"TOYS FOR TALKERS"
Christmas Comes Early
By Patricia "Vulcana" Wright
Edited by Robert Jung, Douglas W. Dlin, and Philip N. Zeman
Additional material provided by Philip N. Zeman, et al.
Photographs by Patricia "Vulcana" Wright

Part 2

Sunday morning, I awoke bright and early in order to head back to Richmond, my home, from my parents' place in Abbotsford. Why was I at my parents? Because it was easier to get the toys sent to my parents than it was to me. So, I headed home with the last three gifts to arrive -- Optimal Optimus, Rampage, and Dinobot, two of which are rather big and bulky items.

As I arrived into town, I began to worry about all the things I had to do: get the last set of presents wrapped, get everything tagged, pack them all together, etc. I also had to change the tag on the Transmetal Rattrap. We wanted one for Susan Blu, but an extra had not arrived yet. Scott McNeil was slated to get this toy, but as he was already getting three others, it was best that the tardy toy be set aside for him and Sue get this one.

I arrived home and immediately started writing the last few tags. All the tags were blue (possibly cobalt blue) strips of paper, and I wrote the recipients' names and quotes on them with a calligraphy pen dipped in silver ink. This ink had roughly the consistency and finickiness of India ink, so I knew that the remaining tags would need the same amount of time to dry, as in several hours' time. I figured that the three hours I would be gone at church would suffice.

However, my notes on which quotes go for which toys did not have a quote for Optimal Optimus.

ARG!

I sent a panicked E-mail to Doug and the others involved with this, in the hopes that someone knew the quote I needed for this tag. About half an hour later I finished the other tags and had calmed down enough to realize that I perhaps had a different E-mail message saved than the one I printed. Would it have the Optimal Optimus quote?

Wonder of wonders, it did, so I sent another E-mail out, calling off the hounds. That was not the first time I had lost the quotes in the disaster area I called an apartment, so it was no wonder that Doug was a little annoyed at me losing the tag so close to the deadline. But the problem was solved, so I went off to church, feeling confident that the tags would be dry by the time I returned.

When I returned home, I wolfed down lunch -- home-brewed hot and sour soup if you must know -- and started wrapping presents. I decided to start with Optimal Optimus.

If you haven't seen this box then you are missing out. It is huge! M Sipher sent it to me in large video tape storage packaging box. I remembered looking at this box and thinking, "Well, I guess Siph' couldn't find anything smaller."

Then I opened the box and saw Opimal Optimus in there -- barely fitting and realized just what a huge toy this was. Since I had already wrapped a large chunk of gifts beforehand, Optimal was definately next on the priority list, just in case I ran out of paper.

The rest of the gifts didn't take up quite so much paper, but by the time I was done I didn't want to see another toy card again. Those things are buggers to wrap. Finally about five in the afternoon I finished wrapping all of the presents. (Hey, I watched some TV in there too....)

I had told Barbara Zelinski (Beast Wars associate producer) that it was just going to be me and two laundry baskets worth of toys. Looking around my apartment at the collection of wrapped toys that had been my constant companions for the past two weeks, I had serious doubts about the toys actually fitting in only two laundry baskets. "With a little bit of planning and a lot of luck," I thought, "I might actually get them into two baskets."

After about half an hour of fiddling (making sure the boxes were on the bottom and everything was packed as tightly as possible), I managed to get all the presents into two laundry baskets. At this point, I wanted to take pictures of them. To take pictures of the event, I borrowed my Dad's old manual camera, and this camera has auto-nothing. I had to relearn how to do a manual focus as well as setting up the flash and F stops on the thing.

When I finally was able to sort out how the camera worked, I took a good look at the baskets. There were several different types of wrapping paper that I used, so I wanted at least one of each type with in the view of the camera.

I currently didn't have such a view.

I dug through the baskets and rearranged everything, until I finally had everything set up.

A long Sunday day had turned into Sunday night, but everything was ready for Monday....

So, finally, everything was ready. The presents were wrapped, the baskets were packed, and the camera was prepared. Go to the next part to look at D-Day for "Operation: Toys for Talkers".

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4 || Part 5 || Part 6

Patricia Wright can be E-mailed at pawright@eyrie.org.
Robert Jung can be E-mailed at rjung@netcom.com.
Doug Dlin can be E-mailed at apcog@hotmail.com.
Philip N. Zeman can be E-mailed at asm_zeman@skyjammer.com.

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