Continued... Alabaster is something of a statistician by trade, and one of the only elves in the world who gives a fig about numbers, columns and random bits and bytes of information. So when he received Shinny's call to come to the North Pole, he arrived with a resume that shut every other applicant out for the administrator's job. He quickly made himself right at home by moving into the nearest dictionary. Alabaster wears his white hair parted down the middle and slicked with a bit of vegetable oil. His small head sits on his long, goose-like neck. (Picture a football sitting on a fence post and you've got the idea) He wears a dark (green) frocked coat, a dark (red) weskit (vest) and dark (green...and only on certain days, plaid green) knee pants with white stockings and buckled shoes. His entire appearance gives one the thought of a stork. He takes his job very very seriously. Since most elves are not so serious natured, Alabaster created quite an uproar when he first arrived in the North Pole Village and immediately began taking inventory of the whole kit and kaboodle. It took over ten years to settle everyone and everything down. Elves just don't go in for keeping records and files on everything they do, think, say and stash away. But, it all came in pretty handy for future reference, and it was, afterall, Alabaster who came up with the idea of organizing all the toy requesting and giving and such. In earlier times, Santa Claus simply took an estimate of how many children were out there expecting a visit, loaded up his sleigh with as much bounty as he figured he'd need and took off. Sometimes there were too many toys, sometimes there weren't enough. Of course, it took someone with the knack for numbers to come in and put this whole thing in proper order. And of course, it was Alabaster's bookkeeping experience that taught him to "check it twice." Please click the 'next page' button below for the end of Alabaster's story...