the stereotypes about drunken attorneys are ALL TRUE.

Friday night was the office Christmas party, which I believe I warned you about in a list of blog previews. It went well, I think. A number of people had to get hotel rooms because they could barely walk, let alone drive, and I have cell-phone video footage of my boss (Attorney B) drunkenly attempting to swing dance with a fluffy white teddy bear which I am DYING to post here but probably shouldn't. And Nate somehow wound up playing Big Buck Hunter -- you know, the arcade game with the giant plastic rifles -- with the other partner (Attorney P), and beating him by a wide, wide margin due to Attorney P's inability to shoot anything even with the muzzle of his plastic rifle pressed up against the screen. Nate was DD'ing that night, so this was a blatantly unfair match. But still.

Now on to the important stuff: the Embarrassing Stories About Annie, which I know is the whole reason you come here. I began the evening by deciding to throw all the Office Party Rules out the window and wear the shortest skirt I could find. Naturally, I then got trapped at the front of the room for a long long time, picking Christmas presents up off the floor. Coincidence? You decide. Anyway, the highlight of the evening was the gag gift swap, a weird ritual in which everyone drew a number and then, one at a time, went to the front of the room and chose a wrapped gift from the pile. After #1 unwrapped a gift, #2 had the opportunity to either unwrap a new one or steal the one #1 had unwrapped, and so on. I was #2. After that everyone who came after me wanted to steal whatever I had, so I ended up unwrapping at least four different presents.

Of course, I just had to wind up with the Mistletoe To Go, a sprig of plastic mistletoe on a stick with a suction cup at the end for affixing the mistletoe to your forehead. Nate was a good sport and came to the front of the room to kiss me amidst hoots and catcalls (thanks honey!), and then I pulled the suction cup off and went back to my chair.

A minute later, Co-worker M took one look at me and burst out laughing. "Look at your HEAD!" she snorted.

Uh oh.

I found a mirror. Sure enough, there was a huge round purple hickey in the middle of my forehead. Folks, there is a trick to removing suction cups from your face, and it is a delicate procedure in which you carefully slide the suction cup upward until it slips off. I knew this when I was a kid, but it had been a rather long time since I stuck a suction cup on my own face, so I'd forgotten. I grabbed the thing and yanked. Whoops. Nate, ever the Boy Scout, was fully prepared with his camera phone:


It's still there now, Monday morning, clearly visible for all to point and laugh at. Damn, I'm cool.

And for further pointing and laughing, here is another picture of me. As you can tell by my bleary face, forehead hickey, and the fact that I have to lean on the wall, this is after we got home.



p.s. If any of you see me in person in the near future, I will be very happy to play the Dancing Boss video for you. It's pretty good.

p.p.s. Last week sometime I surfed across some chick's blog that was peppered with overtly sexy pictures of her, all of them clearly taken with the intent of making her look good no matter what the supposed subject of the photo was - "me passed out on the couch with a hangover," yeah right. Because we all wear short pink shorts and drape our arms across our hips like that when we feel like throwing up. Anyway, I was entertained by this, because I don't think I've consciously posted a single flattering picture of myself on here. This might be because there ARE no flattering pictures of me, because whenever a camera appears I am compelled to be as goofy as possible, but I think it's probably a good thing that I don't take myself quite as seriously as that girl. Life would be so sad.