Last night I went to my first big TM dinner out. It was at Dockside, which I have never been to before and started about an hour after I finished work.
Me and my tiny paper star making buddy went to the library to kick around a bit before the drinks and we saw C and I had a very good although very slow to be made hot chocolate. It's nice having conversations with people where you find common ground and as a result like each other more.
The dinner was in the plastic-walled balcony section of Dockside, and was well heated by those standing inferno things. It was very cold outside yesterday but it was pretty warm inside. The beer, wine and non-alcoholic drinks were free and the whole dinner was paid for by the company.
It's a startingly different situation to working for a government department.
Instead of letting people be cliquey there was arranged seating, mixing people from different teams up into different tables. I was sitting with two friends from CS and the guy who talks to the media, and a bunch of people from different teams. I had never met two of them, so that was cool, and dinner was very tasty.
Antipasto platter to start, corn-fed chicken stuffed with basil, feta and slow roasted tomato and kumara chips served wrapped in bacon. Plus new potatoes and salads. Yum. The only downside was the dessert, which purported to be lemon tart but seemed to be made of cream cheese and paprika. Not good.
I mingled around some and talked to my friends from my team and chatted with a couple of other acquaintances from the kitchenette. (Including a fellow Threadless addict.)
It was cool, and fun and I liked it, and I walked home slightly tipsy but cheerful and was home by ten.
Last Friday Lee bought fancy new bluetooth headphones that are too small for him. What this means is that he actually bought me fancy new bluetooth headphones. Then he went and bought even more fancy foldy bluetooth headphones on Monday.
I like my new headphones a lot.
PoF: happy spaceman, $10 from Jay Jays
CO: Open home on Sunday.