Step One: Put Your Holiday in a Box

First off, I still haven't figured out what that ornament thingy was supposed to be, but your suggestions were fabulous. Next time I'm at my parent's house, I'll collect all the whistles my mom and I found in the attic and send one to each of you. Then, if you happen to see the life-size ornament monster, you can whistle your little heart out and hopefully someone will come save you before you're attacked by the shiny peppermint horror.

It is always so hard to go back to work on Mondays! I feel like I type these same words every Monday, but this week is especially difficult since I still have so much to do and so many people are already gone, celebrating the holidays somewhere, no doubt with a moose-shaped chalice full of spiked egg nog. And I LOVE spiked egg nog. The highlight of this past weekend didn't actually occur during the weekend at all, but rather during the office's white elephant gag gift exchange on Friday morning before our holiday luncheon. A truly brilliant co-worker wrapped up a cardboard box after nestling a can of spotted dick amongst lots of tissue paper inside. (By the way, for anyone who does not know what spotted dick is, it's a "sponge pudding" substance that usually has raisins in it. Or something. I don't really know, it's a Scottish dessert available to us here in the States by the fine people at Heinz who make my favorite kind of ketchup in the whole wide world, which I could eat all day, but that is another story for another time.) But do you get it? It was spotted DICK...in a BOX. Genius!! When the lady who chose that gift opened it up, you could see the wheels turning in our heads as we all just sat there for a minute wondering why the heck a can of spotted dick was...inside of a...OH MY GOSH! Hahahahajdsljfksaldfj!

That part was funny. But the story gets more awkwardly hilarious. Some of the older employees had never seen the SNL sketch and probably wouldn't know the first thing about Justin Timberlake's gorgeousness or about going on YouTube to check out the video. So our 60-something head of the Foundation department (how do I say nicely that she is sort of loony?) got up, grabbed the box, and proceeded to sing almost the entire song WITH DEMONSTRATIONS on how to (1) cut a hole in the box, (2) put your you-know-what in the box, and so on and so forth, with lots of hip gyrations to boot. Half of us dissolved into hysterics and the other half just stared at her, wide-eyed, jaws all the way to the floor. And yes, this was BEFORE we went to lunch, where there was a cash bar. I don't even know what else to say about that, except that thinking about it still makes me laugh and cringe at the same time.

The rest of the weekend was good. Nothing too crazy or out of control, but it was nice to be in town and not have to worry about whether or not the highly-anticipated snow storms would complicate things. My friend Ethan threw a party at his mom's house on Friday night, because he is dog sitting for her two adorable beagles and also keeping an eye on his 18 year old sister. So of COURSE they threw a party! Duh. And of course 95% of the guests were wild-eyed college freshmen, frothing at the mouth for free beer and the chance to have an impromptu dance party. The rest of us kept Ethan (and the beagles) company and downed the punch he had concocted. When my insides began to curdle painfully from the sugar-gin-vodka-7Up-juice concoction, I looked at my roommates and saw that they were feeling the same way. We hit the road soon after, though not before overhearing one of the freshman girls call a friend just to say how drunk she was, she had had FOUR beers, GAHHH! (Oooh to be young again.)

It snowed a few inches on Saturday before we went to a fun Christmas cocktail party that night (and I wore the sparkly dress again, hooray!). I was really lazy on Sunday, which dammit, I felt I deserved after shoveling the driveway and finally getting some shopping done, including going to the grocery store since I can't survive off toast alone any longer. And now, it's back to work. Baaaack to work. Ugh. Is it Friday yet?