Office Christmas Party

Even the phrase 'office Christmas party' provokes an image in my mind: drunk, out of control, crazy people. Fortunately there's no alcohol served at our office party that starts at 3 and ends at 6, unless you want to purchase it yourself which one of my coworkers did. Ours is the good old fashioned kind, which starts with one of the doctors standing up to thank us for our hard work over the past year, then saying grace before our meal (one year our Hindu doctor said grace - she did a great job) before we lunge for the buffet line. It ends with the Chinese Auction. Two years ago somebody questioned if it was still OK to call it that from a PC point of view, but nobody could find anything derogatory about an auction, so we're still calling it the Chinese Auction. We meet at a restaurant in the geographic middle of our four offices called The Fish Market. They have a great back room big enough for our group of about 70 and they reassure my manager every year that serving a vegetarian meal is no problem.

This was my vegetarian entree: marinated artichoke hearts, grilled asparagus, marinated mushrooms, and spaghetti squash. It was really delicious, but an entree it is not! Sigh.... Vegetarian does not = Vegetables Only. I was very polite about it and kept my mouth shut but someone clearly needs some education here.

Our Chinese Auction is a blind gift exchange, with the possibility of exchanging the gift you have with one that belongs to another person, according to the number you drew out of a hat at the beginning. Most of the gifts are quite nice like candles, lotions, stuffed animals, warm throws, etc. A few of the gifts are gag gifts to sort of liven it up a bit...

... like this...

... and this...

(that's Dr.Phillips)

... and this! This is Dr. Barkley who chose the biggest box only to find five pink plastic flamingos with wings that twirl in the wind and long metal 'legs' so you can push them into the ground. I'm not sure what he hoped to find in that big box, but I don't think it was this. These were my contribution to the game. When I went up into the attic last weekend to find our Christmas wreath I saw those flamingos, who have been living in my attic since my 40th birthday. My sister ordered them, along with a sign for my front yard, to torture me on that landmark birthday. I almost chickened out of bringing them but Saeed talked me into it; I'm glad he did.

Believe it or not someone else wanted those flamingos. She grabbed an unopened gift, gave it to Dr. Barkely to open, stole his flamingos and went back to her seat. What was his new gift? A Chia Obama!

Here you see Tiffany trying to get Dr. Garcia's gift, which he's hiding under his right arm. So you see how it goes. No one else wanted those flamingos by the way; the girl went home with them.

So what did I get? At first I got a bag of good smelly stuff - lotion, shower gel, etc. But someone wanted that and stole it from me and this is what I pulled out of the unopened bag she gave me: 

The story behind the spider is this. Dr. Revell's wife was supposed to put together his gift for the party but when he got home she was gone and the gift was still in pieces on the floor. He said, "So I grabbed her spider." I said, "This is her spider?" "Yes, and I hate it. It scares everyone who comes in the house. Don't get rid of it though. I'm going to see if she notices it missing and if she wants it I'll need it back." He gave me his gift to take home (lotion) in case I have to give her spider back.

I took this poor quality picture of Dr. Revell from far across the darkened room, but I wanted to be sure to document the spider thief, with his self satisfied smile at the success (so far) of his caper.