According to the poem, I am supposed to have visions of sugar-plums dancing through my head. I know that is from “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” but close enough. And what the hell is a sugar-plum anyway? According to our friends at Google, it is a type of dragée candy. Learn something new every day! Anyway, there are certainly no candy images floating through my head. If there was, maybe I wouldn’t have a headache. No, despite the season, my thoughts are focussed on other things. The sugar-plums have been replaced by marking, meetings and railways…par for the course right? All these things do nothing but exacerbate the sense of burnout that I’m feeling right now. How many more sleeps?

So Christmas is exactly 2 weeks away. The brown blah I wrote about last week has been replaced by a new blanket of snow, at least making it feel right. The house is fully decorated and ready for the season. Most of the shopping has been done and there are only a few things left to do. I guess it is now a waiting game, which is always interesting with a couple little boys in the house. They are certainly chopping at the bit for the big guy to arrive. We’ll see what he has in store this year!

To answer my previous question, there are only 8 more sleeps before the break. Thank God…my brain capacity is dwindling by the minute! I know I write a lot about it, but it seems as if every year the burnout gets more pronounced. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that I have way to many things going on (hence the lack of sugar plums). I tend to stress about things, which is not usually a good thing to do. I know that relaxation is important (and healthy), but I’m the type whose brain is always chewing on something. School is definitely one of those things. I had to laugh when I read my post from a year ago and wrote Santa for a marking elf. He never did send one, so maybe I should ask again!

This past week was again a very busy time on the railway front. Sunday was the incorporation meeting for the Silver Mountain Historical Society so there was a million and one things to do. Even though the event has passed, there are still many things swirling in my mind. The meeting itself went really well despite some bad weather.

The weather forecast called for snow on Sunday, so as I prepared to gather my stuff and head out to Silver Mountain I was a bit concerned at how that would affect the turn out. I’m sure we did lose some people due to the slippery roads, but the amount of folks that did show up was very positive. There was close to 30 people in attendance, and coupled with those that came to the previous event, we have over 60 names registered with the society!

Silver Mountain Station, December 2012.

I was the main presenter at the meeting, on top of speaking about the railway and our goal to preserve the North-Gunflint Lake corridor, particularly the ghost town of Leeblain. Other information was presented by my co-host Shelley Simon, who spoke about efforts to erect a historic plaque at Silver Mountain (like the PAD&W plaque in Hymers) and repair the Silver Mountain Cemetery. All this and we haven’t even really started!

PAD&W Historic Plaque, Hymers, May 2012.

To proceed with our incorporation process, a society executive had to be chosen. I was nominated and acclaimed as Vice-President. I certainly appreciate the selection, but I am also very nervous. There are just so many things involved and many of us have never done anything like this. Thankfully we have some members from the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society who will be guiding us through this process.

I guess my biggest fears stem from the fact that I am unsure how this will affect my free time. Between work, family and coaching, my time is fairly limited. I still want to pursue my research of the railway and especially the fieldwork aspect of it. Hopefully I can find a way to tie everything in together. To compound things, I decided to start a blog for the society as well, The Silver Express (not really sold on the title, but I can always change it). Oh by the way, if you haven’t noticed, I changed the title of this bog too. I thought it was a bit more creative than “Padwrr.”

Anyway, I guess I should get rolling as I have marking to do; big shocker! Hopefully by next week I’ll have some pics of the society meeting. Until then…