Cleaning Up

I love my job.

So, last Friday was Clean-Up Day. We have this event every June. We spend the morning cleaning our offices, we have an outdoor lunch and then the afternoon is usually full of fun. For instance, for my first couple of years, the afternoon was filled with an Olympics where departmental teams would compete in games like Scattergories and Pictionary and Bocce Ball.

Two years ago, my friend Emily took over and breathed new life into the day with an amazing variety/talent show (where I embarrassed myself in front of everyone with improv comedy).

Last year, we were told that Clean-up Day "is about cleaning up." And so, that's what happened. The fun was drained out of it. We worked, ate lunch, went back to work, and then about a quarter of the company came back outside for a lawn concert with Warren Barfield.

This year, our events committee chose to blow the roof off. We held an interdepartmental Heptathlon. In addition to events in Pictionary, Cornhole (or Bags), a Golf Challenge game, Croquet and Bocce, we also rented these big blow-up games from a local party rental place. We got a 52-foot obstacle course and the day's big fave, the Velcro Wall.

Here's the obstacle course:

Because I was on the committee and had to judge games, I didn't really get to compete for my Media Group's team. (We're the consumer group. And so, we named the team: The Consumering Fire.)

For me, the best part of the day was "testing" the inflatables before anyone else came outside. Clay, Phil and I ran the obstacle course. Clay, Kim, Emily and I goofed around on the Velcro Wall.

Here's Clay:
Emily:

Me:


The Consumering Fire ended up winning Third Place in the games that day, mainly because of David. David, who does marketing for our magazine and runs our MySpace page, participated in every event several times and racked up mega-points. Here he is scoring a 9 in the Velcro leap:

The only competing I did was in the Velcro Wall. But I didn't really do that well. I got a high score of a 6. No upside-down stuff for me. (However, The Consumering Fire did go on to WIN the Velcro Wall event. Thank you, David!)

Most of my day was judging the Bags games:

While this wasn't quite the high energy entertainment of the inflatable games, I did have fun running Bags. Actually, I was surprised how many people wanted to play the game. We had a line 4-teams deep at one point!

That goes to show how good the day went over. This was a much-needed morale boost to the company. There's such a tangible shift in attitude and spirit change around here it seems. There was so much laughter. Almost everyone stayed outside to either participate in or watch the games. In fact, there were dozens of chairs set up around the Velcro Jump.

And who can blame them. Watching co-workers stuck on flypaper is pretty funny:

Pass the Shrimp Dip and Meatballs.

Today is my Best Man Doug's birthday. (He's the Best Man in my wedding--it's not like a fulltime job position he holds. Although that'd be kinda cool. And as I think about it more, it is kinda like a lifelong post. My friend Gene's dad would always refer to his friend Stanley as his Best Man--and he was married like 50 years prior. Like Stanley, I hope Doug will also continue to just come by my house all the time as he's driving around town wearing earmuffs and mismatched socks. As my only model of a lifelong Best Man, I just figger that's what they do.)

Anyway, it would be hard for Doug to stop by when driving around town, because he lives in Ohio. But last night, our big friend group gathered for the first time in awhile for dinner and games. We called Doug and told him we were having a By-Phone-Suprise-Party for him. I don't think he suspected it.

The gathering was fun. We now have babies and toddlers in the group. It's fun to have the usual Pictionary games, jokes and food--with spitting up and lots of questions like, "What kind of noise does a cow make?" And that's just me; the babies also bring a whole new dimension to social outings. It was kinda funny to be playing pictionary and have to transfer babies around depending on who has to draw each turn.

Three more highlights:

1) My Intended and I arrived to find great interest in the food we brought. A few people were very excited to see what my "Shrimp Dip" was that was listed on the e-mailed food list. I really enjoyed everyone standing in the kitchen to watch the very detailed and careful preperation of my Shrip dip: 1) Slap a slab of Cream Cheese on Plate, 2) Dump Cocktail Sauce Over it, and 3) Throw on Shrimp. (Yes, I am throwing all capitilization rules out the window today because I find it funny to Randomly capitalize things.)

2) My first Birthday Present of 2007. Charissa got me a shirt that features a Bull with various Cuts of Beef listed and the slogan, "Meat is Neat." Too true. Too true. What no one knows is that my bag of shrimp leaked on the way of home. Now, my "Meat is Neat" shirt smells like shrimp. Surf and Turf, baby.

3) Charissa debuted her new animated Family Force 5 video. It is as excellent as advertised. You can see it here. Some advice: let it play through once without sound and then go back and watch it the second time it plays through. The first time it runs through is very slow and choppy. I think you will be able to guess my favorite part. Domo Arigato, Charissa.

DREAM LOG
(Date: 1/26/07)
My youth group's leader Jen is my teacher in some fractions class. She keeps quizing us without first teaching us. So I show up, and just getting quizzed--with no instruction on how to do fractions. Later, I am in a big kitchen with several people and we are all being tested on whether we can use a blender. Some guy places a blender in fornt of us and we have to see who can properly use it first.

Of Posses and Predators

You may have seen in the comments log the other day that Charissa wrote that she still has her famous Pictionary sketch of "Posse." I'd forgotten where it went to. But now I remember: Esther, Emily and I put it in a scrap book that was given to Charissa as a going away gift. (She of course then came back. So I think we should get our book back.)

Anyhoo, Charissa scanned it in and sent it over for everyone to enjoy. Here it is:

She drew the stick figures first. The size of them made us on her team think it was a family with a little baby. And then the gun threw us all off. And then, to try and get us to think "Poss...," she moved on to drawing a possum. However, we thought it was a steam ship. See the smoke stacks? Oh, and the thing poking out from under the porthole (or the eye, as it was meant to be) is it's tongue because he's playing dead.

The funny thing is, I remembered it as the "baby" holding the gun. Turns out, it's not the little one who's packing. I guess that's just revionist history. My memory just twisted the story around. It's kinda of like one really sad time in my history.

In high school, my friend John and I were really into the movie Predator. And in our little friend group, we'd constantly joke about lines and scenes. We'd act it out. We'd impersonate characters. We'd quote it. It was huge. Our big catchphrase was, "Billy, what are you doing?!?!?" yelled in a Schwarzenegger-like accent. It came from a scene where the soldiers' tracker, Billy, decides to face off with the predator and give his injured friends time to escape. As Billy waits for the predator, Arnold turns and yells at Billy. So, we would use the line all the time if we were in a hurry or we didn't understand what a friend was doing: "Billy! What are you doing???"

One night, we had a big Predator Party to show it to all the friends who'd never seen it. As we neared the scene, everyone gathered around. "Here it comes," John said. Billy leaves his squad and positions himself to fight the Predator on a bridge. He cuts himself with a knife so that the Predator will sense the blood. And then.... Arnold, on the path yards away, looks back and yells...

"Billy, Let's go."

Yah -- "Billy, what are you doing?" isn't even in the movie. John and I just convinced ourselves it was.

"Billy, Let's go" just isn't that good of a catch phrase.

The Circle of Life...And Pictionary

I love board games. On Friday, I got together with Marc, Emily and Charissa to play Charissa's new game based on LOST. It was basically a game where you moved around movable board peices to explore "the island" and tried to add as many new castawys to your group as you could. I ended up with 5, but most importantly, I got Mr. Eko. He's my favorite.

After everyone got bored of me whupping up on them in that game with my lethal Eko-Jin-Sun combination, we moved onto Pictionary. And what occured there was a wonderful coincidence.

First, some history: Pictionary is a big deal in our friend group. We play quite a bit and have many classic stories. The best is this: During an "All Play," Charissa drew three stick figures. Two were the same size and a third, in the middle, was very short. I assumed this was a family. I guessed, "Parents" and "Baby." But then, Charissa gave the baby a gun. She then went on to draw a Possum. The word was "Posse." Her drawing was so great, it became a shirt.

So on Friday, Marc and Charissa were playing against Marc and I. We were on an All-Play. Marc and Charissa were drawing. As we get set to draw, Charissa says to Emily, "Think hard on this one." After I say "Go!," Charissa begins to draw her Mom, Dad and baby all over again--and once again gives the baby a gun. And after only about 3 seconds Emily yells, "POSSE!"

Sure enough, by some odd chance, Charissa got the Posse card all over again. And used the failures of the past for a better present.

DREAM LOG:
(1/7/07)
I was traveling with three guys from work: Marshall, Russ and Andy. We were at some convention in St. Louis and decided to go to a baseball game. (Where did this come from? Well, years ago I went to a Evangelical Press Association meeting with Marshall and one night we went to a Braves game. I also go to a conference with Russ and Andy every year.) At the game, the Cardinals were playing the Yankees. That Cardinals were winning. We were sitting near the top of the second tier when I noticed a little yellow stunt plane flying around the stadium doing tricks. I watched for awhile and was impressed but also worried becuse he was close to buildings everytime he did rolls and loops.

Suddenly, the pilot ejects from the plane and parachutes away. Meanwhile, the plane goes up for another loop and comes down on a section of seats across the field from me--right behind home plate. The plane doesn't hit people though, but lands on the overhung roof above them. It just kinda bounces off this roof harmlessly. I can't believe it, but I just get back into the game. But then I hear a loud creaking. I look up. And this big section of seats under that roof just tumbles backward out of the stadium. People are screaming and it's mayhem. (So where did this come from? Well, I watched World Trade Center last night.) The last thing I remember is watching a black-and-white movie of the stunt plane pilot parachuting into a lake.

Chicken Popsicles and Lacey Underwear

On Saturday night, I hosted a bunch of people at The Estate for some fun, frivolity and food. It was a party for two friends: Rubino who was recently married and Doug who became a dad for the first time. If they were women, they would have been thrown showers. But because they are men, they got the manly equivalent: A Storm.

What makes a storm different? Well, the decorations included black streamers and lightning bolts (which are still hanging from my ceiling. I'll post when they actually get taken down. I'm betting it will be awhile). We also ate pizza from the delivery box and beverages straight from the can. Drinks were kept cold in a giant R2-D2 cooler. And the party was held a very long time after both events (Doug's daughter drove herself to the party). The only thing that would have made The Storm more manly would have been large quantities of meat. And perhaps some violence.

We also didn't play any Lady Games like at showers. Instead, we broke out the traditional games of The Estate: Scene-It and Pictionary. I want to share Saturday night's best Pictionary drawings. One great moment (with no photo to share for it) was when I was supposed to draw "Poultry." I drew a chicken and then drew what I meant to be a drumstick. But apparently, it wasn't very well done because Rubino saw it and guessed, "Chicken popsicle?"

So you may be asking, why is there no picture of that one? Well, because after Rubino's guess, I scratched it out to the point that it is now just a black splotch.

And now on to the drawings from Saturday that are still in existence. The first (at left) was drawn by Dale during an "All Play." One guess from our team was, "Oklahoma." But it is not Oklahoma. It is "Money."

The other great drawing from the night is below. It produced guesses of "Bee," "Mosquito," and "Dead Snowman."

After Marc crossed off this drawing (because of the Dead Snowman guess, I think), he made a second attempt that lost the candy cane headdress and gained a long black goatee. From that, we successfully guessed that it was a goat.

Both of these drawings have been entered into my Pictionary Hall of Fame, a collection proudly displayed on my fridge. Sadly, the Greatest Pictionary Drawing of All Time is no longer in the Hall of Fame. I am unsure where it went. But I can try to explain its greatness. During an "All Play," Charissa drew three stick figures. Two were the same size and a third, in the middle, was very short. I assumed this was a family. I guessed, "Parents" and "Baby." But then, Charissa gave the baby a gun. Well, that didn't help us guess the correct answer so Charissa started a new image. This one appeared to be an ocean liner, complete with the four smoke stacks on top.

It turns out that the word was "posse." The Stick Family was supposed to be a posse (with a very short leader) and the ocean liner was actually a dead possum lying with his four legs sticking straight in the air. Apparently, we were supposed to guess possum and then make the connection to "posse."

I thought I would share some of the other distinquished drawings of lore in the Hall of Fame:

You may be surprised that both of these drawings are from the same "All Play" round. But they are. You can tell from the top image (drawn by Holly) that this is a beaver because of her arrows denoting the buck teeth and flat tail. The bottom image by Gene, however, seems to be a sketching of the rare Beaver Turkey.

The next two are for the word "hiccup."

Yah, I can't even begin to explain either of those. I have no idea. But I can try and explain the next one because I drew it. Here it goes:

As you can plainly tell from the repeated circles and the arrow, the focus here is the stomach of this no-eyed, T-shirt-wearing bear. The word was "Tummy." But there are many mysteries here: Why do I assume bears like cookies? Why is he wearing a collared T-shirt? And why a bear at all? I don't know. But I think Winnie the Pooh is to blame. He is what I think of when I think of the word "Tummy" but now I am not sure why. I also am not sure why I gave this bear a belly button.

Speaking of strange connections, I guess that whenever my friend Josh thinks of "Lace" he somehow thinks of lacey underwear (and people with three arms): I'll end today's gallery tour with this picture from Becky, Charissa's old roommate:

As Becky was drawing this picture, our team guessed "Elephant", "Tusk", "Mammoth," etc... None of them were right. I looked over to the other team and saw they were drawing plant-like things. It turns out the word was "Ivy," not "Ivory."