Bread 2019

Last week my old boss from the Summer Program started volunteering at WALES. He's going to be with us three days a week until the beginning of Summer Program, which he will be directing again.

This means that I finally got to give him his loaf of bread. At the end of every Summer Program, I give a home-baked loaf of bread to everyone on the team. Last year, however, because my employment with WALES conflicted with the end of Summer Program, I couldn't attend during Evaluation Week, and I wasn't able to give everyone their loaves.

First day of Training Week for the Summer Program we introduce ourselves with a Powerpoint presentation. In my presentation, I promised everyone a loaf of bread at year-end. I didn't forget.

Throughout the weeks, I gave the team pumpkin bread and banana bread, and I made blueberry, pumpkin, cherry, and lemon variations of tarts. But I promised end-of-year, classic, regular bread with my old Katimavik recipe. And it didn't happen.

I want to take things back to Personality Dimensions. At Extend-a-Family, we make a lot of use of this personality test which separates personalities into colours: Green (intellectual), Blue (empathetic), Orange (adventurous), and Gold (organized).

I've spoken on this a lot already, but I'm a fairly balanced Green/Blue with a slight preference for Green. I have absolutely no Gold, except in the category of relationships, in which my Gold is actually dominant. Despite being completely disorganized in every other aspect of my life, I have a hard Gold spike in relationships because I'm loyal and value traditions.

And baking bread is a tradition for showing my appreciation to the Summer Program, and even though I know no one else held me accountable, the fact that I was unable to fulfill my promise haunted me. So being able to give bread to one of the members of the team helped alleviate that.

So as to not leave the rest of the team out, I made loaves for all the WALES facilitators as well. That was pretty well received. I find that baking bread is one of the best skills I've developed. You can make it in bulk, it's simple, and when you off it to someone, they never forget you. I like to offer it nonchalantly and unprompted.

I know who from the Summer Program is returning to their positions, so I will be able to give them bread during Training Week. There are still a few people that I need to find a way to give bread to, so that I can feel complete.

Had that meeting with the Extend-a-Family bigwig about company culture. It wasn't as intimidating as I thought it would be.

I had the first barbecue of the season recently. A friend of mine came over and brought steaks. I have never grilled a steak before in my life. Didn't know what I was doing. Didn't take long and came out phenomenally. That little $20 charcoal grill I bought two years ago is the gift that keeps on giving.