Holiday Party 2008

My company had our annual holiday party on Saturday night. This meant two things, one is that we didn't get to go see Quinn and Catherine's second night performance in the church concert, and two that Ginger's parents were up to watch the kids while we went to the party. This also allowed Ginger's parents the opportunity to go see the kids perform. I heard afterward the performance went well, but for some reason the kids didn't get to bed until close to 10 PM (which may have something to do with the fact that we got a call from Ginger's parent's while at the party during dinner asking us where the popcorn maker was).


We ended up hanging out with our usual group of suspects at the party. In addition to our normally motley crew we also had Nadra and Colin hang out with us a bit beforehand and during dinner.


I normally hate dressing up, and this is really no exception to that. Luckily the party has free drinks, so it makes it easier. The food was a bit on the bland side. They had some cut beef that was rather tasty. but then they also had some salmon that someone tried to save by loading it up with butter and cream sauce. Ginger thought her lasagna was rather bland. But again, the drinks were free. Although if that's what I thought of the food with some alcohol in me it which makes me wonder how the food would have tasted without the drinks.


For the past couple of years there's been a gambling theme where surrounding rooms have had roulette, blackjack and other games. This year the theme was more on active entertainment as they had a couple pool tables, some ping pong, air hockey, Foosball and even a couple of rooms with Wiis in them. The Wiis seemed popular eventually, but early on in the night had few takers so we managed to get in a game of Mario Kart initially. Ken schooled me and a couple others at Mario Kart. As one might expect those of us that had played the game prior all came in the top slots and people that had never played it before came in at the bottom. Having the Wiis there allowed Ginger to try out Wii Ski with the balance board, which probably saved us from purchasing it ourselves since she wasn't impressed with it and didn't think the kids would like it that much.


Later in the evening after dinner Pete schooled me in some ping pong, but wearing a suit and doesn't go real well with physical activity so we switched to air hockey, which he also beat me at. Basically most of the night consisted of me getting beat up on by someone at some activity. Eventually around 11 the bar closed and we left a short while thereafter. One would think those two events were related, but truthfully I had stopped drinking after dinner so the lack of the bar wasn't what prompted us to leave. What really prompted us to leave was the fact that the closed bar prompted everyone else that was there to leave, so the party was really winding down after that.

In general Ginger is running out of people she knows to talk to at this yearly event and has decided that next year she may just stay home and have me go stag. So I'm guessing from that she didn't have that much fun. The gambling in year's past hasn't really been her thing and it was tough for her to participate in the physical activities with heels on (although I think she did play a little air hockey with Karen for a bit).