Holiday time at the office

Tomorrow is our yearly Holiday Luncheon at the office. It's like a community dinner, everyone brings in a prepared dish to share, some sign up for bringing the beverages, condiments or desserts. Every year my department chips in for a sandwich platter from a nearby Subway which I arrange and collect the money for. Though not made at home people like to include a sandwich portion on their plate to accommodate the other choices they make of what are some wonderful taste treats. Crock pots galore with meatballs, chilies, stews, beans, mini wieners. Several varieties of macaroni salads, dip platters and one of the managers brings in an order of hot wings that will burn the skin off your lips, I'm good for a couple of those. There always seems to be something new brought in that becomes the "have you tried the 'whatever' that so and so brought in?" dish. Enough desserts to overload the Jenny Craig hotline. We don't have one single large room where we can all eat together but we do have four conference rooms connected by a somewhat narrow hallway. The food is laid out in three different areas and people settle in one conference room or another where they kick back tell stories, joke around, it's a good group of people to work with and just plain nice to gather for a brief time each year in a festive atmosphere. Our admin staff puts a lot of effort into setting things up and the clean up afterwards. I provide the table cloths which is a holiday border I designed printed on rolls of 36 inch wide paper from engineering plotter which is then laid across the reference and conference room tables. There are usually several people involved in a project with a deadline but they still manage to escape and grab a plate of food then retreat to their desk. I'll be walking a few extra miles to burn off these calories.