St. Patty’s Day
I know, another entry without a life update (and in the same week, too!), but that will come later, I promise!
Friday was the day that my dept decided to do their retreat. It had been planned for a few months now, and let me just say that it’s the lamest idea they could have come up with. At least when I worked for my last dept our retreats were fun mixed with business, but in HR it was all business. In fact, we spent so much of the past month getting ready for this retreat, letting our normal work pile up, and for what? It was a glorified staff meeting with a few random “guests” thrown in for good measure. We had to go in groups to present what our different sections have been up to – our missions and responsibilites (never mind that they never change from year to year!), our 2005 accomplishments, and our 2006 goals. So pretty much to discuss all the stuff that we have been doing, that we already knew about…To be fair, there are five of us that are new to the staff (since December, when I started), but of course we have been brought up to speed already…
It was just a waste of a casual Friday, plus in general a waste of time. My main roles were setting up all the audiovisual equipment the day of the retreat, and preparing our Annual Report. At least that’s the sort of thing that I really enjoy doing, creating documents and playing around on Publisher – because I am super comfortable with software and one day it will make me big bucks at some other job. It already helped me get THIS raise, haha. Oh, and the retreat was held at Holliday Park, which I had never been to and I didn’t realize how gorgeous it is there. I can’t wait until it gets warm and the flowers start blooming – I am ready for some trail walking and some photography!
The whole afternoon was absolutely boring, and I spent my whole time doodling on scrap papers, daydreaming, chatting with the people I was sitting with, and wishing I didn’t have to be there. I was able to spend some time with one of the other new girls, and she’s Latina too. It’s so nice to have someone at work that I can speak to in Spanish, and it’s so hilarious to watch our co-workers trying to listen in and see if they can pick anything up! That’s something I really miss from working in Miami; the last job I had down there, so many of the employees spoke Spanish. So I guess spending more time with her made the retreat a bit better.
Thankfully, with cleanup and everything we were done around 4:30 – there are few better job-related feelings than leaving early on a Friday…The evening festivities began at home with a short pre-game, then on to Rock Bottom for some food, friends, and green beer (yes Mandy, it’s all about the green beer on St Paddy’s Day – in fact, our waiter was giving us the specials, and I’m like, don’t even bother, make with the green beer!) After dinner, it was off to hang with the usual suspects at our favorite party house. As is always the case, the booze and the ‘tunes flowed freely, while tons of basketball played in the background. I’m not entirely sure how much I had in total, but just enough to walk that fine line between drunk enough to feel the inflated sense of self-esteem and being completely shitfaced. I know I had some good coconut rum and Coke and a black and blue. Yummy. It was definitely one of the best parties I had been to in a while – well, since the 80’s party in January, hehehe….
Anyway, just sixteen more days until I am back home in Miami. I simply cannot wait. I wish I could leave tonight. The plan is almost all in place – three Miami Hurricane baseball games against North Carolina, one Marlins home opener, one Florida Panthers hockey game (center ice – lower bowl – $90 seats, thank you eBay!), partying at Sandbar and the Tavern (hello, Category Five Hurricanes and cheap, watered down keg beer), etc etc! So just about a solid week of indulging and sitting on the beach doing not much of anything (except getting a nice toasty tan)…life will be awesome, and just what I need after a long winter up here….