My Day

Check this out. I don't post for a month and then you get 3 posts within the last 10 days.


It is 4:38 pm and I have 22 minutes remaining at work. At least I hope it is only 12 more minutes. Jared went over to a client building and has yet to return. The thought came to me that I could use the remaining time to do some more actual work. But I'm exhausted. Let me tell you why.


As you may or may not have known, work decided to have a team building activity. It was initial scheduled to be in the middle of September. That didn't happen. So we set it for today with a Halloween theme. As is usual with these types of things, I was largely in charge. When I told the managers that I was seeing people decline the meeting invite to come, I got the task of telling people that it was mandatory and they must come or have a most excellent reason for missing out. As it turned out, we only had a handful of people not able to come. We had about 60 of the 80 people present.


I had all my prep work done yesterday and the only thing I had left to take from my apartment was my jello (which was absolutely yummy and I was excited to see a little bit leftover afterwards). I wasn't feeling anxious or stressed about everything being prepared. Despite that, I had a horrible time sleeping last night. I just couldn't. I was exhausted by the time I was supposed to be up that I burst out in tears when my cat found one tiny bit of my leg showing through my blanket on my couch recliner. Not what I would call a good start to my day.

Jared was beyond amazing today. He helped me out instead of doing the tons of work he had to do. He and a co-worker (Tyler) set up the tables and chairs for me. Then they kept going and put up the bats and table cloths. And they just kept helping. It was awesome. I wish I hadn't forgotten my camera so Rod (the picture taker) had better have taken good pictures of my decorations.

Table cloths: black trash bags cut open. Two to a table. Taped together to imitate stitches like Frankenstein. Jared initially thought up the idea of trash bags, but I don't think he was being serious because as soon as I decided it was a good idea he said "but it's tacky!" Hey, it's Halloween. Tyler thought it was cool.

Center pieces: trees made from paper bags. Took about 15-20 minutes per bag. I used paper clip holders as weights so the trees would stand up. I also made little ghosts from salt dough. I will not do that again. At least not with the dough recipe I chose. A few people liked them enough to keep some though. I also put Halloween rubber duckies and Jack-O-Lantern stress balls that were "party favors" on the tables. The stress balls were really cute.

Bats: I made 150 origami bats. Really easy, just a little time consuming because of the amount. Oh, and then I ended up having to paint eyes on them (pens weren't working for me) with white out. Jared and Tyler put them up on the walls and did a great job with it. It looked really good -- better than I had envisioned!

Halloween Trivia: team activity #1 that was done during the potluck portion of the activity.

Build the Perfect Team Member: This turned out really well. We split everyone into teams (randomly) and gave them a small box of random parts. They had to list 6 characteristics of the perfect team member and then build a team member using the parts they were given. Afterwards, they showed them off and told them why they chose what they did. We now have them on display in our office. Kind of in a remote area of the office but... we don't exactly have a central display case.

All in all today, I started at 8:45 am and clean up ended at 2:15 pm. I got lots of compliments on the decor. Everyone seemed to have an enjoyable time. And best of all, I don't have to take home tons of food.

Oh, and I have Friday and Monday off. I need sleep.