A couple of weeks earlier, I'd resigned from Community Connect after accepting a job at Meetup.com, and after a little over two years there, Friday was my last day!
Creative costumes are great and all, but in my opinion, the best thing you can do for a work Halloween costume is to dress up as one of your co-workers! Check out Christine, who came in dressed up as Ian! She gets awarded some pretty serious "I have big balls" bonus points because Ian was her boss!
Wednesday was OFFICIALLY Halloween and it was my team's turn to help get the office ready for the Community Connect Halloween Costume contest! Around 3:30, we called off for the day and got to work turning the common area into a spooky party area.
Waiting for the freight elevator to come down so that I can take my bike up into work. Not very exciting, I know. But sometimes I just take pictures of the boring mundane things I do every day because it helps me remember what that time in my life was like. So, there you go.
On Friday, someone's friend brought their TATTOO GUN into work and a bunch of my co-worker's got spur of the moment tattoos! Richard went with the old fingerstache and pretty much spent the next 3 weeks walking around with his finger over his lip just like this photo. Hahaha.
Wait, what's this? Another piñata? I can't believe that I forgot that this was a two-piñata party! Incredible! Here's Ian wildly swinging and whiffing big time!
Boo-yah! I totally captured the exact second it exploded! If there were porn movies about piñatas, this would be like the most famous money-shot of all time.
On Friday afternoon, we had our monthly party where you celebrate eveyone who had a birthday and who had an anniversary in the past month. There's always a full-spread of food too!
Friday, July 27th was my last day at work before we left on vacation. I was at the office super-late making sure all my loose ends were tied up and then it was...
Around 1am, Mike told us he had to go home which meant he had to pose for this photo of Court and I giving him the "I'm a huge pussy" double thumbs down! Hahaha.
On Wednesday night, I went out for drinks with my co-workers Mike and Court. We hit the East Village and met up with Mike's twin brothers. Here's Mike with one of his brothers and his brother's wife!
For a couple of months, Benjamin Apple, Mike Montero and myself were tapped to split away from the rest of the development group at CCI to create some new products. When asked what we wanted to call our "special" team, we came up with TEAM DOUCHE TRUMPET. (Which is the name given to the weird "wah-wah" noise I have a habit of making out of the corner of my mouth). Anyway, Monday was Benjamin's last day at the company, and when we came into work on Tuesday morning, we saw that Benjamin had left a shout out to Mike and I on his two monitors. Hahaha.
On Thursday afternoon, Benjamin made the mistake of leaving his brand new camera out on his desk when he went to the bathroom, so Mike and I picked it up and took a bunch of "secret photos" for him to find later. This one made me laugh so hard that I took a picture of the picture so I'd have a copy of it on my camera. Meta!
On Friday afternoon, Mike and I took Court out to a farewell lunch! Two weeks earlier he'd announced that he was resigning his job as Chief Operating Officer of Community Connect (where he was my boss) in order to take a job as the CEO of a new start-up called Yodle that helps local business advertise online! (Where I currently work and Court is my boss again! Yay!).
Hahaha. There's nothing better than a party with your co-worker that gets to the point where all inhibitions have completely vanished. Christine and Ian are singing their hearts out and Rob's just feeling it and dancing. Awesome.
...Co-worker Karaoke! After we were all pretty much sauced, we headed up the street to a nearby karaoke bar with private rooms that Dan Kwok knew about! Here's Phil and Dan kicking off the karaoke jams!
On Thursday night, my co-workers and I took out Rob DeBaun to celebrate his departure from the company. Here's Montero pressuring Rob into drinking a shot!
A few minutes later, Julie and Ralph stumbled outside and had a hilarious conversation where they tried to decided if they were "too drunk" to bike all the way back to Brooklyn. Hahaha. In the end, they decided to go for it! (And I'm happy report they made it home without incident).
After Mike lost to Phil, a lady that we all work with (I forget her name) decided to challenge Mike to a match! Everyone started teasing Mike and the ENTIRE company gathered around the table to watch. Mike is the king of shit-talking and knew that if he allowed himself to be defeated by a girl, he would never hear the end of it so he started really psyching himself up. Mike got himself so pumped up that when the match started he almost threw the lady out of her seat. (Which was probably the funniest thing I've seen in like 5 years). Here's the pic I snapped (of the lady yelling and almost getting her arm broken) right when we yelled "GO!" Hahahahaha.
Whenever alcohol and competitions are mixed, you can be fairly sure that sooner or later some arm wrestlin's gonna break out! Mike Montero was making excuses about why his team lost and it turned into Phil challenging him to some arm wrestling! Mike felt pretty confident going into the match, but Phil immediately took a strong lead!
After a huge buffet and a two-hour open bar, we were split into teams, giving unlimited passes to the arcade and told that the team to earn the most tickets in the next 90 minutes would win a big prize!
The next morning I had to wake up bright and early to attend an all-day, off-site strategy meeting for work. Here's CTO, Mike Montero, kicking the morning off.
Full open bar for more than 3 hours = the whole company drunk out of their minds by 9pm. Hahaha. Here's Mike, me and Kevin lamenting the end of free booze as the open bar ended. But if you're inventive like Mike is...
...you can always find ways to keep on drinkin' for free! Hahaha. (By the way, I'm writing this almost two years after this photo was taken and when I recently showed this pic to Mike he just groaned and said "I always knew that picture would come back to haunt me.")
Here's Pete accepting a bottle of really cheap wine after winning the award for "Most Likely to Spend the Night Passed-Out on the Sofa in the Lobby of My Apartment Building" award. (A superlative he earned after a particularly rough night out drinking with people from work.)
