So it’s my last week of work and for some reason, probably as a protest, Seattle temperatures are at like, Tempe AZ levels. Seriously, I woke up this morning at 6:00 and it was 76° out. By the time I left for work, two hours later, it was 82°. I mean, just the fact that I’m checking the temperature this often. It’s like how hot is it now? How about now? Anyway so how do we deal with this literally hellish heat, here in our 50ish° air-conditioned office? With an ice cream social, of course!

The first harbinger comes via e-mail at like 11:00 (outside temp: 92°), then an announcement bleats out over the inter-office intercom at 2:00 (96° and holding). It’s Ice Cream Time! And sure, I personally can’t eat the stuff due to a gastrointestinal intolerance to lactose, but it’s also my last week and I’ve got nothing to do, so I head over to the kitchen, figuring there’ll probably be cookies. Which there are, only not chocolate chip like I was hoping for. Nope. Just Oreos, and fake ones at that. But I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I grab a couple and continue on to see what else I can scavenge. I feel like a vegan lion at a kill, but I think, well, when life hands you lemons. I grab a cone and fill it with some strawberry slices, some crushed fake Oreos (There’s a bowl of crushed and a bowl of non-crushed. Nice.), a Reese’s PB Cup, maybe some other stuff, and then I drizzle on some butterscotch syrup and some caramel syrup too, because I just can’t decide. I do this right in front of this very attractive young lady who works maybe in accounting or something, just not really thinking about it, just kind of going about my business, damn the torpedos style. I also grab one more fake Oreo and put a dab-of-shampoo-sized dab of caramel syrup on it, and I eat that on my way back to my desk.

So some backstory here. I didn’t eat breakfast this morning because we really don’t have anything in the cupboards, and anyway I spent all of breakfast-time packing up my CDs and disassembling the CD rack and getting that all squared away for the move. So around 11:00 I start to feel some kind of hungry in me. Luckily I happen to have some sushi-like rolls that I made a couple nights before and left here in the office fridge, so I grab those to tide me over. As it turns out, though, four sushi-like rolls is a pretty filling nosh, and suddenly it’s like 2:15 (temp: 101°, no joke), post social, and I realize I still haven’t eaten lunch. I’m not about to heat my leftover spag while everyone’s all still getting their ice cream social on, though, so I wait until like 2:20 before heading back to the microwaves, Ziploc’d leftovers in hand.

Sprawled out on the kitchen counter like concubines are at least ten 70%-full half-gallon tubs of ice cream, slowwwly melting in the conditioned air. I think, Really? I think, Would somebody please tell me how much this is all costing the company? I mean, sure, not a lot, like, relatively speaking. But just, people are getting laid off, you know, and how many of us would have noticed if we’d just skipped this whole ice cream social thing. Not a one of us. Or if, you know, maybe only FIVE buckets of ice cream had been set out, instead of this killing field. Because yeah, it’s just sitting there melting and I’m just like: What a waste! What is this the polar ice caps? I think about this for one minute and eleven seconds as my spaghetti is being nuked. And while I’m thinking about it, I walk over and pop another fake Oreo into my mouth. But then who walks into the kitchen just as that fake Oreo is being stuffed between my lips? That same very attractive young lady from accounting. And I’m all, No! I haven’t been sitting here this whole time shoving fake Oreos into my mouth! I just came back in here, like just now, to reheat my leftover spag! Because I mean, sure, I’m getting married in a week, but does that mean I don’t want to look at least not unattractive, like not disgustingly gluttonous in the eyes of the fairer sex? Of course it doesn’t. So anyway she doesn’t even notice me, she just grabs something from the refridgerator or whatever and heads back to her work, which is almost worse, I think, and I grab another fake Oreo, and the microwave dings and I head back to my desk.

Oop! Another e-mail about the ice cream social!

Subject: It’s Melting!

Hi Staff,
The ice cream was melting so I had to put it on the top shelves of the freezer. Please help yourselves. I have left the toppings out for a bit.
Thank you to Operations for hosting such a lovely way for us to cool down…

The funniest part of this whole thing, though, is right when the ICS is announced on the intercom, this lady back in Production springs up out of her chair and starts talking excitedly to her cubicle neighbors, all, “Yeah! This seems like a great idea!” like in a you-don’t-have-to-tell-me-twice kind of voice, like of course she wants ice cream, like who wouldn’t. She’s still talking excitedly as she approaches my cube on her way to the kitchen and then she goes, being ironic, pretending like she actually doesn’t totally want ice cream, “You’ll have to FORCE me to COME!” She says it really loud and emphatic and the way it sounds is just really funny, trust me.