Getting ready for the parade

Rensselaer's annual Christmas Parade is only a few days off (Saturday at 4:30) and I thought it might be interesting to see how one of the entries was getting ready.

CDC Resources will have an float this year, perhaps for the first time ever or at least for the first time in a number of years. When I stopped by the CDC Resources building at the far east end of Angelica Street, two people were working putting on some finishing touches. Or maybe they had a bit more to do before they were ready to apply finishing touches.

The reindeer that are on the front edge of the float looked impressive.

CDC Resources will also have a float in Monticello's Christmas Parade, but it will not be this float. The Monticello Parade takes place at the same time that the Rensselaer's Parade will be rolling through town. So CDC Resources is preparing two floats. I hope that there will be pictures of both on their Facebook page--it will be interesting so see how each location decorated a float.

The theme of the float is Santa's Workshop. It ties in with the CDC Resources Workshop where the consumers of CDC Resources do a variety of jobs for local companies.

In fact the workshop was busy with another job from the bird food people. There were several pallets of boxes in the back of the workshop.

Each of the boxes had packages of bird feed in it. The label and shrink wrap  was to be removed from the packages.

Then the unwrapped packages were placed back in the boxes.

I asked both consumers and staff why they were doing this and no one knew. My guess is that they will go back to the packing line and have a new label put one, but that is just a guess. (I asked how they kept track of how much work each person was doing and was told that they marked how many each did when they picked up the finished boxes.)

The CDC Resources workshop gets a number of  jobs that are one time only. The message of their Christmas parade float is that just as Santa's Workshop can do a lot of tasks, so can the workshops at CDC Resources.

I look forward to seeing what their finished float looks like.

The reason for having the parade after the sun sets is so Christmas lights can be displayed. Unfortunately, it makes taking good pictures difficult. After the parade, the Little Cousin Jasper Committee is sponsoring a Chili supper at the First Presbyterian Church. (Here, here and here are some pictures from the last three Christmas parades.)