the holiday spirit

i haven’t felt much in the way of holiday spirit this season. we have not decorated at home with lights or a tree or my beloved ornaments, and i’m not sure that we will, since we are leaving town in a week anyway.

i did put a strand of lights up at work, through the designer quad cube. it helps a little.

the holiday deluge of food at work has begun. there was the first party last friday that i wrote about, one yesterday at lunch, and another tomorrow afternoon. i should explain how this is structured. i’m part of a four-person Team (which i’ll call level 5), which is in turn part of a 17-person Department (level 4), which is part of a 30-ish person Office, (level 3), which is part of a much larger Division (level 2), which is part of the university as a whole (level 1). we get parties at levels 1, 2, and 3. this is not official policy or anything, just an explanation as to why there’s 3 different office christmas parties.

last year there was a chocolate fountain at the all-university (level 1) party. i bet there will be again tomorrow, but i’m not sure i can partake of it. at the art show that doc and i were in back in late summer, they had a chocolate fountain and i witnessed double-dipping going on. i’m not sure i want to eat germy chocolate anymore.

i think i’m getting karma payback for the nasty woman i encountered at the mall last saturday. on monday at lunch, i brown bagged it so only ordered a soda when out with brittney. the guy behind the counter gave it to me for free. this is the same guy that usually gives brittney (and whoever she’s with) free chips and queso — which he did on monday too. and then today at lunch, i tried to use my pony express cash card (which is cool, i can use it in all the vending machines on campus, the chick fila in the student center, plus some off campus places) to buy my salad and slice of pizza at stromboli’s, and their machine was having problems reading it. so i dug out the little cash i had, and ended up a dollar short plus change. and the cashier said “that’s ok, $4 is enough. merry christmas.” and then he brought free garlic twists to our table later on, to boot.

i think i’m going to bake christmas cookies as a thank you for all these places we regularly go to at lunch where they are extra nice to us.