Party time

Friday night, with my employment at the ripe old age of 1.9 weeks, I got to go to the full company holiday party, this after attending a 3-hour potluck lunch event earlier for basically just the one floor of the building I'm in. The party venue had one complete main floor and five mezzanines with two open bars apiece, free food everywhere and a live band. Imagine my surprise when I was chatting with some folks and suddenly this very sharp, professional girl I've been (constructively) arguing with in meetings all week runs up out of nowhere utterly w-a-s-t-e-d & practically knocks me down, throwing her arm around me like we're old drinking buddies. Somebody got a picture of it too. Yikes. The real fun, though, began after things started to quiet down and another past-her-limit girl from my team (actually the first person I met on the first day of my interviews) invited me to an afterparty. Complete & utter comedy ensued as we tried to gather people and make progress towards the coat check. The contrast between the folks who had "a couple too many," those like me who were nicely buzzed but trying to pretend to be not under the influence, and the fully-composed DD's was simply classic. I literally buckled all the way to the floor in laughter at one point. We finally made it outside and it was windy & sprinkling, and having a large umbrella earned me escort duty for a girl whose dress was my favorite color, teal.

About 20 minutes later I found myself sipping an Adios MF'er atop a velvet perch in a chichi downtown San Francisco lounge with five women in a crescent around me offering a belated birthday toast and teasing me about being a more gentlemanly "pimp" than the usual one. Alrighty then. Moving right along.

Quite a fun way to top off a rocky early run at a company, indeed. Maybe after another two weeks, hopefully before I present my first work to the directors & group VP, I'll understand my job responsibilities and even be able to remember the names of a handful of the approx. 60 people I've been in meetings with or been directly introduced to.

For this week, one team (overseas for this project) that folks in my position rely on doesn't have enough manpower at the moment, so I'm going to be doing their work as well as my own. What's funny, though, is that this will probably make things easier for me because I won't have to coordinate, review & correct stuff.

Man, oh man.