Airline tickets, Xmas party and Secret Meeting, oh my!

Went to bed waay past my bedtime last night. But I had an excuse. It turns out work doesn’t let me abuse their mailserver after all, so I was figuring out how to become my own mailserver. Got it it all working then hit the hay at 1:45am. I had to figure this out quick, because, well, I only had one day left with my current system.
Got up at 7:20, had a long day, went to lunch with Kemp and Jeff and Mark; left work at 5:35pm. When I got home, there was a slightly damp 8.5×11 mailer sitting at my doorstep. Inside? My airline tickets from Orbitz.com! They were expedited to me via Fedex’s 2-day service.
Tonight was the staff christmas party. The company rented out a little Italian restaurant. As soon as I got there appetizers were thrust in my face every two minutes or so — bruschetta, these great little rice ball things, and pizza. Oh yeah, an open bar, too. I came *this* close to winning an iPod with the random draw! Even though it was an iPod-for-Wintel, it would have still been cool to win (I can always reformat it for a nicer computer, after all).
Then it was dinner — a whole bunch of different kinds of pasta as well as (what I imagine was) a good salad. 🙂 So much fun; there was 110 of us in this tiny little place.
Late yesterday afternoon, the entire staff population was notified of an “all-hands” meeting, 8:30am tomorrow morning. Hopefully to deliver good news!