My first non-human van passenger

Late this morning, we had a large meeting at IBM's recreation center. They actually handed out "buzzword bingo" sheets so we could play during the presentation. I'd always heard of that as something to play if you're bored in a meeting, so it was pretty funny to have it as a prescribed activity. Basically, the grid was filled with words and phrases like "value-add", "partner", and "leverage". As we heard them in the presentation or read them in the slides, we circled the words. The first four people who matched the various patterns won a free cafeteria lunch. I think it definitely helped me stay awake, but it's easy to concentrate on listening for the words and not actually focus on what the presenter is talking about. After the presentation was over, we played a game that our organization played a couple of years ago. Basically, everyone sits around in a circle and one standing person asks a question, such as, "How many of you are older than 35? Butts up!" Then everyone is supposed to run to different seats. Since there are more people than chairs, one person is left standing. He or she is supposed to ask another question, and so on. It's a lot of fun, but it's potentially dangerous. At the very least, it looks as if it would be easy to twist an ankle.

Finally, we had a potluck lunch. The funny thing was that no one brought any plasticware. I guessed no one noticed that something was missing on the sign-up sheet. It was a great excuse to eat more chips than usual. Potato chips are actually excellent with good coleslaw on top of them.

EB's dog, Sable, has been sick. She took her to the vet school and found out that she had a ruptured spleen. They operated Wednesday and she was supposed to come home today. We thought she might be able to use the lift on my van, since she probably wouldn't be able to jump into EB's truck. Late this afternoon, we drove over there and picked her up. I raised up the lift with EB and Sable on it, but it freaked her out and she just walked up the step into the van. Everything seemed good and we drove to their house. Well, EB always lets her out of the back of her truck. So, as soon as we got to her house, Sable decided to leave by going out the back of my van! Unfortunately, she decided the only way to do this was go between the backseat (the "couch") and the side of the van. I forgot to mention that Sable is an Akita. She's very large and simply can't do that. She got stuck. EB opened the back doors and she was able to get out, but that can't be a good thing to do after having surgery. So, the whole idea of transporting S from the vet school to her house in the least traumatic way possible failed miserably. Maybe it was still better than her attempting to jump. Maybe.

I went back to work afterwards and was there until around 9. At least I had Neomonde food waiting for me at home.