Last night as we were leaving, Seamus, H. (who we really call H. Lastname, but I don’t want to put her last name out here), and I did a spontaneous dance of joy. I couldn’t restrain myself and cajoled the other two to join me. It was, after all, our last day of work for twelve days.

I’m not sure why we needed the dance party, we had spent the entire day celebrating — donuts, cookies, fresh lattes (Seamus brought in his espresso maker), fresh egg nog (blech), Scotch (double plus blech), hot pizza, — and our office gift from Al, the desktop dodgeball game.

Last week at the official all-office Holiday Party, my co-workers spouses’ were dumbfounded by our camaraderie and ingenious slacking methods. They were most in awe of our lunchtime rituals where we all (there’s about 11 of us) gather into a conference room and eat together, everyday. And of course there is the beloved toaster oven. Softwareman brought in a toaster oven a few months ago and we’ve spent every waking moment trying to come up with the most inventive foods to cook. So far we’ve done break-n-bake cookies, smores, toast, bagels, and yesterday we tried frozen pizza (that I lifted from the bowling alley).

It was a toaster oven miracle!

“When do you actually work?” Ross, Al’s husband asked me last week.

Believe it or not, we work a lot and hard. But we also make time to play hard in the middle of the day. And despite all that, I still could not restrain my joy at the idea of having twelve days off.