Can we really call this an XMas Party?

"I normally don't do this but ahhh, let's keep the party going"

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This Friday marks the date my employer has decided to have our annual Christmas party. This is not an extravaganza, festival, jump-off, crankin'-a$$ joint, none of that. It's a typical office Christmas party.

Normally, I don't talk about my job on this here blog because I know that a couple of my co-workers (who are my friends) actually browse this thing from time-to-time. And even though I love you guys like co-workers, I ain't taking NO CHANCES! LOL. But because I know they'll probably feel the same way about this Christmas party I'm going to go ahead and put this out there.

If I seem very ho-hum about this Christmas party there are some really good reasons for that:

1. I work in a company of about 150 people. Most of these 150 are above the age of 35 years old. I'd estimate the average age at about 38.6 years of age. For a couple years I was the youngest person working here (I was 22 and 23 during those two years). Now, I'm still about the 4th youngest person working here at age 26. Partying with 38-yeear olds, that's what's up!

2. My employer is a publisher. We publish books and journals in both electronic and print formats. But the books aren't the kind that would have me raving about how much I love them. For example, one of our featured books right now is "Birds of the World". If the book was about chickens and 10 million ways to cook them, that'd be on my personal Best Seller list.

3. Aside from being one of the youngest here, I am one of the handful of minority staff members here. So I know not to expect to hear my favorite Christmas songs during this party. Donny Hathaway's "This Christmas" and anything on the Jackson Five Christmas CD. This party is probably going to have some Nat King Cole (which isn't bad) playing at best, and at worst some classical music rendition of Christmas carols. Beethoven and Tchiakovsky totally remind me of Christmas.

4. This is an extension of #2. Because we publish books, a lot of the employees here like to talk about books we sell and the publishing industry in general at these "parties" we have. Imagine walking up to someone with your Sam Adams in-hand, wanting to talk about the Lakers vs. Heat game on Christmas and how Kobe's a straight punk but you gotta respect his game on the court and how D-Wade ain't never have no affair with Hoopz....Then they kick-off the conversation by talking about the American Library Association conference they went to a couple months back. The NBA does promote reading and all that, but come on!!!

So for all these reasons, I am not really looking forward to the party but I will go because I enjoy the break from work and the pseudo social interaction. Besides, this year there's going to be Karaoke (which seems like some twisted joke from satan if you ask me), beer & wine (also courtesy of the man DOWNstairs), and a DJ. I can't believe there's going to be a DJ so I have to go just off the strength of that. I can only imagine the musical selections. Do DJs have classical music on vinyl? Or maybe this is going to be one of those CD-DJ guys. I dunno, but I am curious as I don't know what.