Computer Christmas

Not everyone has a metal "Christmas tree" sculptureClark Griswold wins every year as the most
decorated with lights and ornaments in their office ordecorated cubicle for obvious reasons- his cube glows
reindeers made from vending machine pretzels. A lotfor the month before Christmas and a couple weeks
of offices don't even decorate with all the differentafter with neon red and green lights.
holidays that people celebrate- no one wants toEvery year we do the traditional holiday party too. We
offend. But in our office it's a computer Christmas.all gather in the main room and watch South Park
Instead of sleighs and colored balls on the Christmaswhile sipping eggnog and unwrap bacon wrapping
tree, we've hung a red and green computer mousepaper snow-globes of Darth Vader or Circuit City gift
from a metal tree someone created out of old coatcertificates. We don't know what kind of sneaky
hangers and cubical parts, then spray painted it gold. Asurprise our boss is going to be surprising us with this
shiny spray-painted gold Microsoft mouse acts like ouryear as our thank-you company gift. Last year it was
Christmas star and a touch pad keyboard rests justan XBOX for the break room and the year before
beneath the tree like a special gift from Santa.that we all got a remote controlled computer mouse.
No, it's not a traditional Christmas in our office, butRumor has it that we are getting 30 minute massages
when you look around at the people who I work with,from the Massage Hut across the street from us. I
we are all a little "geeky" and we like it that way. Wethought about what some of my co-workers would
couldn't imagine a white elephant gift exchange withoutthink about that. A lot of them might be excited to
R2D2 wrapping paper or bacon wrapping papershow off their Lord of The Rings trilogy tattoos or
concealing a coveted touch pad mouse or cordlesssome may be too embarrassed to make eye-contact
ergonomic mouse. That is just who we are.with a real person- okay not true, but we are not the
We don't have just a food drive and toy drive box, wemost social bunch.
have a box for recycled computer equipment toSure if we were a stuffier group of people we might
donate to a needy school. Someone even filled it withdemand a lobster and steak dinner in a nice restaurant
some new software and a couple new touch padfor our company party, but we don't sell retail Rolexes
keyboards. It's a tech-y Christmas for sure, especiallyor stocks, we create programs and we come to work
when there is an award for the most decoratedin t-shirts and jeans. We like our Futurama and our
cubicle. I don't think I am going to win this year. Actually,Robot Chicken marathons- we are computer geeks
I never win- some people really go over the edge withand we like our computer Christmas.
their decorations. The tech support guy we nicknamed