here's a new one

So instead of the usual "Holiday Lunch" or even holiday dinner, my firm decided to have an office luncheon and then bowling as our holiday activity this year.

Festivities started at the office at 11:30, which means the catered food was set out in the main conference room, the booze was chilled and flowing, the office phones were turned off and the office was closed for the rest of the day.

The food was a bit interesting. Other than it being catered "potluck" food, there really wasn't a theme going on. There were crabcakes (not good), battered shrimp (really not good), chicken terriyaki on a stick (so-so), some kind of carrot rolled in a slice of beef on stick (don't know how it tasted because it was still bleeding and I don't eat bloody meat), sushi (ehh), and fresh veggies to dip in ranch. Although I tried out a little bit of everything (except for the bloody beef thing), I pigged out mostly on carrots and cucumbers and ranch dressing. There was a dessert plate of brownies, blondies, lemon bars and vanilla cake, but I didn't induldge because it wasn't too tasty.

After muching on food at the office, the staff and attorneys walked over to the Yerba Buena Gardens to continue the holiday festivities with a couple of hours of bowling. These people I work with are sure competitive in nature. Even though the majority of us sucked at bowling (I mean we sucked big time!), we were all talking smack and trying to ruin the other's concentration. In the first game, I lost to the Managing Partner by two points ("I only let you win because you're the Boss Man."). In the second game, I beat out the Junior Associate ("Guess who's getting a bunch of work dumped on her desk tomorrow."). Then the third game was men vs. women, and let's say that didn't work out quite well. The men were scoring 275 points after Round 5 and the women were only scoring 125! The women were only barely catching up by scoring 245 after Round 8 when the pre-paid time ran out and the bowling managers didn't allow us to continue (the men didn't bowl past Round 5 because they were bowling so hard that they broke the pin setter/re-setter thingy at the end).

It wasn't a traditional firm holiday party, but I sure enjoyed this much more. Boss Man joked that next year we're all going to New York for skating in Rockefeller Center.

=)