Game over

Ever been to a party where you didn’t really enjoy yourself? A party where you just wish you had saved yourself the time and energy and had just stayed home?

That was me on Friday night.

And that was at my work Christmas party.

The social committee organized this party and charged everyone ten dollars to attend. This was to cover the cost of snacks and prizes.

Prizes?

Yes. This party was a “games” party. There were games to play. Everyone was put into one of three teams and everyone was expected to participate. You could win points for your team, and then your team could win the grand prize at the end of the night.

In case you weren’t aware of this small fact about me, I don’t do games. I have played games on occasion, but as a general rule, don’t invite me to an evening of board games at your home, because I will probably politely refuse. I would prefer to work the room and actually talk to people, sipping my glass of wine, than play Cranium or Trivial Pursuit (and I am really rather good at those particular games) or horror of horrors, Rock Band (never played it, probably not so skilled at it).

But I was not even given this option at my work party. Participation was mandatory, it seemed.

PG and I deliberately arrived two hours late, hoping to avoid most of the “fun”. We didn’t. In fact, we only missed one game. Fortunately, PG had to work early the next morning, so I had already informed the social committee that we wouldn’t be able to stay long. We had to tough it out for three hours at most, we figured.

I lasted only ninety minutes before I hissed at PG, “We’re getting out of here NOW.”

But don’t get me wrong: it looked like most of my colleagues and their spouses/significant others were having a wonderful time. They were whooping it up and cheering one another on, and generally being loud and disorderly. They were totally into the whole game thing, so I guess the social committee certainly knew what would appeal to the majority of the people with whom I work. It’s just not my cup of tea. The only reason I was there was that I’d committed to attending before I knew what was planned, and as a former member of the social committee, I think it’s important that people show up for at least a short time to any event that the committee has taken the time to organize for the group. It’s a question of politeness for me, I suppose.

But this party was so contrived and regimented! Fifteen minutes between games, we were told – time enough to get a fresh drink and a quick bite to eat. Not enough time to introduce yourself or your spouse/ significant other to anybody. Not enough time to actually have a conversation with anybody. And God forbid if, when they were explaining the rules for the next game, you actually dared to chat with someone in the corner – you got shouted at!

And some of the games were rather inappropriate. I really don’t think that questions of a sexual nature for one of the games had any place in a gathering of people who simply work together. Amongst good friends, sure. But co-workers have to face each other again on Monday morning and – uh – work. As PG noted, now every time I see this one particular person at work, I will think about her story about her younger sister walking in on her and her boyfriend having sex. Or when I see that other person, I will think about all her sex toys that she proudly listed for us. I only met these two people four months ago. Talk about too much information!

Me? I lied when it was my turn and said I’d had sex in twelve different cars. To the general uproar that this statement caused, I modestly smiled and said, “Well, I’ve owned a lot of cars …”

Then we left.

Dirty dancing?

Okay, a few days have now passed and I think I am okay to write about this Embarrassing Incident. Yeah, I know, me involved in an Embarrassing Incident. Another Embarrasssing Incident. So unusual, isn’t it.

Saturday night was PG’s work Christmas party. This is the one in the nice hotel downtown, with dinner and your first two drinks paid for by the company, a dance, and cheap rates on hotel rooms for the night. We always have a good time, and this year was no exception.

I quite like to dance and rarely get the chance. PG is one of those rare men who probably wouldn’t choose to go dancing, but he will dance every dance if he’s already there. (He’s also a flirt from way back, so I suppose dancing was a great way to pick up chicks back in the day. Old habits die hard: he still dances.)

So PG and I were on the dance floor. He was dancing with a co-worker’s wife, and I was dancing with the co-worker. I don’t even remember the song that the DJ was playing, just that the music was familiar to me and I knew some of the words.

Okay, here comes the Embarrassing Incident:

I fell off the dance floor.

The dance floor was flat. There was an extremely minimal incline down to the actual floor, something like half a centimetre. This tiny incline is what I fell off. My stiletto heel slid on that little edge, and the rest of me followed.

I fell flat on my ass into a pile of empty boxes beside the DJ’s table, with my feet up in the air. I squashed the boxes. I was so disoriented that I couldn’t get up. I had nothing to grab on to anyway. So I lay there.

As PG relates it, “One minute you were there. The next minute you weren’t. I looked around, wondering where you’d gotten to. Then I saw you laying on a pile of boxes and nobody was helping you up. The DJs were just staring at you.”

The guy I’d been dancing with hauled me up at that point, I got a fit of the giggles, and we danced till the end of the song. What else could I do? Everyone who’d seen me must have thought that I was some drunken middle-aged suburban housewife and pitied the poor man who was stuck taking me home.

But at least I had underwear on. And tights. Even though I’d already ripped the tights earlier that evening.

Ready, set … Christmas!

My house is now Christmas-ified. I am exhausted, but quite pleased with myself. I was exceptionally efficient and I have now caught up to the masses. Sort of.

As other blogging buddies have already noted (hi Hannah!), there seems to have been more of rush this year to start the Christmas season. Some of my neighbours had their outdoor lights up – and lit! – around Remembrance Day. Many of my friends and work colleagues have had their trees up for two or three weeks already. Some of them have already finished their gift shopping, and everyone seems to be discussing their plans for the holidays. I’ve been to three Christmas social events already, and they were all in November.

What’s the big hurry anyway? Yes, the Christmas season is relatively short, but why are we in such a panic to finish it off before it’s really begun? Who decided that ordinary people like me need to start prepping for Christmas in mid-November? Are we that susceptible to the media and consumerism? It’s so easy to feel completely inadequate when everyone around you seems to be all ready for Christmas by December 1st: outdoor lights up, house and tree decorated, baking done, gifts bought and wrapped, turkey and trimmings purchased, etc.

Well, I got tired of that feeling. And it’s December now, so it’s time. Last evening, I hauled up my boxes of Christmas stuff from the garage. I spent two or three hours putting away my regular year-round knick-knacks and replaced them with Christmas decorations. I minimized, though. Instead of the entire nativity scene with about thirty damn animals on my fireplace mantle, I only put out Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus. Oh, and a pretty wooden star that DD made at school when she was seven or eight.

The next day, I hung all my outdoor lights. It actually didn’t take too long, as I already had most of the clips in place. I also now own a ladder, so that helped tremendously with the higher places like the balcony roof and the top of the garage. (That also helped tremendously to control my fear of heights. Who knew a ladder could be so useful?)

Once that was done, I got the tree into the living room with DD’s help, then I put it together, then I decorated it. That’s always the most pleasurable part for me, since I play schmaltzy Christmas music (Yes, I sing along. Loudly.) and sip rum and eggnog. It’s kind of a ritual, right down to doing it by myself. DD used to hover around, trying to help, but I have always shooed her away. I just enjoy doing the tree so much that she now just vacates the room and leaves me be.

When that was completed to my satisfaction, I even sat down and burned four Christmas CDs for my mom. She’s just bought her first CD player (uh – Mom? We have these things called iPods now. Have you heard of them?) and called to ask us to make her some of “those CD thingies” from our Christmas music selection. And by getting that CD player, she’s also just deprived us of a great Christmas gift idea for her. Again. She may just end up with a bottle of her favourite beverage for Christmas. Again.

So there it is. My house is ready for Christmas. Am I, though? No. Absolutely no baking has yet been done (another time-honoured ritual chez pinkea), only one present and a couple of stocking stuffers have been bought, and the rest of the required presents are not yet even a glimmer of an idea in my head.

But you know what? I don’t really care a whole lot about all that. I love the Christmas season, and when my house is decorated, I’m happy. The rest of it will somehow all come together at my own pace. It always does.

Now it’s time for yet another of my Christmas rituals: I’m going to go turn the lights on my tree and lay underneath it and look up and have a good think.

Blowing smoke

On our walk last night, DD and I had to stop in at the grocery store to pick up milk. We go through a lot of milk at our house, since we both drink a lot of lattés. Well, not exactly real lattés, more like coffee with lots of milk and maybe a bit of vanilla extract (or even sometimes real vanilla syrup, just like at Starbucks) for flavour. And we really only do this on weekends, since we’re both out of the house pretty quickly most weekdays, so we don’t actually have time (or take the time) to make coffee at home. I’d rather sleep longer.

But, I digress.

So we bought the milk and made our way to the underground parking lot of the store to go home. It’s a bit of a shortcut for us to go through that carpark to get back to our house from this store, rather than walking all the way around back the way we came in. By going this way we do have to cross a four-lane street at a spot where there’s no actual crosswalk or traffic light, but the street is only really busy during rush hours, and it was eight o’clock on a Friday night.

The sliding door opened into the carpark and our nostrils were assailed by the unmistakable odour of someone smoking dope. We glanced around. Yep, there they were, three teenagers standing beside a parked car, giggling and smoking away. It must have been strong stuff too, because that smell permeated the entire carpark, which is wide open to the elements on two sides.

Not that I’m super-conservative and strongly against marijuana or anything, but come on! Standing in a grocery store parking lot at eight o’clock on a Friday night and smoking dope? Do you really have nothing better to do? And considering that it is still an illegal substance, is there really nowhere else you can go to do your dope, perhaps somewhere just a bit more private?

And as we walked by, they didn’t even offer us any.

Sheesh. Kids these days.

The show must go on

Porsche Guy and I were at the theatre this weekend. We had tickets for a musical production of “White Christmas”, just the thing to get our Christmas season going, we thought. A real feel-good, old-fashioned story.

It truly was a lot of fun to watch. I mean, who wouldn’t enjoy ten tap-dancing guys and gals clambering up and down stairs and fake pianos? I’m honestly not a huge fan of that Broadway belt-it-out type singing, but I do appreciate the power of the singers’ voices to be able to project like they do. The acting was a bit over the top, but again, it’s supposed to be like that in musical theatre, and also that’s how actors acted way back in the 1950’s when the original movie was made. So we did enjoy it a great deal – and we in the audience got to sing “White Christmas” along with the cast on the stage, so as far as I’m concerned, any singing I get to do in public is a big win.

About three quarters of the way through the first act, however, the fire alarm in the theatre started to wail. I thought it was part of the play, and even when a voice came over the PA system saying “Will all the actors please leave the stage”, I still didn’t get it. I got it when they turned the house lights up, though. This was most emphatically not part of the play.

Now, do you remember what happened the last time PG and I went to see a musical, back last spring at this same theatre? It was “Les Misérables”, and the sound board fizzled out, so after a delay of forty minutes or so, the performance was cancelled and everybody had to either rebook their tickets or get a refund. So PG and I don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to musicals.

So we all sat there for five or ten minutes, talking animatedly amongst ourselves. Then came an announcement over the PA. PG and I froze. Not again, we fervently hoped.

The announcer told us that it appeared that there was a malfunction with the fire alarm system, there was definitely no fire so no need to evacuate, but the firefighters were on their way to the theatre to check things out and give the all clear. They hoped to continue the performance as soon as possible.

They “hoped”? Oh noze!

Shortly afterward, two handsome, strapping young firefighters came striding down the centre aisle, to a smattering of applause. Several minutes later, they left, waving, accompanied by more applause. We waited. PG was getting very antsy – and negative. “It’s been too long. They’re going to cancel this one too!”

But then, after we’d been waiting about twenty-five minutes total, they announced that the play would be continuing, so could everybody please return to their seats. A couple of minutes later, the house lights again dimmed, the orchestra started up again, and the curtain rose again on the scene that had been so rudely interrupted by that wayward fire alarm. The play carried on, and we in the audience certainly got our money’s worth!

But now I’m starting to wonder about musicals, PG and me. So far, we are two for two in terms of “incidents” at musicals. We have tickets to one more this season, in May 2010. It should be a good show. After all, what could possibly go wrong?