Dirty Santa, Baby!

We had a Department Chili Lunch and Dirty Santa game yesterday. The bowls of chili were massive, and hot. I'm pretty sure mine once covered the ruins of Pompeii. In other words, it was perfect.

The conversation at my end of the table mostly centered around kid's toys and TV shows. There was some debate over Thomas the Train and similar items. Cute, or Creepy? I threw in my support with the "Creepy" crowd, saying "Inanimate objects really shouldn't have faces. They tend to invade my nightmares."

This was met with general amusement and some skepticism. "Didn't you have toys like that when you were a kid?" "Well yeah," I replied, "but when I was a kid, my toy bulldozer looked like a bulldozer. It didn't have a face!"

Soon, our conversation was interrupted for the start of the Dirty Santa game. There was all the typical D.S. amusement... one guy in particular kept opening up cool gifts, so he was constantly being stolen from, that sort of thing.

One guy opened up a package and got a USB fish tank. Plastic fish floating around in a fake fish tank. It was cute. Chatty said, "Hey, let me see that." He picked up the box, then looked at me and smiled. "Look out Jeff, they've got faces!"

I convulsed in mock horror and hid under my chair.

Later, Shaggy (former 70's hippy type, current department boss-ish thinger) opened up a present. To his considerable dismay, it was a purse with photo sleeves.

The roar of laughter lasted a *long* time. Toward the end, I stoked the fires a bit by shouting, "Shaggy, that goes really nice with your eyes!" "Don't you have some work you need to be doing?", he asked, desperately.

For the rest of the game, he was a failing purse pitchman. "Hey man," he'd say, holding the purse out invitingly, "You could be workin' from home tomorrow."

Sadly, he wound up "winning" the purse for himself. As folks wandered off to their desks to work (nap), one of the managers asked Shaggy to hold the purse up so she could see it. Thus distracted, the department head was able to come up and snap a photo of Shaggy proudly holding up the purse. "You set me up!", Shaggy howled.

For the record, I also tried to snap a photo of my own but it didn't work out. You'll just have to use your imaginations.

Happy Friday!

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