Different Much?

Today's event went well, but seriously - I didn't know that my clock had a 4:30 AM! I was downtown at 10 to 6, and like my fellow coworkers - had to break into the parking garage of our venue in order to get into the building at our call time.

Sometimes my department at work makes me laugh, and think of one of my favorite songs from my Sesame Street days - (yes, a song from when I was really young)... a quick Google search gave me this video of that song. It's not exactly how I remembered it, but then again there wasn't an Internet or You Tube back then... so this is probably how it has morphed over the years.

I sometimes feel like the one that is "not like the others" in my office... there are 7 people in our department, and this is the make up:

6 women

1 man

1 Jewish person

1 Christian person (that I know of)

1 Lesbian

6 liberals

1 conservative

5 married people
2 single people

4 Caucasians

1 African American

1 Hispanic

1 tree hugger

4 parents

6 drinkers

1 non-drinker

5 people that live within 10 miles of the office

2 that live over 25 miles away from the office

I think you get the picture, but for such a diverse group of people - I've never seen a "team" come together like we do when we need to. I use quotes around that word because in my past work experience - it has only been a concept that was thrown around by management, but never something that was actually achieved.

I sometimes feel like a complete odd-ball when it comes to hanging out with these people, and never more so than when we were released from the office today. Our boss let us go at 3 because of our hard work, and long day... and everyone in our department except me went to have happy hour together. They tried their best to convince me to go, but in all honesty - I've never been really comfortable with people drinking with their coworkers. It just doesn't present an overall professional image to me... and being that I don't/can't drink anyway - I just opted to come home and get things ready for my church small group meeting tomorrow night. Not to mention that I desperately want to get to bed as early as humanly possible tonight.

Okay, and speaking about the fact that I'm the only conservative person in my office that I know of - I can pretty safely guess that I'm the only one that just got off the phone with the Republican Majority campaign... hysterical phone call... (how do I get sucked into these things?!) The first question out of the box is "How do you feel about the outcome of the recent election?" - can you imagine the answers they are getting? All I could do was laugh... I mean seriously? You know what types of people you're calling... what do you think?

Not to mention that it always makes me wonder how they build those call lists - because I've never given money to any candidate... never registered to vote in a primary... so how in the world do they know that I'd be receptive to their call?

In the end they wanted money - and I wasn't willing to make a commitment without John being home to talk it over... but I think they put us down for $10 and are sending us a letter to decide if we want to give more... yeah - sure... I don't know - sometimes John surprises me, but I just don't think that it's very likely that we'll have more than $10 extra bucks going into the Christmas season...