Hard At Work Or Hardly Working?!

I like to read on my lunch breaks at work. For this reason Saeed likes to tease me that I go to work so that I can read my books all day long. One morning as I left for work he asked what book I'd be reading that day at work. Very funny. I am almost reluctant to post these pictures because they will add more ammunition to Saeed's arsenal of jokes about how I don't work very hard at work! But the weather was so lovely today that we decided to have our lunch meeting outside, sort of a picnic in our back parking lot. Once it gets a bit hotter that asphalt will be too hot even to walk on, but it was in the 70's today - perfect. In addition to a nice lunch (well, not nice for a vegetarian, but, it's not all about the food, right?) we discussed the issues on the agenda and played some team building games.

We each brought a deck chair.

Linda and Patricia are settled and ready for some grub.

The lady with the purse was a pharmaceutical rep. She provided lunch which included barbeque, potato chips, cole slaw, iced tea, and cookies. What did I eat? A vegetarian "chicken" patty on one of their buns and a spoonful of coleslaw. Man, by 3:00 I was starving and had to eat some edamame (brought from home for emergencies like this!) for my snack. There was also an ice cream cake which Jackie provided for the January-May birthdays.

Here, Linda (different Linda - we have three Lindas) takes my picture while I take hers. See my reflection in the window on the right?

Jackie leads a game in which the team on the left, lead by Patricia, competes against the team on the right, lead by Jennifer. I was on Patricia's team and we won by finishing first, but the other team felt we had used some non-qualifying answers and took issue with that win. The game showed two things: 1) how we needed to work together to come up with the answers 2) how competing can make you do things that may not always be nice or fair.

Melvette, Debbie, Rita, Angel, Stephanie, Angela, and Rosa watching as Jackie referees the game.

Laura and Stephanie then each represent their teams in a yoyo competition. Stephanie's yoyo was dysfuntional, so Laura helps her fix it. What a nice competitor!

Laura won anyway! Carol, Jennifer and Gina cheer her on.

One of the other games we played was to line ourselves up according to our birthdates, but we were not allowed to speak to each other. At first it was challenging but we soon figured out how to communicate using our fingers to indicate the month and date. We have about five people born in June and amongst themselves they got all mixed up, but the rest of the line was in the correct order. Before long we had to clean up and go back inside for the patients on the afternoon schedule. Yes, Saeed, we worked the rest of the afternoon.