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Issue #1231
Including:

Gary

Doug

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From Gary

Hello fellow Squamidians. Last edition of 2025. Hop everyone had a safe and enjoyable Christmas. Happy belated birthday to Doug (25th) and Gale (26th). We hosted Christmas dinner here on the 24th. Evy cooked a turkey with all the fixings, including homemade cranberry sauce. We purchased dessert due to time constraints. Unfortunately Evy was a bit under the weather on Christmas Day so we missed Christmas dinner at Phoebe’s. I bbqed an Atlantic salmon fillet so we still had a special treat. We had a green Christmas but now it’s white out (Friday afternoon). Happy new year to all and May 2026 be full of warm sunshine and little stress. Take care and stay safe everyone.

Gary

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From Doug

I did manage to pull it off. I made the home made fudge that has become our one and only Christmas tradition over the past decade. It used to be a joint effort but thats no longer possible and for the past couple of years I’ve taken it on myself to make the overwhelmingly sweet treat. Its pretty easy to make, but actually not so easy. The easy part is its only 3 ingredients, Demera brown sugar, Lactantia salted butter, and sweetened condensed milk. There can be 3 varieties, regular, caramel, and chocolate. For caramel you use the caramel flavored condensed milk, for chocolate you simply add baking chocolate to the regular type. Then of course there is the mixing and microwaving and so on. It takes time and a bit of practice to get the consistency right. But its definitely melt in your mouth stuff. Too sweet for us old farts to eat but the kids sure like it.

Because of the number of kids working at the gondola that we give it to, as well as the others who work there, and the neighbors we give some to, I’ve made 13 batches. Thats a LOT of fudge. I cut each batch up into pieces and then wrap 4 pieces together, using a mixture of the different flavors. The kids at the gondola, most of them being far away from home, really get a kick out of someone doing this for them. They are also getting a kick out of the snow up there because for whatever reason they all seem to be from the Perth area of Australia.

It takes several days to distribute it as various employees there work various time slots. We started on Monday morning and continued on Tuesday morning. Plans his a snag when the weather forced the gondola to stay closed all day Wednesday. A major winter storm pounded our area with winds that were too high for them to run the lift system, as well as pouring rain and pouring snow. Can’t win, after weeks of never ending rain, the storms just keep on coming. We tried again on Thursday. The winds were still howling so the gondola could not open at their usual time. However, they did open an hour and a half later. We had gone there only to find they were opening late. So, we went home. Customers were coming up from the city and the lineup was already starting.

Because we really had nothing else to do we went back to be there for 10:30. When we got there we saw that the lineup was several hundred feet long, and it was chilly because of the wind. So, I figured there was no point in trying to go up. We did go inside the retail store where there were a couple of kids who I had not yet given fudge to. They were delighted to receive theirs. Also in there was one of the managers who we’ve know for quite a long time. I told her we were heading home because standing in the line was not an option. She said to follow her, which we did, and she took us around to where the lift operators were waiting for the go-ahead to start sending customers up. Lift speed was being kept to below half because of the wind so it would take a long time to work through the lineup, and there was a constant stream of customers coming, adding themselves to the end of the line.

So, we came in from the exit side and went right onto the first cabin. A group of people that were at the front of the officia line joined us and we rode up together. We all started chatting, they live in Toronto but were from Grease. They were blown away by the scenery and couldn’t believe this was our usual morning coffee location. It was a slow ride up so by the time we got to the top we all felt like friends. They wanted to buy us our coffee, I kept saying there was no need. Once at the top we all went inside and the girls behind the coffee bar saw me coming and had my ‘usual’ order ready (1 coffee, 1 blueberry muffin which we always share). The operations manager was there so we chatted, and I gave him his fudge. When I went to pay I was told that Rob (manager) had paid for it. So, I flashed my pass card in order to let our new Greek friends to get our discount. When they spotted our ‘corner’ sign, they had to have their pictures taken with us by the sign. I managed to distribute a bunch more fudge to several of the kids working there and they were all quite pleased. One told me that she had heard about my fudge way back in June when she started working there.

The ride down was equally slow. The necessary slow speed due to the wind meant that customers were arriving faster than the lift could move them. The lineup was now even longer than when we went up. It sure helps to have friends at the top, so-to-speak, and being sort of celebrities there.

I could write more, given that we then had a snow storm, and the fact that I had to make yet another batch of fudge, but I’ve bored you guys enough for now.

Doug

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Have a Good One
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