to graduate to lead docent.  If I do, I’ll let you know.  The commitment is to do one tour, hence be there one half-day a week, so I said I can do that.

But in the meantime I’m a baking maniac, and made 11o fruitcakes last week, and the same this week, so have over 200 fruitcakes in the can. I plan to keep this up as long as I physically can, and as long as I think I can unload all of the product.

Last Tuesday my friend Petra and I went down to Osoyoos as I wanted her to meet mom and see the house and orchard.  It was a beautiful day, so we took a detour to the Summerland Sweets store and then onto Dirty Laundry Winery.

Petra hadn’t been to either, so enjoyed that.  We arrived just before noon and had lunch outside.  Jerralynn had made candied salmon, which is salmon baked with butter and brown sugar.  She’d also made a beautiful stacked heirloon tomato salad for the appetizer.

We drank a delicious bottle of Wild Goose’s gewurtztraminer, and Jerralynn made an ice cream cake for dessert.  By three or so it was time to head north, so we said good bye and then stopped briefly at that adorable antique store on main street of Okanagan Falls.

It’s nice to get out and see the things we have here in the Okanagan Valley, especially with the unseasonably hot weather we’ve been having.  It’s still so hot I have to walk Louie before 8:00 AM or else it’s too hot for him.

So this should be fun, going to the gym and the art gallery, baking fruitcakes, writing a blog and newsletter.  For extra challenges I’m working on a short story I plan to submit to CBC Radio’s short story contest which closes November 1st.  Deadlines are good.

And maybe that’s how I’ve been able to stand the fruitcake business, in that there’s always an end goal in sight with it.  December 25th, here I come.