Company Picnic 2016

Today was the company picnic for the organization that employs me. For a guy who typically works nights, it's a wonderful opportunity to see co-workers I don't see that often. This year, the picnic committee decided on a 'casino' theme- we had a craps table, roulette wheel, and two blackjack tables set up in the main conference room of our headquarters, and gaming professionals to run the games. Everybody received one-thousand 'dollars' worth of play money, which could be redeemed for raffle tickets for prizes. I learned that my boss is quite the craps player... who'd a thunk it?

It was another scorcher of a day, so the lawn games that we usually play didn't receive much attention. In a very funny side attraction, the picnic committee set up what I called the 'junior delinquent games', which on further consideration I would call the 'misspent youth' games. One game was much like 'beer pong'- nine cups of water were set up in a square, and the first competitor to land three of their colored ping pong balls in a row, similar to a 'tic-tac-toe' victory, would win. One of our IT guys is a table tennis whiz, so he did pretty well in this game. I'm a big beer drinker, so I beat a young guy who works in our retail department, though it was a close match. Another of these games involved shooting a triangular stack of empty soda cans with rubber bands, with victory going to the first one to knock down all of the cans. I was up against a diminutive pixie from the development office. I won pretty handily, largely because I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home shoot brown marmorated stink bugs with rubber bands during the great stink bug infestation of 2012. When one of my co-workers noted that smashing the stink bugs releases pheromones which attract more stink bugs, I noted, "That was the point, more targets for the shooting gallery." A good friend of mine used to joke about youthful mischief, "If we weren't so bored, we wouldn't have had so much fun." Paradoxical, no? At any rate, a lot of the women playing the game noted that having nice nails was a disadvantage- the stout rubber bands really weren't conducive to a manicured look.

It was fun getting together with everybody, and a hoot watching co-workers getting into the casino games in an intense fashion. It was a nice way to spend a few hours with co-workers, especially for a guy like me who works nights and weekends. I'm fortunate in working with a great group of people.