Our trip from Houston to Chicago was mostly without incident. We did get out of the gate about 1 1/2 hours late but the trip was short and we landed only about 1 hour behind schedule. After an extended bathroom stop for the ladies, we got our bags, called the limo (who was there within minutes) and we were on our way. The limo driver gave us a cook's tour of Illinois but finally got us to Barrington.

Sleeping is a little tight at Rebecca and Trey's house when there's as many visitors as we presented. So, Ellie and I slept in the basement on the Futon. Not too bad except for the heater blower periodically kicking on and the water softener doing it's thing in the middle of the night. But you can get used to anything and I did, sleeping through the night with only one wakeup to go to the bathroom.

About mid-morning we took the train from Barrington to Arlington Heights to visit a little city park which has been decorated with loads of Christmas things. It's cold in these parts now and being outside was a little daunting for people from the tropics. After about 45 minutes, I was wishing I had put on my thermal underwear as I had originally thought.

We braved it for an hour or so then left to have lunch at Egg Harbor. As one would guess, this is a restaurant that can cook eggs in just about any way you want them. I had a nice omelett and potatoes; not bad food especially when you're ready to eat your shirt collar as I was.

When we left the restaurant, Ellie and I decided we would take Jordan, the youngest to the train station while the others went back to the park. We would wait at the station for them to join us and then catch the train back to Barrington.

Ellie and I had not been in the station more than a minute when they closed the thing and kicked us out into the cold. So, we spent the next 45 minutes tromping around in the weather until everyone else returned and the train picked us up for the trip back.

We spent the rest of the afternoon messing around with my laptop, trying to get the wi-fi working. Finally gave up trying to use 802.11b and bought an 802.11g card. It worked perfectly as soon as I installed the software and card. So now I've got high speed access through my machine for the rest of the time we'll be here.

Dinner tonight at Shaw's Crab House. We'd been there before and I liked it but tonight was a different story. Service was mediocre to poor, the food was mediocre at best, and they slapped an 18% service charge on our check. I almost didn't pay it but decided to let it slide this time. Probably won't go back there.

Since Michael, Patricia, and Walker are returning to Houston on Monday, we opened some of our gifts tonight. I don't think they're going to try to do anything that looks like Christmas stockings tomorrow morning. Rebecca has prepared some colorful bags for us to put the "stocking stuffers" in tomorrow morning.

Our trip from Houston to Chicago was mostly without incident. We did get out of the gate about 1 1/2 hours late but the trip was short and we landed only about 1 hour behind schedule. After an extended bathroom stop for the ladies, we got our bags, called the limo (who was there within minutes) and we were on our way. The limo driver gave us a cook's tour of Illinois but finally got us to Barrington.

Sleeping is a little tight at Rebecca and Trey's house when there's as many visitors as we presented. So, Ellie and I slept in the basement on the Futon. Not too bad except for the heater blower periodically kicking on and the water softener doing it's thing in the middle of the night. But you can get used to anything and I did, sleeping through the night with only one wakeup to go to the bathroom.

About mid-morning we took the train from Barrington to Arlington Heights to visit a little city park which has been decorated with loads of Christmas things. It's cold in these parts now and being outside was a little daunting for people from the tropics. After about 45 minutes, I was wishing I had put on my thermal underwear as I had originally thought.

We braved it for an hour or so then left to have lunch at Egg Harbor. As one would guess, this is a restaurant that can cook eggs in just about any way you want them. I had a nice omelett and potatoes; not bad food especially when you're ready to eat your shirt collar as I was.

When we left the restaurant, Ellie and I decided we would take Jordan, the youngest to the train station while the others went back to the park. We would wait at the station for them to join us and then catch the train back to Barrington.

Ellie and I had not been in the station more than a minute when they closed the thing and kicked us out into the cold. So, we spent the next 45 minutes tromping around in the weather until everyone else returned and the train picked us up for the trip back.

We spent the rest of the afternoon messing around with my laptop, trying to get the wi-fi working. Finally gave up trying to use 802.11b and bought an 802.11g card. It worked perfectly as soon as I installed the software and card. So now I've got high speed access through my machine for the rest of the time we'll be here.

Dinner tonight at Shaw's Crab House. We'd been there before and I liked it but tonight was a different story. Service was mediocre to poor, the food was mediocre at best, and they slapped an 18% service charge on our check. I almost didn't pay it but decided to let it slide this time. Probably won't go back there.

Since Michael, Patricia, and Walker are returning to Houston on Monday, we opened some of our gifts tonight. I don't think they're going to try to do anything that looks like Christmas stockings tomorrow morning. Rebecca has prepared some colorful bags for us to put the "stocking stuffers" in tomorrow morning.

Ellie has been active with a local organization called Second Mile for several years. Second Mile is a church sponsored charity that helps indigent people with food, clothing, and even pays utility bills for the worst cases.

During those years, I always noticed that when Ellie came home from a volunteer session at Second Mile, she would be in a foul mood. She would explain that most of the people she saw were indeed in need of help but there was always a small percentage that exhibited the "greed, not need" syndrome. And it was those greedy people who would induce her bad moods.

So, a few weeks ago, the proverbial straw/camel back thing finally happened. She was trying to assist a guy who she described as looking more like a pimp than an indigent and because she wouldn't let him raid the entire place of everything he wanted to carry out, he made veiled threats against her. She reported the incident to the head of the charity organization; he made note of the guy, telling her it would be taken care of. But by then she had had enough and told me she would not volunteer there again.

Fast forward to a few days ago. She informed me that because she's bilingual, she was still needed and was going back to help out with the Christmas gift giving. But there was a caveat: I was also going along to protect her. So, yesterday evening, I went along to act as her body guard and bag toter for the people who came in to receive their annual allotment of gifts and food.

Here's how it works at Second Mile. The families, usually consisting of only a mother but sometimes a father, too, sit in a little chapel where they are barraged with an ongoing sermon...mostly in Spanish. The volunteers go in and retrieve one family at a time, taking them outside and across the parking lot to a building where the toys are stored. Between the chapel and toy building, a volunteer stops and prays with them, they have their picture taken standing in a manger scene, then they go in to select toys for the kids. The kids are shuttled off to a small holding area where they play games and, if they're old enough, select a gift for the parents. The parent(s) are sent into a room to pick out toys for the kids.

Toys are placed on shelves arrayed around the room and parents are allowed to select toys according to a complicated formula involving value of the toy and what could be picked from which shelf, a formula I never quite understood. Bicycles for older kids are also in the room, further complicating the formula because, if a bike is selected, it reduces the number of toys that can be picked.

It was interesting to watch how each family picked toys. Some were aggressive, at times trying to defeat the system and confuse the volunteer by picking up and rearranging toys from one shelf to another. Others were only too glad to have the opportunity to give their family a few gifts they would be otherwise unable to afford and had to be encouraged to pick items beyond the few they thought they deserved.

After the toy selection was complete, we moved on the gift wrap. Small rooms that usually served as offices were set up with wrapping paper and a couple of volunteers. The gifts were hauled in and the volunteers set to work wrapping each and every one of them, including tieing a red ribbon on the bicycle. I found this to be the most agonizing part of the operation. If a family had lots of kids, there was lots of gifts. It took forever to get them wrapped but it was a nice touch, seeing as how they could have just sent them out the door with the toys in a plastic bag.

Gift wrap complete, the last stop was to pick up the kid or kids and a food basket and we were out the door. There was always a few volunteers around to help carry the toys and food out to the cars where we spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out how to stuff toys, kids, parents and bicycles into a compact car.

And now that we get to the part about cars, I come to the gist of this story.

As Ellie and I were helping our families pick toys, I noticed one woman who seemed to stand out from the crowd. She was loud, approaching obnoxious, and kept repeating the fact that she had 8 kids. One of the things I think Second Mile does not do well is screen people. In order to get gifts she only had to state that she had 8 kids and supply their names and ages. Who's to say whether or not she had that many because there's no way to verify it.

Over the course of the next hour, I watched her pick up toy after toy. The gift wrapping alone took the better part of an hour while she stood around commenting on how there didn't seem to be as many people this year as last. It was obvious she knew the system and had been taking advantage of it for a while.

She finally disappeared from the scene. I did not see what happened next; it was related to me by the volunteer who helped her carry her bounty out of the building. I ran into him in the break room where he was complaining about her. He told me that when they carried the gifts out, her car was a spotless, shiny 2003 BMW. If memory serves me, there was a song from quite a few years ago entitled "Welfare Cadillac". I don't know who sang it or who wrote it but it looks like it should be translated into "Welfare BMW". I know people's fortunes can change in a hurry. But from remarks this woman made during the evening, I'm convinced she is playing the system. It probably happens all the time but the sad part is that there are many who have great need. The greed of one affects the need of others. But, I suppose that in the long run, one has to answer to their conscience and their God. If she is defeating the system, I hope this woman someday comes to that realization

How can a head cold hang on for so long? Today is the first time in 2 1/2 weeks that I feel like a human rather a walking mucus generator. Not a good time to be sick with Christmas shopping, choir concert, and assorted holiday activities to attend.

But things are beginning to slack up. Our choir concert is over and another burden has been lifted. I've done many of them in my life and always feel my spirit rise during and after a concert. I suppose it's the feeling of accomplishment rather than the dread of rehearsals.

We leave for Chicago this Friday to visit Rebecca and her family. And since we won't be here over Christmas, we had our gift giving party last Saturday for Michael and family. It's early but that's better than trying to lug all the gifts to Chicago and back.