What a week!

This past week went flying by!
Here is a breakdown of events:
Monday =
Work half day and volunteer with 22 other coworkers at the San Francisco Food Bank from 12:30 - 3:30. Our project was repackaging rice into affordable packages for the community that uses the food bank or one of its many other pantries around the city. It was super fun and the time flew by. I was scooping rice one one side of the bin and my boss was on the other and we had contests during the afternoon to see who could get closest to a pound scooping with the left hand, 10 small scoops and one legged. The Food Bank had music on so we were all rocking out. It was a wonderful afternoon and a great opportunity for me to get photos of my coworkers in hairnets!

Tuesday =

Work until about 6 PM, drop some things off at one of the VP's homes (that she forgot), and then pick up Tim to go to Target and run errands. Got home around 9 PM and then went to bed.

Wednesday=

Work at my desk a couple hours in the morning and then start to transform one of the meeting rooms (creative space) into a winter wonderland. I had planned a sit down lunch for 100 people for our holiday party, so I had my work cut out for me. I had help from Wendy and Aya and the decorations were done within a couple hours. Rentals arrived and we started setting up tables, dressing the tables with crisp white clothes and rolling silverware in festive red napkins. Plants arrived and were placed on the tables along with a long ribbon running down the middle. The only thing missing was the chairs, which were coming later in the day.

I stayed at the office until the chairs arrived at about 6:40 PM and decided I would see how many I could set up by 7:00 PM and got the entire room done except for a little row of tables that we were going to finish in the morning. I got home around 8 PM and crashed.
This is how I left the room on Wednesday night.

Thursday=

Work for a hour or so, set up last couple tables and AV (I projected a yule log on the wall). Set up tables for the buffet, chafing dishes were set and all we needed was the catering. Catering arrived and the dishes were filled with a wonderful holiday meal, turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, salad and cranberry sauce. Everyone lined up and filled their plates and made their way into the room for lunch. We actually ran out of seats! I was really happy about that since last year about 1/3 of the office showed up.

After the meal, I made a couple of announcements, appreciations and then we moved on to the Yankee Gift Swap. We had 53 people in the swap this year! They way it works is everyone gets a number, number one starts and picks a gift and opens it. Number 2 picks a gift and opens it and then can decide if they want to keep it or take the number 1 gift, this repeats through the entire line of people and then number 1 gets to go again to pick from all of the opened gifts or the can keep what they got. I was number 26 and opened a nice espresso maker for the stove top - I knew this was going to get taken from me so I decided to steal a gift I knew no one else wanted, but I loved it! The Pope John Paul II water/drink dispenser that number 1 had opened. He sits on my desk now, but will soon move to another location or be brought out at parties and could use a little more spirit. People come by my office to see it and have a few laughs. I love the Pope, so to me, I just like having him around. It is pretty crazy though and gets a lot of laughs around the office. People laugh at how proud I am of it and the fact that I actually took it from someone else. You should have heard the room chanting "Pope, Pope, Pope, Pope...."when each person had an option to steal. It was a great gift exchange and everyone went back to work afterwards.

I was at work until 6 PM - spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up, packing up leftovers for the local food bank to pick up with Wendy and Aya and directing some guys who helped fold up the tables. We got everything pretty cleared up by the time we left for the day.

Friday=
Chiropractor appointment and boy did I need it! Went to the office and made sure all of the rented stuff (plates, glasses, silverware, linen, tables and chairs) were all set to be picked up. Got caught up on work, called Emily (it was her Birthday) and left on time for once this week.

It was a fun and busy week - next week will be a little more mellow and I can get caught up and start working on my next big event that I plan each year...The All*Star Awards Dinner, this will be my 9th year planning it.