Break Time!

Ah, break: a brief moment of happiness in the otherwise bleak existence of a government employee.

To be fair, it's actually rather a lot of moments, none of which is particularly brief. We have to keep pace with the chain-smokers, after all, and there are a lot of those. A lot. So as a matter of principle, we spend a good deal of time on break.

Today we bid Silhavy a tearful adieu (oh, but he'll be around) as he goes back to exciting College Station, Texas to work on a master's in urban planning.

Urban planning! Woohoo! (Here I and a couple of my readers high-five one another.)

I'm pleased to say we have sent Silhavy off in style, or at least I think we have. We had, not one, but two going away lunches, at the first of which his boss chose the venue and yet totally failed to pay for his meal:


...and at the second of which S. got to pick the place and my homegirl A. picked up his tab.


But best of all was last night's "Happy Hour," or happy several hours as the case may be. I only wish we'd chosen a bar that obeys city ordinances on indoor smoking, because the place we picked immediately drove away our friend b.r., a central figure in our government-worker break scene, whom everyone loves dearly even if he is high-maintenance and gassy.

We ended up at Barflies on Airport, a fine establishment where all of us bonded so strongly that even complete strangers ended up in our group (blonde, second from left; name unknown but she's clearly very cool).


We discovered that all of us are about equally good at pool; in other words, if you see one of our group with a cue stick, I highly recommend you just run. Maybe even buy an airline ticket. Just get out of range, for God's sake!

And at about 1:30am we wended our way home, then went on about another Friday at work. Another set of construction plans to gaze at blankly. Another example of the fact that as much taxpayer money as we can spend on pointless and self-referential projects, there are certain items for which the government staunchly refuses to stick the public with the bill:


And another break, just to carry us through the day.