Saturday, December 20, 2008

Posers



Tonight my husband and I went to his work Christmas party. They had it at the Meritage resort hotel in Napa. When we got ready to go, my husband commented that I looked nice and said, "I don't usually see you this dressed up.". I told him I'm basically a poser. lol I dress nice for the occasion, but I was really out of my element.

We got to the resort about half an hour early because traffic was light. We decided to drive around town a bit since I had never been to Napa before. We saw a market place so stopped to have a look. This was a high brow market place, the kind of place where we look but don't buy. They had all kinds of specialty shops inside. One sold all kinds of olive products. They must have had at least 20 different kinds of olive oil. I almost bought some for a Christmas gift, but had no clue what kind to buy. They had a spices shop, but I buy my spices at an Indian grocery where I can get them for 1/10th the price.

The Christmas party was nice. It was a little odd to be in a winery when we don't drink. When we came in, they gave us 4 coupons for drinks at the bar. We gave them to a coworker. Then they had wine with the meal, but of course we don't drink, so passed on that. It was kind of shocking to see how much the other people drank though. I guess I'm totally out of my element around alcohol too. At one point, the lady next to me had asked for more wine and the waitress came and told her that there was only 1 bottle left from what the company had bought for the night. She explained that they needed to share with the rest of the group of people, but if she wanted more wine, she could always buy some from the bar. Okay, she said it more tactfully than that, but the lady got the picture.

For dinner we had pumpkin soup (it was really good, didn't really taste like pumpkin), spring salad, roasted sweet potatoes, a cheesy cauliflower dish, salmon, duck, and prime rib. For dessert they had a pumpkin cheesecake, praline chocolate cake, and apple cranberry crumble. I like to try other people's cooking :) I have to admit, I wasn't that thrilled with the food, but it was okay. I've only had duck in Beijing before, and liked it there, but I didn't care for this duck, it tasted a little livery. It was nice though, nice to get out too.

They had a raffle for two big screen tvs, a gps, a camera, and a 2 night stay at lake Tahoe, but with 70 people in attendance, we didn't have much of a chance of winning. I would almost rather they buy more smaller gifts than 2 huge expensive gifts. That would allow more people to win a prize.

At one point, the owner of the company spoke and was joking about some of the employees. I was surprised he brought up the "day without a gay" day. He was joking about the one sole employee that didn't come in to work that day. Everyone laughed, but Paul and I laughed more because he didn't feel well that day but went to work anyway. :)

Oh, one funny thing that happened: At the end of the raffle, they told us that at each table there would be a chair with a sticker under the chair. The person who got it would win the table centerpiece. We all reached under our chairs and pulled off stickers. We all had torn off the fire retardant information that had "Do not remove under penalty of law" written on the bottom. :D

1 comment:

Nene said...

Our last company party was a "Luau" and even though we were dressed casually I still disliked it.