the ’Zine

Clambake

June 18, 2007 by Heather Wilson

Filed under: Behind the Scenes / 0 comments

I got dressed in some cargo pants and my bright green "Immaculate Conception Field Day" t-shirt, which I purchased at a thrift store for $0.50 (trust me this comes up again later). Then I headed to the office with DanT and Whitney (she is good friend of mine who just started in QA) where we picked up the sunscreen, bug spray, and kites. While there were ran into a mob of QA people and an extra designer so we all took the T together.

Our boat launched from a different side of the harbor this year which confused a lot of people who apparently don't read their email thoroughly, I won't name names. We had an open bar on the way out but I was told it's illegal to have one on the way back. The line at the bar was super long all the way to the island and some people didn't get any drinks at all which made a those people slightly testy. So what happens next won't be too surprising.

We land and I go talk to the head Park Ranger man, his name is Mike. After the initial greetings: "The Immaculate Conception! I'm a member of the Immaculate Conception over in [insert name of small Massachusetts town here]." "That's great!", I reply. How do I explain to this very nice, obviously quite Catholic man that I am wearing this shirt for its high irony value? I mean come on, "Immaculate Conception Field Day"? Mike gives me a talk about what to tell people: watch out for small children, don't litter, don't smoke, take everything off of the island that you brought on with you.

I climb up onto one of the convenient wooden benches and project loudly to get everyone's attention: "Hey Dudes!".

"We are eating in the same place we did last year"

CHEERS

"Take everything off of the island that you brought on with you."

More CHEERS

"There are little kids on the island please watch out for them."

Some cheers, some snarky comments. My boss Kris adds: "Please try NOT to teach them any new words."

"There is no smoking on the island."

One second of silence and then a large portion of the crowd erupts in grumbles and starts looking like it's going to find a dark hole in the fort, kill me, and leave my body in it.

"It's a state park. It's illegal. Come on "

More grumbling. This is not good.

Someone says something to the group that I don't remember because of the blood rushing in my ears. My fear of being lynched increases.

Silence.

"Ummm that's it.

Ok go have fun!"

More CHEERS

Mike the ranger grabs me as I jump down from the bench. "You can go easy on the smokers, just make sure they take their butts with them." I think he felt sorry for me.

After that fiasco I was doubly anxious to make sure everything else went smoothly. The catering set up looked perfect, a lot fancier than last year and there were vegetable kabobs being cooked for the vegans. Awesome!

The first thing I unpacked was the sunscreen, and then the kites. The sweet, sweet kites. Last year we had tiny decorate your own kites that didn't really fly so this year I bought some high class nylon kites from KiteandWind.com. We got some pirates kites, some horsie kites, and of course a unicorn kite. It was pretty much the best kite selection ever. One of our programmers even brought his super action stunt kite. The kites went over really well and there were only a couple of mishaps...

(This is Matt Boch, one of our Production Assistants getting a kite out of a tree.)

We also played volleyball, soccer, croquet, bocce, and climbed trees.

Lunch was all seafood, another problem, this time less lynch-worthy. Last year the caterer served lobster AND steak tips. This new caterer serves Lobster OR steak tips. She was super nice about it though and said that next year we'd have both. Yay! She brought ice cream sandwiches and snow cones for dessert so I forgave her rather quickly. Also she brought so much extra food that a bunch of people had second lobsters and I am pretty sure two guys from QA were eating lobster for two and half hours straight.

After lunch I snuck away so I could read because I like to do that sometimes. When I came back KingKendall grabbed me for some fort exploring and tree climbing, which is harder when you haven't done it a long time and are slightly afraid of heights. This did not stop me from climbing the large granite wall around the house where the gun powder used to be kept. It is also didn't stop me from jumping off the wall and falling flat on my ass. I think I covered pretty well by lying back in the grass and pretending to be sunning myself. At least Bill, our QA Lead, seemed to buy it.

Fairly soon after that we had to head back. A bunch of people helped me pack up the kites and round up the rest of our gear. The boat ride back also had an open bar, which was a surprise to me but made a lot of people very happy. Well, maybe not a lot of people, just the ones that made it through the line at the bar that lasted from the moment we cast off to almost the moment we landed.

Back on shore there was a brief two minute span where I was pretty sure we had left Todd Roberston: Media Artist on the island but it turns out he was still on the boat as it was leaving. They were nice and brought him back.

A bunch of people scattered to nearby bars and I went to Faneuil Hall for a chocolate covered chocolate cream puff.

So we didn't get kicked off the island this year but we did get to have an entire day outside, eat a lot of yummy food, and get to hang out with each other outside the office.