One of my favorite moments

While "I hate potlucks" consistently wins the keyword search that leads to my blog, "monty python" is somewhere in the top ten.

I just had to bump this one up again because it never ceases to make me laugh.

I just don't have blog fodder like that anymore. G, say what you want about H-Town, but some of the best blog posts came from there.

I hate potlucks

Yesterday's potluck was annoying, mainly because of the 20 minute time limit but also because I forgot my stupid dish. I spent the night before buying supplies for and preparing the stupid artichoke dip, and I left the damn thing in the fridge. This would not normally be a problem, but I have one of those 'case of the Mondays" sort of people in my department who kept saying that i needed to leave during my 20 minutes and go buy something to donate because it wasn't fair for me to eat otherwise. The same thing happened to a colleague. I ended up donating a bag of chips and package of twinkies from the vending machine. she wasn't pleased. My colleague did as she was supposed to and skipped lunch. I practically skipped lunch seeing as though there was nothing appetizing anyway. I think my meal consisted of some cream cheese ball thing and crackers. Oh, there was some homemade strawberry trifle thing, too.

Today before I even got out of my door for lunch, 2 people in my department rushed in asking if I had brought my donation from yesterday and today. I brought my dip and come store bought cookies from the bakery. They weren't pleased with the fact that the cookies were store bought (even though some other tool brought a lemon cake from Walmart, and everyone oohed and aaahed about how fucking phenomenal Walmart's bakery is). The dip was a hit, though.

Slim pickins at this luncheon, too. Here was what people brought: rotissere chicken (Store bought, mind you) and scissors to fucking cut off a piece; my dip; green bean casserole (ugh); fruit salad (store bought); 3 types of cake; my cookies; iced tea in a jug

I ate my dip and 3 pieces of cantaloupe. The thought of the chicken and scissors disgusted me; I hate green bean casserole; the fruit salad consisted of 2 grapes, a buttload of honeydew, and cantaloupe, so I ate the cantaloupe; I hate the cookies I brought, and I didn't want the cake. Well, I take that back, I nibbled on the walmart cake to see what the fuss was all about. I should've brought this cake for the damn fiesta.

Here's the other thing I hate: Secret Santa. K. The instructions say to spend no more than a dollar to five dollars a day for a week (not in excess of 15 for the whole week) on your santa person. My person said that she liked coffee, mounds, turtles (not the chocolate ones), ceramic dogs, and doorstoppers and decorated her tree in red and gold. I bought her the following: Day 1. an oversized coffee mug, an individual pack of gourmet coffee (enough for one pot) and some chocolate stirring sticks (oops they were kahlua flavored--hope she's not a tea totaller); Day 2. a red and gold hand blown ornament; Day 3. a pumpkin spice jar candle; Day 4. an assload of mounds candybars in a cute container; Day 5 will be tomorrow. a gift certificate to Starbucks and a little gift basket thingy from there. I might have gone a little over 15, but it's within a decent range.

My secret santa, however, (oh, sorry they are secret angels this year) spent ungodly amounts of money on me. Each gift was about 15-20 bucks (i know this because she left the price tags on). I feel like an ass, now, because not only did I not buy a ceramic dog turtle door stopper (Praxis, can you pick one up for me at the dollar store?), but I didn't spend nearly as much as everyone else's secret santa did. I'm like the welfare santa, and I'm gonna get bitchslapped with Southern hospitality tomorrow.

Grumble.

OMG OMG OMG OMG

I went to Fiesta today to buy some junk for all my stupid holiday luncheons this week at work, and I accidentally came across Peanut Butter Bars. I was just talking about these the other day to some people at work, and no one knew what I was talking about. I mean, I see those foulass chick o sticks everywhere, but man, these things are the bee's knees. Truth be told, though, what I like more than the taste is the packaging. The brown pinstripes make it. I feel my heart drop a little when I unwrap them to reveal a stark white piece of candy.

DE-LISH. I would give up a year's worth of cotton candy for one bag of these. MMMMM. Problem is that I go through them in an instant, so I have to watch it.

Eat yer heart out, Praxis, eating all that healthy shit. I'm going straight for comfort food. OOO, it says it's low fat and cholesterol free. Whoopee! I'm eating healthily, too!

[I should've bought more than one bag].

K, so I mentioned that I had to cook a bunch of shit for these things at work, right? One luncheon is tomorrow for the English department. We have to cook enough for the entire department plus the damn librarians (no offense) and the "principles and vice principles" [sic]. The above was written by a special ed teacher, not one of our English folks, thank god. The best part--we have 20 minutes to heat it up, serve it, and eat it. I'm making artichoke dip--cold. No preparation, just plop it down and sit my ass down to eat. This is the fucking luncheon (I hate that word) that I went to last year when one of the VPs pointed at my gut and said, "Is there something you'd like to tell us?" really loudly. I said, "Yep, I'm fat, now get out of my fucking way. I want some pie." [Grumble].

[Damnit, Mia's trying to eat my peanut butter bars. No, Kitty, that's mah peanut butter bar].

Then Thursday, I have to make something for the English dept luncheon...oh, do you think I repeat myself? No. No, on Thursday, we are splitting the department up into "hallways" and having lunch with the hall. WTF? Know what I'm making? I'm making sugar cookies with icing on top bought directly and packaged directly from Fiesta. [grumble more].

Friday, we are having the chili cookoff and luncheon (What's with that fucking word?). Oh, no, I'm sorry. It's the chili [and soup] cookoff and luncheon. I told them that I was bringing vegetarian chili because I don't eat beef, and they said, "Ooooh. Isn't that nice. Well, we'll just add soup to the flyer, and it will all work out just fine."

MMMM...peanut butter bar. La vita e bella now. Anyone know how to make an e with an accent mark over it with the computer? I can't make it work. Now I wrote The life and beautiful.

Yeah, well, the life and beautiful.