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March 12, 2006
Thank You, Craig School Auction
Last weekend, we attended the swanky suburban extravaganza of school spirit and upscale New Jersey fundraising known as the annual Craig School auction. "Tuscan Splendor" was the theme, and I am now the proud owner of not one, but two artfully assembled bunches of plastic grapes, which I developed quite an affinity for at the event.
Mom works at Craig, my brother went there, and I am the deliquent website designer. It's a great, close-knit school that has been steadily growing over the past few years. I was blown away by the scale of the auction this year. There's a silent auction, a live auction, a cash raffle, and gift baskets that you can buy raffle tickets for. We usually bid on things just for the fun of it and end up taking things home that we may or may not need (the coffee mug I'm drinking is from a Craig auction in the 90s and I love it, but I think the accompanying items went to a stoop sale). In this year's live auction, trips to exotic places, opera tickets, and a guitar signed by Bon Jovi were highlights.
I was woefully underdressed, failing to have purchased a dress with a lacy shawl and high heels at the Short Hills mall ahead of time (the outfit of choice in Morristown, NJ these days). My turtleneck, skirt, and glasses look (a la Velma from Scooby Doo) didn't quite make it. (Side note: In my rush to Century 21 on the way to the train to pick up tights, I also picked up leg warmers and discovered that they actually work. If you're wearing a skirt and it's freezing out -- and you don't mind looking like an extra on Flashdance -- they're perfect.)
Anyway, we lucked out at the auction this year, thanks to Derek's strategic placement of raffle tickets in baskets.
Remember how I mentioned that we don't own a teapot that whistles? This has been an ongoing saga. First, I burned out a saucepan numerous times while boiling water for tea. This made Derek a little nuts. Mom bought be a nice teapot but it seemed to leave mineral deposits in the water. So I bought a different type of teapot but lost the whistler in the move and burned it to a crisp. I bought a replacement at Pearl River, but the handle got boiling hot and the whistler didn't work. Mom gave me ANOTHER teapot for Christmas, but that also had a whistler that didn't work, so I reverted to the saucepan method. That's four faulty teapots in the space of a year.
I've had similar luck with coffee makers -- I broke a college roomate's coffee maker and I can't seem to make coffee that tastes good. I own an espresso maker and a coffee maker but have never gotten decent coffee out of either (they both years of dust caked on them and live in boxes). I finally switched to using one of those filter holders that you postion over a mug and pour water into. It's really all I can handle.
So, I was absolutely thrilled to win a huge gift basket with a fancy coffee maker, a beautiful, whistling teapot (!), lots of coffee, and two travel mugs which will come in handy when the cops start enforcing that new law about coffee on the subway (until we won the basket I was considering a career as a coffee-on-the-train activist). The coffee maker has a timer and a water filter and a clock and is amazing. We just made our first pot and it, miraculously, tastes fine. The basket even came with a little coffee-measuring spoon. And the coffee maker stops brewing if you take the pot out in the middle to pour yourself some coffee. Thanks, Craig, for giving a long-suffering coffee and tea addict some decent tools to work with.
Posted by csageday at March 12, 2006 12:31 PM