Happy Halloween!
We have a competition at work where the CEO dispenses pumpkin seeds in late August and the great pumpkin growing contest begins! Basically, the person who grows the largest (heaviest) pumpkin wins, and gets $5/lb as the reward. Last year, my boss won with a 65lb pumpkin. This year, he didn't fare as well and a guy from IT brought in a 271 lb monster that he grew at home somehow! They put it on display in the lobby so everyone could see it.
Yesterday, we all gathered in the parking lot to watch the pumpkin hoisted up by a crane and dropped at a height of 3 stories. It was surreal to watch this giant pumpkin fall, and when it hit the pavement, there was a very satisfying *splat* along with
exclamations of all sorts from the crowd! Everyone asked how messy the result was, but the truth is, the pumpkin-gunk is attached to the walls of the pumpkin, so to clean it up, you really just pick up the shattered pieces of the shell.
Today wasn't as fun. For starters, neither of my cars were cooperating this morning. Hello dead batteries! Craig took care of me and jumped the car, and changed the battery during lunch. I was so grateful. I was stuck at work until 8:30pm today, and I was the last person there. How scary is that? Craig to the rescue again! He came by when I was done to make sure I got home safely. Not to be overly paranoid or anything, but there was an incident a couple of weeks ago where one of our female employees was leaving the building, and a giant van was parked extremely close to her car. Very suspicious given that the parking lot was mostly empty. She went back in, and came out with a male coworker who asked the van to move. The van left, but the woman noticed that it was following her for several miles after the left the office park. That's not cool.
I had my pepper spray and cell phone with me.
Small Update
I was busy at work from the second I sat down until I left. Usually I have some time to BS with coworkers during the day, but not today! Too many things due.
When I got home, there was a strange envelope in the mail. The postage was stamped from LA, but the return address was Baltimore. I opened it up, and it was Ruut's new CD! Yay! I'm listening to it now while typing this entry while belly-flopped on the couch. Yes, I am a master multitasker!
In other news, Craig got tickets from work for the Redskins game yesterday. I guess they wanted to do something nice for him after exploiting him all the time, so he scored a couple of club level tickets and a parking pass. He put it on the calendar, and when Sunday rolled around, we packed up a small tailgate and made it to the stadium. I had been to Fed Ex field once before to see DC United vs Chelsea, but the stadium was nowhere as packed as it was for a football game. Ironically, back then I was kind of a newbie to international soccer and I knew Chelsea was good, but I didn't know *how* good! (I thought DC United was going to win.....they didn't.)
We had great seats and great parking. The game was a good one as it was close up until the very last second, but I'm not much of a football fan and I think it's kind of hard to follow the ball since they're always trying to hide it and fake other players out. Nonetheless, it was still cool to go to a football game (my first ever!) on a VIP package courtesy of work.
In boring adult-news, we refinanced exactly a week ago. Yes, I have one of those ticking-away ARM time bombs, and I'm glad I initiated this process now because the market here has tanked. There are foreclosures everywhere. The bad thing about those is that once they become viable sales data, it hurts your appraisal. Unfortunately, when the condo was appraised, it came in 5% less which means the down payment is gone. The good news is that we were able to refinance favorably, and now, I can tuck this issue into the back corner of my brain and not worry about it for another 10 years.
:)
