Deyna's Halloween Adventures Part 2

The second big competition at work is the office decorating. There is a most fall themed or a most Halloween themed category. As my fellow skit members now know, I have a mantra when it comes to theatrics and crafts- go all out or go home. I'm pretty sure if I say it again I work, I'll get pushed in the pool. So we decided instead of just being spooky or leafy, we would add humor, since we knew we could do that. And when else is HR allowed to be funny? NEVER!!!!!! :) In an effort to not offend anyone, we decided the target of our satire should be ourselves. Can't make offend yourself, right? Well, I guess if you tried hard enough you could, but in our good-natured little world, we didn't.


We figured, what is fun about Halloween...it's evil. And everyone thinks HR is evil. So let's play with that. I turned Dina and I into witches with photoshop and scrapbook supplies. We made roadsigns and Hazard signs all over the door. Dina even found the perfect doormat on clearance at Target. We made 3 ghosts out of 1$ material and balloons and replicated our name tags. We tortured her poor plastic office tree and Dina splurged on the motion-sensored freaky witch. Whatyda think?

Deyna's Halloween Adventures

Every year, the staff Halloween luncheon is the biggest of the year. There are decorating, baking, and skit contests. The air gets competitive with trash-talking and threats, and if you've ever seen friends, I can be a bit like Monica. Just a wee bit competitive. Right, Lake? So before you get excited, I'm just gonna lay it out now that I did not participate in the food decorating contest. Time was not my friend, it didn't happen, get over it (this is mostly directed at myself as my inner Martha is still a little disappointed). This being Dina's first Halloween at the Village, wanted to go all out and decided we should sweep the competition (except for baking as she doesn't bake).

Let me start out with the skit. Departmental skits are the highlight of the year. This is the one point in time when it is okay to make fun of your boss, your co-worker, or just anything in general. It is extremely important that you do not divulge any details to another department about your skit as they will use this information to dominate you during the competition. Legend has it, that in past years, an employee broke into the reigning champs' rehearsal and videotaped their skit for an advantage and won. Now, I was going to post a video on here of the actual skit, but the camera settings were so bad, it is not really worth it, and it's 7 minutes long. We had really wanted to do High School Musical spoof, but through a fair informative, we knew another department was already doing this. So we teamed up with Volunteer Services and IT for Dancing With The Stars: GKTW Edition. Let's just say, I was Britney Spears and Dina was Ugly Betty. I think I dislocated my jaw from chewing such a large piece of gum. And I was unable to perform my dance number because I had to "go shave my baby's head". It was funny, and I tell ya, the hardest part was making a modest Britney outfit. Instead of having professional dancers for the washed-up celebrities to dance with, we had GKTW staff member parodies. We got some good laughs.

We won second place! First place went to Entertainment. They did High School Musical 2. At the end of the skit they all grabbed hands and jumped in our swimming pool. That kind of commitment should be rewarded. All 4 One!

Deyna

It is hard to answer the phone at work: "Give Kids The World Human Resources, this is Deya."
"Hi Dina"
"I'm sorry, this is Deya."
"This is Dina?"
"No, this is Deya. Dina's on the other line, can I take a message?"
"But I need Dina."
Unfortunately, our names sound exatly alike on the phone. So several of our fellow staff members have started to refer to us as Deyna.

Adventures of Deyna Part 1: A few weeks ago, our insurance broker invited my boss Dina and I to a March of Dimes charity dinner at the Portofino Hotel at Universal. I'm not really one to pass up an opportunity to get all gussied-up, but when I found out that local chefs and restaurants were having a cook-off at the event and we would be voting on the food, well, I'm no idiot. Dina and I went to the event and had a great time. I will say, the biggest challenge of the night was trying to find me a non-alcoholic beverage! All off the restaurants had wine pairings with their food, so the servers weren't bringing drinks to the tables at all. I asked for a water and was completely scoffed at as if I had requested a free-night in the Penthouse Suite. I tried to explain the situation and was told the cash-only bar had soda. This plan had 2 loopholes. 1) I never carry cash and 2) I hardly ever drink soda. Nice. Dina is now very distressed that I will become dehydrated and pass out before the night is over so she is on a mission to find me a drink. She goes to the Blue Martini (a very trendy club in town) booth and convinces them to give me a martini glass of ice and orange juice- yes, straight. Everyone at our table was dying to know what my fun drink was. And no one believed me! The Playboy bunny-esque bartenders did not want to refill my 5oz of juice so we were back at square one after my ice melted. Hmmm, what to do? We eyed a coffee cart and saw a pitcher marked "Skim Milk". I poured a coffee cup full of skim milk and it was possibly the most satisfying dairy drink of my life. The moral of the story? Don't bring a hand bag that won't pack your own bottled water.

Tagged

A. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning.
B. Each player lists 6 facts/habits about themselves.
C. At the end of the post, the player then tags 6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

I was tagged by Megan Hilton- I thought I was going to get out of this, but it's different than the last time I was tagged. Dangit!!!

1. I am completely and deathly afraid of spiders. I can't be in the same room as one, go to sleep if one is alive, or even look at a picture of one (SHANNON!). I have been known on occasion to call my parents who live thousands of miles away to "help" with the spider on the laundry room door because Chris was out of town.

2. I am obsessed with anything pink. My entire desk at work is decked out in pink paraphenalia since Chris won't let me decorate the house. When I moved into the Freshman dorms and Mom let me pick out new grown up bedding, the only pink comforter or sheets being manufactured in that day and age were Barbie. So I had a Barbie dorm room. :) If the high heel fits....

3. I love hearts. Love is my middle name and I've had four open heart surgeries so I feel a bit of a connection with the generic shape. If someone has something that reads "Love", I do claim it has my name on it. Let's face it, nothing ever says "Deya".

4. I have hiccup tourette's. Not my fault all though I was constantly in trouble for it high school. Who else has to bring a doctor's note saying they are excused from hiccuping in class? Seriously?!?!

5. I can't eat any vegetables. Sounds like the dream diet, but you never want broccoli until someone takes it away. Well... technically that's a lie. That's probably the one vegetable I do like. A salad then. I've never been a big salad eater and now I would kill for a trip to Sweet Tomatoes. Mmmm, my mouth is watering!!!!!!!! Juicy ripe red tomotoes, cripsy romaine lettuce, broccoli florets with ranch dressing! AGH!! Stupid freaking Vitamin K!

6. I love the Disney Channel. I have never really grown out of my 14 year old self when it comes to music or television. Sign me up for High School Musical, Hannah Montana, or Aly & AJ any day. It's fun and it sure beats a lot of the crap on TV now. Although I have to admit to Beauty and the Geek!

Now I tag: Lake, Elysa (That's right- both of ya!), Kristl, Shannon (payback time!), Samye, and Carma

Carnival Cake

Mom, this is mostly for you. And Elysa- since you were asking about the cake. This stupid thing took me a week to make. This was Judith's 30th birthday cake and I was pretty much making it up as I went a long. It took a week because I did it in stages. Made the cookie dough one night, cooked them another, frosted them the third. You get the idea. The cookies which were used as the animals for the carousel and to supplement the cake as we had no idea how many people would be coming to the party. It was a "whimsical" carousel which in reality meant I could not for my life find a horse cookie cutter that was the right size or that I liked (it's possible I only looked in 1 store). These I already had. :)

Then I baked a 2 layer cake, but did not put them together. I used some cake pillars and separator plate to make the carousel pieces and used icing as glue for the "ponies". The decoration is a Meringue Buttercream icing which I found on the Martha Stewart wedding website and the candies are Skittles Gum. I would've loved to decorate it more elaborately, but at this point, I was really done with the cake. :)

Bestest Birthday Part Ever!!!!!

Last Saturday was our friend Judith's 30th birthday party and she decided her theme should be a carnival. Not just any carnival, but the kind of party you always dreamed of having as a child. The one your parents could never afford to give you or didn't want the liability of throwing. :) Keep in mind, this is an adults only party- no children. Here are the activities: Twister Championship (that would be me!!!), Three-Legged Race, Wheelbarrow Race, and Waterballoon Toss. Yes, the adults participated in all the activities which made it even more hilarious. We also had the following "attractions": Snowcone machine, Popcorn machine, pinatas, inflatable rock-climbing wall, inflatable waterslide, and a bounce house. Oh yeah- coolest birthday ever. Enjoy the pics. Chris was there too, but feeling under the weather, so he was taking a lot of the pictures. I'll post the cake I made a little later.

Playing Hooky

Sorry for the delay in posts, it's been a bit of a whirlwind over here. Don't worry, I have tons of blog material for you over the next few days. Gear up, here we go! Last Tuesday, Chris and I miraculously had the same day off, so we decided to take advantage of our proximity to the Most Magical Place on Earth and headed for EPCOT. Yes, it does have to be in caps as it is an acronym. While I agree with most tourists that it means "Every Person Comes Out Tired", the actual meaning is "Experimental Prototype Community Of Trivia". This is the place Disney does a lot of research and tries to help the world, in addition to taking it over. Chris had never been and I hadn't spent more than 2 hours there since I was 14, so we figured, what the hey!

Let's first say it was again a Tuesday in October and it was raining. As the parking attendant stated, "It's a Florida day!" Apparently only natives are either a) smart enough to come during the week in the off-season or b) stupid enough to brave the rain even though they live across the street and could very well wait for another day. Either way, it was indeed a Florida day for us. I apologize we have no pictures of us in our sexy rain gear and poncho. I waited for Chris to ride the two extreme rides (yes, this is really the reason Chris had not wanted to go to EPCOT till now- not enough "thrill" in an amusement park for his taste) .

After the rides, we walked through the House of the Future or whatever they call it now, since you can actually buy the things you see inside. I was literally drooling over the kitchen. And not because of the fake cookie dough in the oven. If and when we ever buy a house, I would like to just transplant the EPCOT kitchen into my house, thank you very much. Chris liked the TV you talked to. Never worry about losing the remote again. It's great advertising (and shameless I might add) for all of their corporate sponsors. It's just too bad that only Brad and Angelina can afford any of it.

Then we headed to the new Nemo ride, which was fairly lame and low-key. I guess they have to have rides for all the little kids too. It just would've been nice to realize that before we stood in line for 30 minutes. Although, I have to say, the highlight of the morning was being corralled around these giant rocks where the ocean splashes and some tin seagulls start saying "Mine! Mine! Mine!" We were laughing really hard. If that's not funny to you, you really need to see Finding Nemo and probably get out more in general.

Soarin' is the cool ride I could go on, so it was clearly my favorite. They sit you in a Hang-glider and fly you up to an IMAX screen where you fly all over California. Very cool. But in payback for waiting around while Chris rode all the other rides (I figured sitting in a spaceship that puts you against 3 G-force + my pacer = a bad time) I made him stand in line for 35 minutes to take pictures with the characters. It's highly possible we were the only people in line without children. But we were also the only family in line who wasn't whining, crying, screaming, climbing, or in any other form bothering everyone else. So that has to count for something, right? He paid me back by flirting with Minnie Mouse and kissing her on the cheek every time the photographer tried to take the photo. That poor rodent was so flustered, even I was laughing.

We eventually headed to The World Showcase and of course spent the most time in Canada where Chris had to play the "Do you know so-and-so?" with all the employees of Canada. He is definitely getting pumped up for Christmas in Canada. He is trying to teach me the words to the national anthem and is increasingly discouraged by my lack of enthusiasm for the task. I'm sorry, I just discovered the soundtrack to Legally Blonde: The Musical- yes, seriously, and which would you rather?

So on went the day, dodging in and out of rain. We had a lot of fun and it was great to just relax and not worry about anything. Oh, we did meet a giant troll in Norway, who we thought really more resembled the House Elf, Dobby. May he rest in peace.

The Disney photographers (a.k.a. money-hungry commission-based thieves) took some fun pics that you can check out for the next 3 weeks. They disappear after that, so don't say I didn't warn you! :) I'm crossing my fingers this works...