Oh, Yeah

The faculty party last night was fun.  I do like the people I work with, and I didn't feel too bad when I started yawning around 9:00 because everyone else was yawning too.  Teachers!  We're such party animals!

Actually, we are.  I had forgotten that the competition for the cleverest white elephant gift was more among Utah friends/colleagues.  For the party last night I made a version of a gift my parents gave me a few years ago - an "automatic paper-grading box."  It's a little box with letter stamps in it (A, B, C, D, & F), along with an inkpad.  You shake up the box, select a letter at random, stamp the assignment, and move on.  For fun, I also threw in a harmonica ("To learn to play in all your new free time!").

My gift was one of the last opened (it was also the smallest, and the big packages always go first).  To my dismay, the husband of the counseling secretary was the one who picked it rather than one of the many teachers there.  He opened it up and took it apart looking mystified, while his wife exclaimed "What the **** is that?" (she was a bit tipsy by this point).

It did get traded later in the game - Jesse wanted the harmonica.  Some of the teachers there said that it was "clever," so I guess I met my goal.  Wrong crowd, though.  The gifts that were the most popular were the bottles of wine, the Belgian beer, the miniature version of Manneken Pis that pees liquor, the illustrated book of sexual positions, and the set of vibrators with various lotions.  Yeah, "clever" was not what I should have been going for.  (If you're wondering, I wound up with a book of Christmas-themed bumper stickers, which I gave to another teacher who admired it.)

After the party I had the pleasure of turning off my phone and all my alarms and sleeping in.  I mostly spent the day running Christmas errands.  The stores were crazy with lines winding all around the aisles.  When I got home I did several loads of laundry, cleaned out my fridge, wrapped presents, and started one of my big craft projects for the year while watching old episodes of Community and Doctor Who.  I'm thrilled that I have a whole week off before Christmas.  Rather than staying up for unreasonable hours sewing, I stopped at a good point and packed the project up to take to and work on in Grand Junction.  Luxury!

I'm off to finish packing now so I can depart soon after church tomorrow.  It looks like the weather is completely cooperative - it's supposed to be in the 40s in Vail tomorrow!  Yay for global warming!