Turned out to be a three-pronged strategy…
December 9, 2009, 11:53 PM
My office had its annual “holiday party” this evening, at Bossa Bistro & Lounge in Adams Morgan. All in all, it was a fun party. I stayed for three hours and had a good time.
The thing that was the most entertaining was the slideshow that featured pictures of all the stuff that the office did over the last year (or so). The slideshow had pictures taken in the office, pictures taken at various official events, plus various “extracurricular” events (i.e. things coworkers did outside the office). Most surprising was that a good chunk of the photos were either of me or taken by me. I often volunteer to do the photos, plus a lot of photos of me ended up in the rotation. They actually had what I called a “three-pronged strategy” in digging for photos: Official photos, Facebook, and Schumin Web. This was one of the more amusing photos of me that ended up in the rotation:
This was from an Email I sent in late September (note lack of soul patch) to the staff in DC indicating that we had gotten additional copies of Congress At Your Fingertips, which we call “Congressional facebooks”. As you can see, I am smiling really big, and giving the thumbs-up while holding a Congressional facebook. This was deliberately cheesy, designed to make a bit of a splash with people. And apparently, it worked. This is when I learned that my coworkers find my all-staff Emails amusing (which I kind of do on purpose to make them sink in a little more). I make good use of that iSight camera on my office Mac.
Then they also used a recent raid photo of me with Meredith (this one), a few photos from the tubing trip, plus a few other ones from some all-staff Emails I’d sent.
Two others in particular amused me, but I don’t have them on me at home. They were of me holding up reams of paper, to illustrate what paper to use where. Rather than describe how to identify the different kinds of paper in words, I fired up Photo Booth and held each one up, smiling for the camera in both photos.
What can I say? I’m a bit of a camera whore sometimes.
But yeah, it was awesome. Another thing they had at this event which was kinda fun was a bake-off. Everyone was invited to bake some holiday goodies for everyone to sample, and then vote on their favorites. First prize won a $25 American Express gift card, and then second and third got plants. I tried a few of the goodies, and they were, by and large, tasty. I didn’t cook, and I also didn’t vote. I didn’t cook because I was just too bloody lazy. I deliberately abstained from voting as a small protest on my part – why does everything have to be a contest? Why can’t we just do it for the lulz? Why does someone always have to “win”? I think it would have been just as awesome to have just done it for fun, with no prizes. But oh, well.
Then the commute back home was long. From Adams Morgan, it’s about the same distance to walk to the bus or the Metro (Woodley Park-Zoo). I decided to take the bus, and so I took the S2 from Harvard Street to Silver Spring station. Then from there, I switched to the Y9 to home. See, Metro plus bus would have cost $3.10. Bus plus other bus only cost me $1.25 (bus-to-bus transfers are free with SmarTrip). Plus I figure, I have to wait on the same stupid Y bus regardless, so I might as well save a buck and some cents.
Song: Mark Bunker (aka Wise Beard Man) discusses Scientology's practices as applied to Christianity.
Quote: Then the only major downside to the event was the beer, which was so bad that one could barely call it "beer" and keep a straight face. They had Miller Lite, which was actually the better beer of the two kinds they had. The other one was called "Sol", which, considering it tasted more like water than beer, probably was really an acronym for "S--- Outta Luck". But the company was good, and my coworkers certainly knew how to cook.
Categories: Work