(no subject)
Yesterday was the fabulous work "celebrate success" day. Our director likes to do these every now and again because so many of my colleagues come from consulting backgrounds and miss the perks that consulting used to give them. It's also a chance for the director to point out how much money his development teams have saved the company. My little analysis and reporting team just goes for the free food and drink ;-)
Anyway, it was yesterday. We went into London for the do, going to Brown's in Covent Garden for lunch. I took the sensible precaution of leaving the office early, driving to a train station near home and travelling in from there to meet them all. Last time I left the car at the office and was then faced with a long, traffic-filled drive home after a long day in London. Not fun.
Lunch was very long because the restaurant took rather a long time to serve the food - we didn't finish until 4pm having arrived at 12.30pm! Thankfully there was no assigned seating thing this time so I got to sit with colleagues that I actually know and like, rather than contractors that I'd never met before. I also got to know a couple of people that I haven't been able to chat to before. The food was pretty 'meh' but the company was good, making lunch very entertaining. When we were finally done, there were the usual patting the other teams on the backs speeches and then we got on with the 'fun' activity portion of the day.
This time, it wasn't a treasure hunt with impenetrable clues. Nor was I in my director's team. Both factors made it a much more fun activity. We got split into teams (making sure all the usual friendly groups got split up) and each team was set the task of recreating, in five photos, a famous movie. In fact, the thing bore a startling resemblance to Wobblevision. Except I'm sure none of my colleagues have been to Redemption...
Thankfully my team got assigned a movie with a couple of fairly iconic scenes that were easy to recreate, so when we have to play guess the movie next week we should do OK. We also managed to complete it in around 40 minutes, arriving at the pub nice and early :-))
I had planned to leave after the commuter rush on the train, but ended up not leaving until 9pm! It was fun, though, and I enjoyed getting to know people better. I even found that one of the new chaps is a fellow book geek. And as my colleagues got more drunk, they got even funnier ;-)
The downside was that I totally overdid things, including standing to talk with people for a couple of hours, so by the time I got home my back was killing me. Bleh. I finally gave up on undrugged sleep at around 2am and took some painkillers which knocked me out. In fact, I then slept so well that I missed my hairdresser's appointment! So I've had to rebook it for next week - my hairdresser is lovely and knows that I'm only late or fail to turn up if it's something really bad, so she called when I was ten minutes late to check on me and fitted me in next week. Phew!
I now feel like a complete zombie, so I really need to wake up a bit so that I can do some college work, which is the plan I set myself for this weekend. First, though, I'm going to eat some soup for lunch.
Anyway, it was yesterday. We went into London for the do, going to Brown's in Covent Garden for lunch. I took the sensible precaution of leaving the office early, driving to a train station near home and travelling in from there to meet them all. Last time I left the car at the office and was then faced with a long, traffic-filled drive home after a long day in London. Not fun.
Lunch was very long because the restaurant took rather a long time to serve the food - we didn't finish until 4pm having arrived at 12.30pm! Thankfully there was no assigned seating thing this time so I got to sit with colleagues that I actually know and like, rather than contractors that I'd never met before. I also got to know a couple of people that I haven't been able to chat to before. The food was pretty 'meh' but the company was good, making lunch very entertaining. When we were finally done, there were the usual patting the other teams on the backs speeches and then we got on with the 'fun' activity portion of the day.
This time, it wasn't a treasure hunt with impenetrable clues. Nor was I in my director's team. Both factors made it a much more fun activity. We got split into teams (making sure all the usual friendly groups got split up) and each team was set the task of recreating, in five photos, a famous movie. In fact, the thing bore a startling resemblance to Wobblevision. Except I'm sure none of my colleagues have been to Redemption...
Thankfully my team got assigned a movie with a couple of fairly iconic scenes that were easy to recreate, so when we have to play guess the movie next week we should do OK. We also managed to complete it in around 40 minutes, arriving at the pub nice and early :-))
I had planned to leave after the commuter rush on the train, but ended up not leaving until 9pm! It was fun, though, and I enjoyed getting to know people better. I even found that one of the new chaps is a fellow book geek. And as my colleagues got more drunk, they got even funnier ;-)
The downside was that I totally overdid things, including standing to talk with people for a couple of hours, so by the time I got home my back was killing me. Bleh. I finally gave up on undrugged sleep at around 2am and took some painkillers which knocked me out. In fact, I then slept so well that I missed my hairdresser's appointment! So I've had to rebook it for next week - my hairdresser is lovely and knows that I'm only late or fail to turn up if it's something really bad, so she called when I was ten minutes late to check on me and fitted me in next week. Phew!
I now feel like a complete zombie, so I really need to wake up a bit so that I can do some college work, which is the plan I set myself for this weekend. First, though, I'm going to eat some soup for lunch.