Monday, December 16, 2013

You know you have social anxiety when....


You know you're coming off a good weekend when you can't decide what the highlight was: finding a fascinating Holocaust memoir to read, or Sunday morning when Titanic and the Sex and the City movie were on simultaneously.

I was supposed to venture out and interact with others Friday night, at Eric's work Christmas party. Something I've come to realize as I've gotten a little older is that Christmas parties for educators are in a different ballpark than Christmas parties in the private sector. Apparently those provide drinks, food, a location, gifts, music, etc....aka it fits the widely accepted definition of "party".

For us, it's more like "hey, when do you all want to get together and drink before Christmas?". And everyone picks a time, and an (inexpensive, we don't make much) place, and it's on.

I got home from work and was exhausted. That's a pretty typical state of affairs, but I also had a headache and a slight fever. (99.1, but I'm a freak and my temperature almost never even hits 98). I pretty much didn't leave the couch until it was time to go to work on Saturday at 3pm. I still felt fairly sick, and as we all know, working sick is just fantastic.

You know you have social anxiety when a fever is preferable to a party where you hardly know anyone. Also, Legally Blond was on. Do you realize that movie came out in 2001???

As I said, Sunday involved two of my favorite movies, and more reading and crying. The historical fiction novel I read last week got me sucked in, and now I can't stop. (Full disclosure: those aren't affiliate links, because I'm not cool like that, just amazon links to the books for those of you who want to be depressed when they read, like I do.)

A weekend where I leave my pajamas as little as possible is a huge win for me. It's freezing out, so hot chocolate is my newest dessert obsession.


I managed to leave the house Sunday night, and also did 30 minutes on the bike trainer. I went to the Charm City Run employee Christmas party, which, incidentally, did fit the normal definition of "party". Eric had his monthly WWE hot date with a bunch of other fake wrestling obsessed men. I convinced my (male) friend Alex to stand in as my date.

It was actually fun, chatting with others face to face, and it didn't hurt that the food was delicious. The best part was white elephant (the game where everyone brings a gift and you can either choose one to open or steal one). 

Most of the gifts people brought were on par with the one I provided, which was a huge hit.

I'll miss you, Mr. New Booty.

We have five locations, and the lucky recipient of my fabulous gift works at a different one, so I wasn't sure if he would be comfortable with the internet fame that comes along with exposure on Chocolate is my Life. But trust me, he was thrilled.

I was doing pretty well, but my Starbucks gift card and then Trader Joes goody bag both got stolen, and my despair forced me to try every kind of Christmas cookie provided. I ended up with one of those heat or freeze packs that you can use on sore muscles. This one is filled with cherry pits, which sounds weird, but it smells great, and as I've made clear, I'm all for anything and everything warm these days.

In summary, it seems when I'm not running (and done with grad school), I'm averaging one book for "pleasure" per week. I'm happy with those stats. 

10 comments:

  1. I haven't gone to any Christmas parties this year yet. Jeff didn't even tell me about his work one because he didn't want to go. He's so social. He said they ran out of food last year and people got rowdy about it, but that made me want to go more. It's Hunger Games for engineers!

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  2. Ha! I went to my husband's (law firm) Christmas party last Friday. I agreed to go, and didn't feel too fussed about it, until about 12 hours beforehand, when I realized that it had been weeks since I hung out with anyone (except my family) who worked outside the realm of "fitness". AND I was expected to look like a snowflake or something (Theme: Winter Wonderland / Dress Code: WHITE). But I was too far in to pull out, so off we went. I suppose the evening went reasonably well - and since they were all drunk after about an hour, no one else would've remembered it anyway. ;-)

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  3. Hot chocolate is not dessert. Please stop with your HLB ways.

    I wish you guys could come to our white elephant party. No one brings anything as good as Mr. New Booty!

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  4. Ha, I was shocked as hell at Will's party on Friday-- you can definitely tell that he works for a multi-billion dollar corporation in comparison to my small family business! :)

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  5. One book per week sounds like a good way to live to me :) I'm sorry two of your gifts got stolen from you! I had a work meeting on Monday where we did a White Elephant gift exchange (my family calls it Cutthroat Christmas). I got this really cool Hypertheticals: 50 Questions for Insane Conversations book that looked really funny. And I had plans of asking my husband each of them on our two hour drive to see family on Friday, but then it got stolen! I'm still not over it.

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  6. I am currently ditching my Christmas party, which is exactly like the educator parties you described, only they also have crappy Mexican food for $10. I choose couch. :)

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  7. Love the Javas mug. Let's go to Javas when you are home!! So sad the Pirate is gone from your life. ITS JUST THAT PERFECT.

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  8. Please come to my house and make me some hot chocolate, that looks just about perfect. Though, if I'm being honest, I'm not sure you have enough whipped cream on it.

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  9. Ahhh, Javas <3 Hot chocolate counts as dessert when it has whipped cream piled on it. Also if it's anything like Trader Joe's sipping chocolate instead of just Swiss Miss, it counts as dessert.

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  10. Love your hot chocolate...... How did you do those sprinkles????? I just got a keurig for Christmas from my hubby so I'm anxious to make some hot chocolate after my cold morning runs!!!!!! I'm super excited to hear about your training for the 100 miler!!!! Good luck!! Enjoy every mile (or as many as possible!!!)

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Thanks for commenting! Comments make me probably more happy than they should.