Areas of Unrest

20 December 2007 - The Office Party

The major event of the day was the annual holiday luncheon over at my corporate office. I had baked pumpkin-coconut bread, but I should have presliced it if I really wanted all of it to get eaten. There was, as usual, way too much food. I assume that most of the leftovers get eaten by various folks for lunch tomorrow.

I got to see several folks I had not seen for a while, which is the real point of the party. At one point, four of us who had held the same job consecutively (my previous job) were all lined up together. Kim (who currently has that job) had brought along Alex as her guest. I amused the others by explaining how he and I used to debate the relative ranking of henchmen, lackeys, flunkeys, minions, etc.

We played a little game in which we were given index cards and asked to write a six-word memoir. I had surprisingly little trouble coming up with, "Around the world, clockwise and counterclockwise." Some of the others that I liked included, "Who needs more than one suit?" and "It's only freaky the first time you do it."

Finally, there was the gift exchange. Instead of drawing numbers, we used the last two digits of people's badge numbers. That worked out nicely for me, since my number was high and I got to choose something good to steal. My usual logic on these things is to take a food item which I can then bring to my other office. That way I don't end up with more clutter at home. I ended up with a tower of chocolate-covered almonds (three types), which seemed to go over well. But the definite classic of the gift exchange was a bright purple banana holder. This was sort of like a tupperware container, designed in the shape of a banana. I think it's intended to be useful for keeping a banana from getting crushed. Personally, I detest bananas so was particularly glad not to have gotten it. The person who provided it did fill it with M&M's, but it was still quickly deemed a keeper, until (inevitably) someone decided our group vice president should be the recipient.

I went back over to my customer office for a while, where about all I did was watch today's GPS launch. Well, I did clean up a little old email, but that's a chore that will take a lot more time.