Ahh December

December is, hands down, the most stressful month of the year for myself and my team at the office. We've got other pressure points, but this always seems to be the worst. I think it is because of all the extra end-of-year administrative stuff (eg performance reviews), the fact there are fewer days (ie stat holidays are great, except when you've got deadlines...) and all the added family-and-social pressures from the holidays (lunches, decorating contests, shopping etc). At any rate, we get through it with a lot of coffee, chocolate and laughter.

This year, we were "gifted" with a holiday decorating contest on the actual worst day of the year for us. We could have bowed out, as a couple of other departments did, but no, we're a wee bit too competitive for that. So we built an igloo.  Around our desks. Crazy? Perhaps. Fun? Absolutely. It became our goal not to win but to make as many people laugh as we could. So we also gussied up the inside and outside of the igloo with Canadian winter stereotypes. The team dressed up in our finest hoser gear. And when it came time to "present" our concept we said "eh" a lot and offered the judges Timmy's and Blue.

Did we win? Another team brought in an entire traditional turkey dinner, and incorporated team members in Hyderabad, Dublin and Calgary via videoconference - holy crap! But from the outset they were the team to beat. Did we make people laugh? Oh yeah :) 

These pics do not give it justice, but might give you some idea...

Items of note: fake fire on the monitor (another one was showing Gretzky highlights, and Bob & Doug's version of the 12 Days of Christmas was playing on the iPod dock), armchairs in place of desk chairs, a Canadian flag tied to hockey stick, miscellaneous ski and hockey equipment and the most, um, interesting moose head wreath we've ever seen.

 

Items of note: sled, very small sheepskin jacket and boots, ice-fishing polar bear, polar bear with reindeer antlers and headphones (hooked up to a BlackBerry - we started with an iPod, but decided if we were going to stay on theme it really ought to be a RIM product!), large Timmy's cup and a heck of a nice fake fire (the split logs are real, but the flames are a length of red lame fabric and orange fun foam - that's classy!).



In the midst of that we actually got our work done. We had built in a cushion for our Friday deadline to allow for some carryover to Monday or Tuesday and ended up not needing it. What does that mean? A unexpected weekend of recovery for me, featuring rather a lot of knitting and crocheting and present wrapping for me!

I started a little froggy prince for Princess Leah, thought about working on the beer cozy for my brother (designed to look like his rec league hockey shirt) and bought yarn and settled on a pattern for a mug cozy for his new girlfriend. Not a lot of finishing there, but I did start and finish this ornament wrapper for our tree:

  

More productively, I wrapped a bunch of the presents to go under the tree. Leah and I decorated it together a couple of weeks ago - our first :)  It's about 2/3rds finished in this pic - a bunch more small balls still had to go on, and a few special handmade ornaments.

In all, I'm feeling pretty good!

I'm hoping the good luck at the office lasts just a little longer so I can get out to the weekly Toronto North Knitters meetup Monday night so I can work on the mug cozy with some company. That would be the icing on a very yummy cake :)