random thoughts – Day 1,673 – (Wednesday) – spirit

Foggy river morning.

It was a weirdly gray and foggy morning. Moody. Mysterious. It was a combination of perfectly spooky Halloween weather and a water color painting. 

Viewed from the Bridge Street bridge, the river was shrouded in fog and practically invisible. The smokestacks on the mill buildings were more like abstract suggestions than solid brick structures. The time spent sitting on on the bridge was a pleasant moment to enjoy the fog and mist. 

Fall colors.

By the afternoon, the temperature was in the high 70s and it was sunny. The weather practically demanded an afternoon walk. The chosen route was over by the canal and the new court center. The trees had multiple levels of fall color going on. There were bright reds and gold, faded and muted reds and gold, and totally bare. I stupidly wore my suit jacket outside and by the time I got back to my desk I was overheating.  

In addition to the fall colors and spooktacular Halloween events, October is the month of our regional spirit dinners for work. It’s spirit in the community, team camaraderie, company pride type of spirit, not the Halloween spooky haunted type spirit, although that would be on theme for October in general. I was on vacation the week the dinner for my work location was held, so tonight I attended the dinner for a different region.

At first, I was kind of nervous attending an event without the full entourage of my Marketing comrades. I was afraid I wouldn’t know many people at the dinner, but that was an unfounded source of nerves. I knew quite a lot of people and had a chance to chat with several of them over dinner in a relaxed setting. Of course I had a good time and all the insecurities about being there “alone” felt silly once I was there.

The event was at Salvatore’s in Lawrence, and opened with a cocktail hour with a cheese and cold cut board and bruschetta. The dinner buffet had salad, roasted veggies, mashed potato, butternut squash ravioli, chicken with mushrooms, and steak tips. The dessert table featured chocolate chip cookies, cannoli, and thick brownies. So yummy.

Buffet feast.

There were raffle prize drawings ranging from gift cards for stores and airline tickets to fancy coffee machines, a Roomba, Apple products, and the most popular item, a high-end sick vacuum. It’s amusing to me that the most popular raffle item for a couple years going is a vacuum. I didn’t win anything this year, even though I was eyeballing a beautiful hard-sided, dark blue carry-on bag and also the airline tickets.

The traffic heading in to Lawrence was on the heavy and horrible side, and twice I was stuck in the wrong lane to make the left turn that Waze waited too long to tell me about to plan correctly. No worries, I got there just fine, and was glad that I live close to the office and don't have a longer commute regularly. The ride home was a breeze, and maybe it’s not actually driving that I hate, it’s traffic. Good to know.