Frosty
Sunday, December 11th, 2005Although Josephine and I had been looking forward to the S Tech Holiday Party for several weeks, we both fell asleep on the couch.
Gasp. It’s 4:45 PM. We have to leave in 15 minutes.
So since I had couch-head, I hopped in the shower… again.
And we were out the door by 5:02 PM. Destination. Padres Hall of Fame Bar and Grill at Petco Park, the old warehouse standing in front of right field that has been converted to a souvenir shop on the lower floors and a nice restaurant on the top floor with the balcony overlooking right field.
Despite the heavy traffic on a Saturday night in North County off the 15 freeway, we arrived at Petco Park a little after 6:00 PM. At the door I was greeted by name by one of the HR people, which is pretty good considering I don’t work at the corporate headquarters. I got a company Christmas gift, which was a nice mini portfolio with notepad inside. I also was handed my parking validation worth $8. This company is awesome. Free holiday party, free parking in downtown San Diego.
[What a breath of fresh air when you compare this to the lame-ass party that A Corp had last year. Thank goodness I didn't go. Not only would I have to spend it with a bunch of lame people, but I would have had to pay $100 for the both of us to go have a party at some lame hotel.]
Before dinner, we enjoyed a variety of nice hors d’oeuvres like sushi, shish kebab, crab meat patties, stuffed tomatoes, and empanadas. We also enjoyed soft drinks and a modified 7 and 7 from the open bar. Modified? They didn’t have Seagram’s whiskey, so the bartender made it with bourbon instead.
Dinner was delicious! They had salads (mixed greens and Caesar’s), potatoes (scalloped au gratin and garlic mashed), teriyaki chicken, baked fish, prime rib, and vegetarian pasta (heavy on the garlic!). We definitely ate too much.
After dinner the company gave out 5-year service awards and made some other announcements. But we didn’t hear much of it very well. The people sitting with us at our table were very rude. They were practically shouting their conversation as if they were the only ones at the table. I think they had too much to drink. One of the executives sitting at the adjacent table was trying to get those rude people to shut up during the announcements, but they were oblivious.
They raffled away some company goodies, which I did not win. However, I did win a cool prize when they were doing some Christmas song trivia. When it was our table’s turn we had to guess the last words of Frosty the Snowman. So I started singing the song to myself. My first inclination was to guess, “Christmas is on its way,” but I knew it was wrong. Other than “Thumpety, thump, thump,” my brain was running out of options. So I started singing away some more in my head. Then I blurted out the correct answer: “I’ll be back again some day!”
My prize was this plastic maze money holder thingie. You had to maneuver this tiny metal ball inside of a plastic maze into this small boxed area. Once inside there, it allows you to open the plastic drawer, which held a $30 Blockbuster gift card. Pretty cool.
After struggling with the maze for several minutes, I let Josephine and someone from another table try it. None of us could figure it out. The guy at the next table had the same idea as me. It’s “hammer-time” baby.
We left the party early at around 8:45 PM. We skipped out on the video horse racing, dancing, and any other games and activities they had planned. On the way home, Josephine and I stopped to finish our Christmas shopping. We made it home by 10:00 PM.
All in all, a great party and great food.
P.S. I took a hammer to that plastic thingie this morning. With my gift card, I rented Cinderella Man (Widescreen Edition), The Skeleton Key (Widescreen Edition), and Murderball.
