Events at Work

We had 2 events at work this week. The first was an activity for my department that is very similar to the show, The Amazing Race. We were assigned to teams of 3 and our first task was a scavenger hunt to collect different types of documents from different people throughout the office. Once we completed that task, we could get our clue to go onto the next place. It took us outside in the courtyard where our next clue gave us a detour. We had to find our logo that was on a car in the east parking lot. We combed the lot looking for the car so we could record the license plate and report it back to the next person. We finally found it and ran back to where we were and handed it to the designated person. At that point we were allowed to get another clue. We had to do a crossword puzzle and take letter from the crossword puzzle to decipher where our next location was. It was Isabella's Cafe on the concourse level of the building. We ran down there to get our next clue. It brought us to the common area of the same level where we had a choice to run up 5 flights of stairs to collect a piece of paper in each stairwell with our logo on it or to pop up to 300 balloons looking for the same logo. We took the stairs. Once we turned in all of our logos, we were on to the next clue, which brought us to the fountain. In the fountain, there were floating letters, A-D. We had to take each letter all of the same color. They had numbers on the back and we were given an equation using the numbers. Once we solved our math problem, we got our next clue which brought us to the picnic tables outside. Once we got there, there was a puzzle that was waiting for us. The first team to put their puzzle together won. My team got 2nd place out of 5 teams. The first place team each got a $25 Visa gift card. We did get pumpkin pie and rhubarb cake though. It was a lot of fun and took up 1.5 hours of the afternoon.

I work in the Northland Building in Bloomington. Northland had "Oktoberfest" yesterday. They had HUGE tents in the picnic area. There were was a lot of food I tried for my first time ever. They had brats, chicken breasts, german potato salad, traditional potato salad, cucumber/tomato salad, cole slaw, apple streudel, soft pretzels and root beer from a keg served in a mug that we got to keep. They even had a polka band.

So I ate food I have never tried before. I had never had German potato salad and was suprised to find out that it's served warm. I guess I thought it would be cold like regular potato salad. It wasn't too bad but it had a vinegar taste to them. I also put sauerkraut on my brat for the first time. I liked it! The smell is sauerkraut is much worse than the taste. I also had a cucumber/tomato/onion salad. This I have had before but do you know what else was in there? Watermelon! I thought that was weird! I also had cole slaw, which I have had before but it also had almonds, apples and cranberries in it. Overall, it was a very fun and new eating experience.