200 pounds of onions, oh my 12/20/11

• Sometimes being a vegetarian sucks.  When I got to my volunteer gig, which is helping the Red Cross and Street Reach Ministries prepare Christmas dinner for 5000, my options were to hack up turkeys or cut onions.  I can't hack hacking turkeys, so I chose to peel and quarter 200 pounds of sweet Spanish onions.  Worked with a lady named Sandy from Little River, very nice, and another couple from West Virginia that spend half the year in MB, also very nice.  After the first 50 pounds or so my eyes didn't sting and I couldn't even smell the onions.  I could sure smell that turkey, though.  Yuck.  And there's nothing more slippery than a tiled kitchen floor covered in turkey grease.  I scrubbed the soles of my sneakers as soon as I got home. 
• Since I did so well on the onions, Lee, one of the guys in charge of the kitchen, deemed me Cranberry Lady.  A team of female basketball players from Atlanta, in MB for a tournament, were coming to volunteer and I had to supervise them dipping cranberry sauce from 5 gallon buckets into little plastic souffle cups, capping them with lids that fit, putting the cups into boxes, and keeping count of the whole shebang so we could get to 5000 cups of cranberry sauce.  We had 4 buckets going in my work area, 3 buckets going in another room.  While we were dipping and capping and stacking, their head coach was standing around taking pictures and yacking, so I started hollering, "Hey Coach, how about toting some of these boxes out to the fridge truck."  The girls got a kick out of me making their coach do some work.  Guess I got a little bit of drill sergeant in me from my dad.   We finally ran out of matching lids, somewhere between 2000-3000 cups.  Chef Brad assured me his restaurant would be donating more cups with lids by tomorrow.  Hooray, I'll probably get to scoop more cranberry goo when I go back on Thursday.  At least it's not sweet potatoes.
• Lee was a really cool guy.  When I introduced myself, he said his first girlfriend's name was Roni so it would be easy for him to remember.  Then he proceeded to call me Tori all afternoon, even after I would say, "Roni," and he'd say, "oh, right."  So when I was signing out to leave, I shook his hand and said, "Well Ted, guess I'll see you on Thursday."  He laughed and winked at me and said, "Thanks, Roni."
• I was supposed to work until 5, but by 4:15 my back was screaming "I'm done."  Plus my ballteam had left, so there wasn't much more I could do except turkey duty.  Gave me time to do some barefoot beachwalking before sunset.  Great way to end a good day.  That and getting my butt down to the hot tub right now.