Office Party

It's been a longstanding joke at the college about how I don't have an office. Before our syllabi got all standardized and formal, I used to put that my office was the Food Court, and that was in fact where I held office hours when needed. But I do have business cards, and I'm always dropping them in fishbowls at various restaurants in an effort to win free food (sometimes I think I those cards may have won me more food than they have gotten me students or gigs). I've won the "party platter" from Subway and a few individual burritos, but I always had my eyes on the prize: the Chipotle office party.

Last week, I got a message on my answering machine from a girl who sounded cute (deferring for the moment the debate on how someone can "sound" cute and how often that aligns with reality...trust me, she did), telling me that I had won the office party for the Frisco location. This was especially cool because it meant that the winning card was the one I'd dropped in there during my birthday Trifecta. It also meant that I could recreate that birthday celebration with Halfling and Dingus there this time, and they could experience their first Trifecta in the process.

After figuring out how many people constituted my "office" (up to ten) and could our "free lunch" take place at dinnertime (indeed it could), we decided to hold it tonight during our usual post-big band burrito hour.

Along with Halfling and Dingus, all of my birthday Trifectologists were in place (Coop, Zack, Jazzy G, Micah, Chris). The latter two met us there, Dingus rode in the G-Box, and the rest piled in the newly-repaired Kevmobile 1.2. It was really cool to just go up to the front, say "hey, we're the office party," and get free food. There wasn't a table that would hold us, so we dominated the "bar" area. The burritos were uniformly good, probably in no small part because we didn't even have to get our wallets out (Chris did anyway for a second, on general principle). Of course, I dropped another card in the fishbowl, and we all pondered how excellent it would be if I won again.

As always, we completed the other two-thirds of the Trifecta back-to-back, taking the Krispy Kreme donuts to Starbucks, where this time we took up three tables, mostly due to Zack bringing his laptop to test out the Wi-Fi in there. The Starbucking lasted for over an hour, as Halfling and Coop regaled us with stories from their lifeguard gig, and most of us started talking details for the upcoming Branford Marsalis concert on the lawn of the DMA later in the week. We were also lucky to see a poster on the way out of Starbucks (they're a sponsor) telling us that the concert is in fact on Friday night, as we'd all had it in our heads that it would be on Thursday, the day when the free concerts had previously been held.

So that's three Trifectas for the summer so far. Halfling and I need to start playing racquetball again so that I can counteract the calories from these tasty evenings. We also proved tonight that sometimes, there is such a thing as a free lunch dinner, and you don't have to have a physical office to have a good time with your "co-workers."

(UPDATE: Dingus posted a list of the positions that last night's participants might hold in the office of a theoretical Kev Inc.; it's not only funny but pretty accurate.)