Can I just say real quick that there are some decidedly awesome people in this world?

Oops, I just said it, and without waiting for an answer even.

You see, @welshstacker organizes this little secret santa exchange on Hive every year and I am just happy as a dog shit on the front lawn to be a part of it!

This year my #secretsilversanta went all out and then some! As we can see below, Secret Santa lives on Snowball Lane in the North Pole and, interestingly enough, uses Canada Post.

Canada Post (which can't seem to mail something from Oregon USA to Vancouver Canada (312 miles/502 kilometers) in under a month) handles all Secret Santa packages from the North Pole without a hitch! Go figure.

Oh yeah....

Yeah, I know.

Silver
Canadian coin (old)
MAPLE FUCKING CANDY!!!
liquor
Skulls
Drinking vessels (see above)
Chocolate

Secret Santa is a damn #BOSS

Story time

Way back when, 10 years before digital cameras were mainstream items, I use to live in Southern California. The town I lived in was about 4 hours from Las Vegas, NV ;) I was in my early 20s and working a swing shift office job.

I mean, I say office job like I worked in a #cube but I really worked in the production department of a major payroll company so I was part of the team that was there stuffing payroll checks into envelopes with a machine as big as a refrigerator. Loading stacks of checks into the feeder and a stack of envelopes onto a belt. The machine would grab a check from the top of a stack, fold it in two places as it moved it down the machine where it would stuff it into and envelope and seal it, spitting out the back end.

I was just there to monitor the machine and refill it with a new companies checks when the current run was finished. Then, at 11pm, I would clock out and my work day was done. This is of course when the fun started.

Every once in a while a couple of good friends and I would get the itch, the Vegas itch, and when I clocked out at 11pm we would hit the road for the short (LOOOONG) 4 hour drive to Las Vegas. Over the years our home base in Vegas became the Imperial Palace, but on these trips we would not see the Palace until the following night ;)

We usually headed straight to Silver City Casino for 75 cent bottles of Heineken and a little gambling. Not too long after arriving we would find the $1.95 BIG breakfast. Back then there were a few places offering giant breakfast plates from midnight to 6 or 8 am for 2 or 3 dollars. It was unreal. Steak and eggs, hash-browns toast sausage bacon you name it, all the things. $1.95. Nothing like washing down some pancakes with a shot of Jim Beam.

After a meal like this there were only a short number of hours we could stay awake, as we had not slept since arriving at 3am. By some stroke of drunken luck we stumbled on a plan that we used on quite a few subsequent trips.

Most of the pool areas at the bigger hotels were fenced off and locked...until 8 or 9am. Well, once opened, we would wander in, find a few comfy chaise lounge chairs (in the shade) and pass tf out! After 4 or 5 hours we would be up and ready to go! We would then head on over to our home away from home, Imperial Palace, book a room for the night and get right back to the business of drinking and gambling.

So you can imagine the joy I felt opening this gift from #boss-santa tonight.