Forced Fun and Fancy Parties

Or, "How I Spent the First Two-Thirds of My Weekend"

As is tradition (apparently), yesterday we had our JPAC company picnic.  Now, when a military organization sends out an invitation, they send out an invitation.  See below for the first part of the first of many pages outlining our specific orders:

One should note section 3a, especially the phrases "official duty location" and "[all] deviations from this guidance must be approved by the Deputy Commander."  This was mandatory fun, everyone!  The rule was that if you didn't want to go, you could either take official leave or go to work for the full day.  Now, I hate fun as much as the next incredibly dull person, but I'm wise enough to know that eating free food by the beach and getting to go home at 2:00 (or 1400, if you're military) is still preferable over going to work for nine hours.  So I went to the picnic.  It was fun for awhile.  The food was good and I walked by the ocean and gathered some "treasures from the sea"* until I stubbed my toe on a rock and had to go tend to the bleeding lest I contract some type of ocean disease.  Getting to go home in the middle of the day was pretty awesome; I had to keep reminding myself that it was a Friday and not the Saturday it felt like.  I spent a bit of the rest of the day at the mall (where I ate a pistachio macaroon at the Pacific Place Tea Garden--yum!) and then went home to clean my new-old chair.

Clearly, a Friday of fun with co-workers was just not enough!  I write tonight after having just returned from a fancy party at my old professor/current supervisor's house.  I got the invitation for this event Monday, as did some other co-workers:  "cocktails and dinner," it said!  My first thought:  whatever will I wear?  My second thought:  wow, I'm definitely not in grad school anymore!  A party at the "boss's" house!  This is how one moves up in life!  Thankfully, it turned out to not be the formal affair I had envisioned:  it was an outdoor gathering with many people from work and some not--no cause for worrying about which fork to use and the proper technique of buttering rolls.**  I felt slightly overdressed in my black-and-white fifties-esque "favorite" dress, but I didn't stand out like a sore thumb, either.  This is not to say that the event wasn't fancy--oh, how fancy it was!  Everything was so beautifully presented--no paper plates and plastic cutlery here!  The hosts definitely went to great lengths and it was much appreciated.  Of course, the food was fantastic!  Grilled steak and vegetables and hors d'oeuvres (this really delicious crab dip, among other things) and strawberry shortcakes and soda in glass bottles---look at me, I'm sounding like an orphan from the 1930s experiencing decadence for the first time!  And all the exclamation marks!  I guess my naïvete about such things is a good quality--better than jaded sighs of "ugh, not another one of these work parties," right?

At any rate, it was a fine weekend, and it's only Saturday night!


*I was feeling very Sarah, Plain and Tall as I did this; I intend to mail some of these "treasures" (shells, coral, and the like) to some of my "mainland" friends.
**You only butter the part you're eating at the very moment--cutting it in half and eating it like a butter sandwich is a terrible faux pas!  I usually avoid this awkwardness altogether by eating the entire roll at once.