To Play or Not To Play Colors

Today (Saturday) was the Hindu festival Holi, the festival of colors. It's supposed to celebrate the start of spring and several Hindu mythology stories. Part of the celebration involves wearing white clothes and running around in the streets throwing colors (paint/chalk) at one another. Thursday I got an email that a there was going to be a group of Deloitte peeps playing colors in the courtyard of the corporate apartments, inviting people to play or just watch. I was all about playing colors! How many times in your life can you say that you were allowed to throw paint at someone & get all messy yourself? Well, I told my group that I was going to play colors & they advised me to get some coconut oil for my hair. Apparently if you get alot of color in your hair, it could stay there for an extended period of time, especially if you have blond hair like me. So I sent my driver to get me a small bottle of coconut oil for paint protection.

This morning I got up, all excited about being able to laugh & get messy today. No white clothes though, just grubby workout clothes. On the way over to the apartments I saw some groups of people in the street who'd obviously played colors earlier in the morning. Got to the apartments and none of them had the apartment number on the door so I wandered out into the courtyard. The courtyard was deserted, almost. The only other person there was a girl from Atlanta who'd just started on Thursday. She made a couple of calls & found out that we were in the right spot. Apparently everyone else was still sleeping because of the night before. No colors for us. Honestly I was disappointed. Went back to my hotel, took a nap, did some reading, worked a bit & watched Bride & Prejudice (really good BTW). So much for playing colors....Maybe next year???

*Pictures are from a presentation by one of the staff about Holi.

PD Town

I work in a cube. I work in a cube literally in the middle of my floor. I work in a cube literally in the middle of the floor that sticks out into the walkway. So I know when everyone walks by and everyone knows what I'm doing when they walk by (very distracting btw). When I sit up straight in my chair, I can't see directly over the wall of my cube. So if I want to see something I have to stand up. I also use IM to talk to my co-workers (it's a company thing) and the other day someone on my floor was "away" and I needed to talk to them. So I poked my head up out of my cube, looked around the floor, and sat back down very quickly. As I sat down I almost started laughing. I was like "oh my goodness, I'm a prairie dog".

Yes, I felt like a prairie dog. That little creature that pokes up out of it's underground tunnel system to see what's going on in the world and to communicate with other prairie dogs. And once they're done looking for friends & chatting, they go back into their tunnel and get back to work.

Now that's what I think of myself every time I poke my head up out of my cube to look around.

For more information on prairie dogs please visit:

http://www.desertusa.com/dec96/du_pdogs.html or http://www.nationalgeographic.com/burrow/pdog.html