Danny was invited to attend the Belcan company Christmas party on Friday. We were actually debating whether or not we should go because our ward Christmas party was the same night and we wouldn't be able to find a babysitter. Plus, Danny kept forgetting to pay the money for his guest-me!...typical. :) So once he finally got the money paid and everything was in order to go, I decided it was my initiative to find a babysitter.
Our options to find a sitter were limited, but I ended up asking a couple that Danny and I met at our Halloween party. The Glausers are former BYU students and the wife actually worked on the formula 1 race car with Danny in 05. I remember her distinctly because she was the ONLY girl among a bunch of guys taking turns racing the car. AWESOME! She was sweet to agree to babysit Jakob even though she was hosting a going away party for a couple leaving their ward. What's even better is that Jakob had a great time and was super happy with all the entertainment and attention that he got from all the wives oogling over how cute he is...little flirt.
We arrived at the Chowder Pot around 6:45 and I got to meet some of Danny's coworkers. They are much older than we and I felt a little out of sorts mingling among older/wiser people. I enjoyed listening to them give their opinion for where we should go to see the best sights along the coast. We have an entire new list of places that we need to visit in CT, yay! We mingled and ate our new favorite appetizer: crackers, cheese and pepperoni. We were asked to take our seats for the main coarse around 7:30.
There are a couple of things that I am trying to get use to living in Connecticut: First, I can't believe how many people are smokers. I can smell the smoke in their clothes as they pass, on their breath when they talk, and in the air as they exhale right in front of me. I miss Utah's clean air! Second, drinking alcohol is as common as drinking water. I am amazed how many individuals at this party were drinking alcohol and were going back to the bar for third and fourth rounds. In my mind I was making the connection-If all these people are drinking 4 glasses of alcoholic beverages and planning to drive home after the party, they can either really hold down their drinks or there are a LOT of extremely unsafe drivers on the road-scary thought! We enjoyed our buffet style meal and I got to listen to some entertaining conversations among east coasters. I was slightly amused to see how excited everyone was when the waiters brought out the coffee. One woman said, "Oh finally. I've been waiting fort his all night." Yeah, I'm still trying to get use to it here.
Around 8:15 there was a lovely presentation for a member of Belcan who was retiring this year. Afterward there was a raffle- pulling names from a bowl and giving out gift certificates. I don't usually have high hopes when it comes to raffles, but when a woman from our table received a gift certificate to Macys I suddenly became more interested-Christmas shopping!!! One by one the announcer called names from the bowl and complained about how bad their handwriting was. The very last name was called and who should win? Danny of course! He danced his way up to the front, since everyone who got called had to do this, and returned to the table. I anxiously awaited to see my, I mean his, prize as he opened the seal to the envelope. He pulled out the gift card and we were both thrilled to have received a generous gift to...a liquor store! YES!!! ha ha ha Danny's older friend Bob just laughed and said, "You don't even drink!" We both just laughed and honestly didn't know what to do. I was hoping the "Macys" lady was fond of liquor, but she wasn't willing to trade. Bob found a guy from a different table who was trying to trade his gift certificate. When asked to trade for the liquor he said, "sure, that's much better than a golf shop." So Danny got a 50 dollar gift card to a golf shop. Later we found out that someone had a Lowes card and was also willing to trade...I wonder what other options we had. :)
We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and had a great time! It's nice to be among adults after being with Jakob all day. We had some laughs, won a prize, and did a little dancing: a great Company party indeed.
3 comments:
Pha ha! That is the best story Jamie. It was kind of crazy how excited I was getting just reading about how you won to find out that it was a liquor card. Oh man. So funny!
I so agree on the smoking/drinking/coffee thing. Especially the smoking! I'm always astounded by how many people smoke here still. I always want to ask them, "Have you been living under a rock?? Who in their right mind smokes anymore??" What I do have a hard time getting used to is everybody's astonishment that we DON'T do those things. Pretty much everyday for the first 2 months of school somebody offered to get Jacob a coffee (it's NYC, he's like half a block away from 3 different Starbucks) and he had to tell them he doesn't drink coffee and they all would freak out about it. It's almost unfair that his classmates are getting this extra coffee buzz all the time to keep them going and he's on his own! Now a lot of people know he's LDS so it's not so bad though it's weird because his classmates only get together outside school to drink.
Did you find tickets home for Christmas? I'm going home for like 3 1/2 weeks because it was cheaper to fly that far outside of christmas!
yeah, the drinking and smoking thing is interesting. What kills me is all of these PhD students and Med students getting wasted on the weekends. These people know exactly what this stuff can do to their bodies but who cares. Right. Anybody want a drink?? sheesh. lol.
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