My liver is crying

So here we are, at the end of another glorious week of the holiday season. And today, my friends, I realized that maybe, just maybe, I need to take a day off from trying to singlehandedly kill my liver.

Our office party was today. Our company is kind of wierd in the fact that we have two Christmas parties (and yes, we call them "Christmas Parties" instead of "Holiday Parties" because that's how we roll in this politically incorrect town). One party is held on a Friday night and it's an open house held at our office, including all of the employees (including the field guys), any clients we want to invite, and a blend of subcontractors, architects, and general people just looking for free booze and crab dip. The other party is kind of a snoozer held at the big country club in the city where everyone wears a coat and tie and brings their spouse. Let's just say the
Friday one is more fun because more often than not, someone will lose their underwear or the police will show up at some point.

In the ten years that I've worked there, we've had a few parties that got pretty wild. Like the year that one of the guys had his estranged wife show up and he ended up putting his fist through her windshield. Or maybe the year when two of the guys ended up getting in a fistfight because one cut the other one's ponytail off on a dare. Or when one of the owner's assistants had sex on her boss' desk with one of our superintendents (who the following year did stick-person diagrams on the white board in the conference room detailing all the explicit acts they committed that evening).

The last few years, however, have been pretty blah. I'm not sure if it's just that we've all gotten older and mellower or what, but we haven't had a decent party in about three years.

This morning I was standing at the copy machine and the president of the company came up to me....

Bill: Liz, I have a mission for you today.

Me: Okay Bill, shoot.

Bill: I've had a few people asking me lately why the Christmas parties aren't as fun as they used to be. So I had a talk with the guys this morning and now I'm putting you in charge of the ladies.

Me: So what do you need me to do?

Bill: Well, we need to spice things up a bit. So we need for there to be some fighting, maybe someone getting their hair cut off, maybe someone hooking up with somebody, you know, stuff like that. And I want this party to go on until midnight. Sound like something you can do for me?

Me: Gee Bill, this is an awful lot of pressure to put on me, but I'll see what I can do.

Of course, all of this was done very tongue-in-cheek, however I think we made a little progress tonight. By the end of the first hour, we'd already had one person pull their pants down, one person give someone else a lap dance, one spanking, and God knows what else that I didn't see.

It was a fun time, save for the part when I ran into an old pseudo-boyfriend that I used to work with years ago. Kind of a long story, but it was a situation where we both really liked each other but came to the realization that if we did hook up and it didn't work out it was going to be majorly awkward. But we're friends now and I hadn't seen him in about six months, so I was standing there talking to him when of course Chachi shows up on the scene. I introduced him to Karl, and the first thing out of Chachi's mouth was, "Hey, aren't you the guy that Liz tried to hook up with when she used to work there? Dude!"

Jesus H. Christ. Talk about embarrassing.

Anyhow, it was fun and I ended up meeting Joey afterwards (he had another party to attend as well tonight) and we had a burger and some beer before heading home.

We are headed down to see my parents this weekend. My brother Dave, my sister and I ended up chipping in together to get my parents a new computer and we are headed down tomorrow to assemble everything, set up their internet service, and all that jazz. Then let the headaches begin as they believe that it's so much easier to call us versus Technical Support. Remind me later on why in the world we thought this was such a great gift idea, okay?

Later gators.