Spaghetti dinner

Gail's spaghetti dinner and silent auction was held last night at Ryan's school. I say "Gail's" because she's the chair of the school council that ran the event, and has thought about little else for a couple of weeks. It was kind of a one-woman show last year -- Gail's council co-chair, Paul, did all the stuff for the auction, and Gail pretty much did everything else. It wasn't like that so much this year -- the council divvied up the responsibilities a little more evenly, so Gail was kind of the fore-person and was in charge of communications, and Paul did the auction again, but other people were responsible for the catering, desserts, decorations, entertainment, raffles, and other stuff. They had about 440 tickets sold, and something like 160 items at the auction, and ended up raising between $8000 and $9000, all of which will go towards music programs and instruments and stuff for the school.

A rousing success, as was last year's event, which allowed them to purchase a scoreboard for the gym. The scoreboard also has some advertising panels on it, so local businesses pay to have signs there, which brings in even more money going forward.

A good time was had by, well, most. They had comment cards available (which Gail collected), and I took a look at two of them this morning - one gave the event a 5/5, saying that the food was good and hot (which was a problem last year), and everything was great. The other one (obviously written by a student) gave a 1/5, and said that the waiter got their drink order wrong, took too long, tried to steal their bread, and some other negative comment I can't remember. Oh well, you can't please everyone. We all had fun, anyway. My sister came as well, and was very helpful in keeping me from throttling Nicholas, who decided numerous times that a crowded gymnasium with over 400 people in it (plus tables, chairs and lots of food and breakable auction items), was a good place to spin around, dance, swing your coat around and generally play. As I've said before, whoever invented the phrase "the terrible twos" didn't have a three-year-old.

I bid on a few items -- Raptors tickets, a nice pair of sunglasses, gift certificates for green fees at local golf courses, and one or two other things I don't remember, but just ended up with 2 sets of green fees, so I'll take my dad golfing in the spring. Ryan purchased the opportunity to be "secretary for a 1/2 day", so he gets to sit in the office and talk on the PA, do morning announcements, stuff like that. He'll love it.