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Last weekend, my company had its annual company meeting / Christmas party in San Diego, which is where our headquarters is. It was the first one for me though. John came from Mississippi to hang out in San Diego and go to the party with me. The event was on Friday, but we spent Thursday night – Sunday morning in San Diego. We all stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel.

The early Friday activities were just for employees. We had lunch and did some team building exercises. It was great meeting people from the San Diego headquarters and the San Francisco area offices that I had never met before and getting to see the people again that I had previously met. There were a few new hires who hadn’t started yet, but still got to come join the fun.

We took a break and then saw a presentation about where the company is and where we’re going. I’m very much looking forward to the New Year.

After that we took another short break to get ready for the actual party. We had to dress up for this. It’s the first time I’ve had to put on a suit in years. They herded us all on a bus and took us to the yacht we were going to be on for the next few hours. Fancy, huh? After a few cocktails, we had dinner and an awards ceremony. The awards were mostly jokes, like getting an award for always bringing food to the office. Next up was casino night. The amount of chips you had at the end determined how many raffle tickets you got for the drawing later on. The prizes were a 13” MacBook Pro with Retina display, a 4th generation iPad (I think), and an iPad Mini. I wasn’t going to gamble because I prefer gambling on slot machines. John convinced me to play at the end and I got in a few hands before time was up. When we traded in our chips for raffle tickets, I the dealer gave me a few extra, probably because I didn’t get to play long. When they drew names for the third place price, the iPad mini, they drew one of my numbers! I was shocked! I never win prizes! After we left the boat we went back to the hotel and partied some more. I don’t drink much and I had way too much that night on the boat and at the hotel. After some more socializing, I went back to my room. There are some things about this night I don’t remember. Bits and pieces have been coming back to me over the past week, though. John ended up going out with some of my co-workers and their guests.

Saturday, John and I hung out in San Diego. We did a lot of walking, some shopping, some of the same stuff he did while I was in meetings the day before. I had my first ever brunch. Later went to Balboa Park where there was some kind of fair or something going on. We went to some of the museums and met one of his friends that lives in San Diego. I went to bed kind of early because I had an early flight, but John went out again.

Sunday, it was back to Portland.

I had a blast that weekend. It was great hanging out with John, being in San Diego again, and spending time with co-workers outside of work. I’m already looking forward to next year.