Holiday Cheer

The office Christmas Party and gift exchange was yesterday. I ended up leaving work early due to a power outage; it's hard to work in complete darkness. The owner sent us out of the office early; everyone decided to go the restaurant and sit in the bar...at least I thought that was the plan.

I was the first person there by about half an hour. Now, there's nothing that screams, "I am a loser with no friends," like sitting at a table in the bar by yourself and reading a book. This is what I would have ended updoing as I literally had nothing to do. Instead of heading in the bar, I sat by the window and gazed out longingly for my coworkers. I was just about ready to give up and go to the bar to see if I could find someone that did not mind me sitting at their table when Richard showed up.

He looked rather uncomfortable when he saw it was just me, but I ran over and grabbed him anyway so that he had no choice but to keep me company until everyone else arrived. I am aware that Richard is a (not out) gay male, and I got the feeling that he was afraid I would try and hit on him. I quickly steered the topic of conversation to safe topics like travel to make him feel comfortable.

After about an hour of me pulling out every travel anecdote I could think of, another colleague showed up with her partner. I breathed an internal sigh of relief and did mental cartwheels when sat down to join us. Thank goodness as my conversation topics would shortly have been tapped as dry as the Los Angeles River during drought center. Most of my coworkers showed up after that, and we went into our private room for the party.

We started off the evening with appetizers, wine, and the white elephant gift exchange. I was the only one that brought a gag gift. As predicted I got a laugh, but not as big a one as I had hoped. My gift was opened by the only other woman working in the office. I'm sure I would have gotten a much bigger chuckle had one of the guys opened it. Predictably, no one would trade with her.