Holly Jolly Christmas

Oh you just gotta love company holiday parties. I never worked for anyone that did them (except for one, but they only invited management) so I have to experience them through Hubby's work. - ok, I take that back, I worked for a company one year that had a holiday party. One of the employees invited all of his loser friends and they spent the entire evening stealing stuff and getting high in the back rooms. It was not a pleasant experience, so I have tried to erase it from memory -

So anyway, about every other year Hubby's office puts on a pretty good shindig; nice location, good food, free drink tickets for all the employees (pretty $$$ overall); and we go, mainly so Hubby can be seen by the higher-ups and so we can sit in the back and watch everyone get stupid. This year was no exception. We were hosted at an old Mansion turned hotel downtown, served stuffed chicken and rosemary beef tenderloin medallions with a yummy red wine and mushroom sauce and there were two bars, one on each end of the room, actively serving the guests. This year the company hired a local photographer to do portraits of the guests - ok, just a hopefully helpful note here: if you are ever in charge of securing a photographer to do portraits for an event, please, please don't hire an architectural photographer, even if he's cheap. He may want to break into event photography, but most likely all you'll get is a bunch of pictures of the building mixed in with way over lit, harsh photos of the guests. End of Rant. No, actually the photos turned out pretty good (shh, I think he used a warming filter in his post processing). I'm not quite sure why the location shots are not of the actual location of the party, but whatever.

So we sat in the back at one of the many overly squished tables (why, why, why do party planners think it is ok to put 10 people at an 8 top table??? I know the chairs fit when they are empty, but when you put bodies in them, knees are going to be knocking, glasses will be toppled and people will NOT be able to walk between the tables. Either insist on booking less people or put only 8 chairs!!!) Ok, so I used to be an event planner too. Forgive me. We sat in the back with Hubby's best co-worker friend and his beautiful wife. Co-worker Friend (CWF) is notorious for his joking nature and picking fun at all things politically incorrect. So I got to endure the discussions about the alternative lifestyles and the races and all things that would potentially get a rise out of someone. Then came the discussions about who they didn't like and all the office gossip and poking fun at what people were wearing and who was flirting with who and how annoying they were. I swear, for a moment or two I thought I was sitting with 2 catty women, picking apart everyone else in the room. But it was all in good fun I guess. Hubby and I had a decent conversation about the photographer and the equipment he was using. It is fun for me to try to figure out how and why photogs do things, since we all seem to do things differently; and it was great having a decent conversation with hubby about it - until he forgot who I was and started making bad jokes and talking to me like he talks to CWF. It kind of shut me down and suddenly the event was not much fun. People were starting to feel the alcohol and get silly, the food portion was over and since this particular company doesn't do any announcements or anything there wasn't much left to the evening. So after staring blankly around the room for about 30 minutes, I told Hubby I was ready to go. No doubt Kiddo was by now giving his generous care givers a run for their money; as he did not nap that afternoon. I was pretty sure by then they were all in need of rescue.

I tipped the valet way too much money and we left (it was bitterly cold - I bet those guys were making a fortune!). Kiddo, who had been surprisingly wonderful, was exhausted when we picked him up and easily went to bed. Unfortunately, all he needed was about 2 hours of solid sleep and then proceeded to keep me up the rest of the night while he flailed and whined and annoyed me in his half asleep state. *sigh*

I guess it was a nice night. I got to dress up and look nice and not have to worry about food or snot on my clothes; got to pretend to be an adult with all the other pretend adults and got to see a beautiful, famous venue that I would not otherwise have the opportunity to see. The only expense was gas to get there and a valet tip - so yah, it was worth it. :)

Thankfully we only do that once a year though...
More later,
D :)