pallid, chill and drear

It can't be breaking news for anyone living around here that winter has arrived. Officially on the 21st but effectively way back before Thanksgiving when we got hit with the first of a yet-to-be-interrupted string of major winter weather events. I can't keep track of them any more nor of the peculiarities of each storm. We're into a state of perpetual snow emergency. I wonder if Opening Day at Target Field will even be fully accessible or if Mpls will still be enforcing its quaint and totally incomprehensible winter parking regulations.

A sure sign of the approach of winter around the Young household is the annual Linwood Monroe Silent Auction Benefit. If you don't have it on your social calendar into the middle of the next decade...well then, just too bad for you. It's the brainchild of an unknown con artist who must have had a fleeting association with the Linwood PTA and has since been serving time in a federal penitentiary for some stock derivative arbitrage conviction. This thing is that insidious.

It works like this. The Linwood Monroe PTA sends its activists out into the St. Paul marketplace to beg for donations from local merchants. Parents and teachers and whomever else gets sucked in will donate goods and services. The individual grade levels work on collecting items for theme baskets. This effort always nets a high-quality haul of stuff to get auctioned or raffled off and pulls in a decent chunk of change for various school beautification projects. Probably not as much as might get raised out in Edina or North Oaks. But still a serious chunk of change for a humble St. Paul operation. Serious enough, anyway, to hire an off-duty St. Paul cop to keep the cash box safe and sound. And all in the name of keeping the kids from having to be out on the streets while hawking frozen pizzas and holiday wrapping paper.

Lately, the staff has been asked to contribute to a "Wall of Wine" by chipping in a bottle of hooch. Yeah, this is for a K-8 school; don't ask me how this gets justified. It's put me and Miz Susan in the interesting position of donating goods and then bidding on them to buy them back. I got hooked last year when one of the teachers sent her husband out for a bottle of wine and he came home with a bottle of premium tequila. I couldn't very well let someone else take that home, could I? We barely touched last year's bottle but that didn't stop me from bidding on this year's lot. Anyone up for a marguerita party?

Susan and I try to stick together to coordinate our bidding activity and keep an eye on the budget. That usually lasts for eight or ten minutes. After that, I just count on hooking up with her at the end of the evening. She tends to go for the highbrow stuff, jewelry and fabrics and artwork. I'm more inclined to the booze and chocolate. So far, I haven't given in to the urge to get into a bidding war over the 10-lb Pearson's Nut Roll but that's about the limit to my restraint. Anything else goes.

At the end of the night, I wander around and collect all of the stuff we've won and the bid sheets that get tallied up at auction central. This year, Susan's and my diverse bidding patterns drew more than the usual notice from the PTA bosses when it came time to ante up. Some catty comment came up about about her bidding on the month's membership to a health club and me bidding on the three homemade cheesecakes. And I thought the school was supposed to be all about celebrating our diversity.

All in all, a nice milestone to pass and a warning that the Christmas insanity wasn't far behind. As a precursor to winter though, the Silent Auction ran late this year. I had to claw my way home from B'lyn Park in the middle of the the December 3 snowstorm in order to get to the darn thing. A normal 35-40 minute trip got stretched out to nearly two hours. It's a good thing that we both enjoy the event so much because this year's version must have missed the news flash that winter had already arrived.

Happy holidays to all. And to all a good night!