The Office

Even though I usually don't blog about my work, this past week has been sort of exceptional, which merits at least an honorable bulleted mention. Once a year my institute does a week-long program review with all the staff gathering in the DC office for a week of meetings and discussions on how our work is going. Even though it gets a bit hectic with lots of people roaming around the usually quiet halls, in retrospect it was quite an interesting week:

~The never-ending food supply: during these reviews, they usually cater several meals and snacks per day, so there is such an abundance of (free) food that by the end of the week, even those who are always hungry like myself couldn't stand the sight of another (albeit delicious) sandwich, bagel, fruit salad, cookies/brownies, and other snacks. One of the newer staff members from Uzbekistan couldn't believe his eyes---when I ran into him, all he could muster besides a "hello" was "Does this feast ever end?" The feast culminated during our division retreat on Thursday with cake being served for one of our colleague's birthdays around 10am (that's when you know your day is off to a bad start) and then incredible pumpkin cheesecake served at lunchtime for desert.

~On Tuesday, being "high" on all the food (and sugar) and tired of being locked up in a meeting room, I got a bit hyper and literally chased down the facilities guy who was delivering mail and packages because I thought that I had seen my Banana Republic box in his pile. This was a new low, even for me, especially since the package ended up being for someone else---oops. (In my defense, they usually are for me). I think I scared Glen a bit, and he is going to be avoiding me from now on.

~Best part: sneaking out at 4:00pm on Friday with 6 other co-workers to go to the movies. I think by Friday afternoon we were all so collectively unproductive that we decided that it made more sense to contribute to the GDP by paying the movie ticket fees than by sitting at our computers doing nothing.

Too bad that good things have to come to an end. Oh wait, tomorrow is President's Day---yay for another day off.