White River Junction, VT (USA)

This morning (as usual), I started teleworking very early.  Since it was the Holiday Season, I'd decided to sign up for several volunteer opportunities during the coming weeks.  For this reason, I departed my condo at 1330 and drove to Lebanon.  This allowed me to spend some time (one hour) helping a team from the LISTEN Center to assemble holiday baskets.  Our work space, the basement of the Lebanon Congregational Church, was absolutely filled with bags and bags of gifts. These items had been delivered by generous souls from all across the Upper Valley.  Actually, my only job was to validate that the bags contained the requested items - in almost every case, there was much more in the bags than the individual and family “wish lists”.  It looked like some parents had focused on warm winter clothes but the donators had added games and gift cards.  There was some great stuff and I can imagine some REALLY happy kids waking up on Christmas morning this year.  After getting done (1500), I drove to White River Junction so I could work out at UVAC.  I swam for 45 minutes (52 lengths), took in 15 minutes of sauna, biked for 28 minutes (6.9 miles), rowed for 5 minutes and lifted weights.  Once I was finished, I went home (arrived at 1730) and resumed teleworking.  Glad I could help out my community and get some exercise on a cool winter afternoon!