Well, it's been a long, crazy weekend in Cape cod with all of my co-workers. To catch you up, my new job, [topcoder], decided to fly all of their employees to Cape Cod for the weekend, put us up in a nice hotel, and plan some events. And that they did. It was a long weekend...

Friday

I flew into boston about the same time as Saisha, so since Lane had flown in the night before, I met up with her and shared a ride with my hot little rental car. (okay, it was a boring little rental car. The traffic was atrocious. Apparently there's one highway that goes out to the cape, and every new englander and their family was going out threre at the same time as us. On top of it, the cup of coffee and croissant I ate in the morning just wasn't keeping me full 8 hours later. When we finally got there after three hours or so, I was happy that they had plenty of food and cold beer on the company tab.

There was a little weird "nice to meet you" business talk with several people from the company, but luckily I managed to dodge most of the bigwigs. At some point, This place we stayed at, or rather, this 'complex' we stayed at was pretty incredible.There were dozens of condos spread all around the property, and each room, mine included, was larger than most one bedroom apartments I"ve seen. they even all had full kitchens. I would find out later that these rooms led themselves quite well to after-bar parties.

We ended up going to a little dive bar called "the Woodshed" and listening to a pretty spunky cover band play the greatest hits of the 80's. I swear the bass player was one of those guys from ZZ-top. If he only had a belt buckle he could spin his guitar on that would have clenched it. After that we ended up at somebody's hotel room for a little after-party. Luckily, the TopCoders had commedeered an entire block of buildings, so there was nobody nearby to file a noise complaint (the next night we weren't so lucky).

I met my project manager, Sarah, that day also. She's cute tiny girl, probably only about 5 feet tall, from canada (but originally from Trinidad). you'd think a tiny girl like that could have maybe a couple drinks before getting all and stumbly, but that girl could knock back more white Russians than 'the Dude' himself. Quite impressive.

Everybody was really getting into this game involving throwing a ping-pong ball into plastic cups of beer. I didn't indulge in the activities, but just ask Saisha about it, she was nuts for the game. I end up making my way back to my place and getting to bed around 3:ish,

I know shots of hotel rooms are boring, but this place was huge.	There was a little gift pack waiting for me from topcoder. I wonder if the name of the basket was "stoners paradise"?	Saisha, Lane and I in our lobster bibs
Sarah was kind enough to bring me three canadian beers for buy-me-a-beer	Saisha Looooved playing this game with a ping pong ball and plastic cups of beer.	Oh man, I barely remember this photo being taken.

Saturday.
I got up, (probably earlier than I should have) and topcoder had us all set up for free breakfast at "the mansion", where a funny little asian guy was cooking up Omlettes to order (I found out the next morning that we were supposed to sign an account number when we paid, but we just walked out without paying for our $15 breakfast, Hopefully they figured out who we were and put it all on the tab). After that, there was a big golf tournament that I skipped out on because I'm certainly no golf player. To fill my day, I hopped into my little white rental and drove down the cape to provincetown. P-Town was an awesome little town. The main downtown area is lined with all kinds of little botique shops, art galleries, seafood restaurnats, ice cream parlors, and all locally owned businesses (except for maybe a ben & Jerrys). It's also a pretty big harbour, so there's lots of sailing and whale watching cruises and ocean activitis. P-town has a very big gay community, and I think one of my favorite sites was seeing the pirate ship with feather-boa clad gay pirates. Makes me wonder how many actual pirates back in the day were actually in the closet, and if they ever dreamed of someday being on a pirate ship where everybody could be out and sail their big rainbow skull flag. That would make a good movie.

Just a shot of downtown P-Town. Not very representative of how cool it actually was.	View from the Harbor	Out on one of the fishing piers. looking back. not all that interesting really	Tons of seafood restaurants everywhere.
Oooo, a pirate museum.	Gay Pirates! a whole shipful of them! Arrrr.	I reallyl wish I could've been around for the Drag Karaoke night. I guess this place is quite a place to be in the evenings.

We had a big dinner later in the evening, which was also an all-company event (there was probably a couple hundred of us). Which was a pretty fabulous mean that no expense was spared on. We all feasted on some of the stuff that the Cape is famous for, mussles, clam chowder and lobster. A whole lobster for each of us! I've never cracked open a lobster before. It was a little bit dusturbing, but I held strong and managed just fine. I can't say that lobster is my favorite food, but hey, if I only get to eat it once a decade or two (at least, that's how long it's been since last time I had it), I might as well pretent do love it!

After dinner, we went down to the beach and built a fire. There was a guy there playing guitar and singing Jimmy Buffet songs for everybody. We played with the hermit crabs on the beach, and there was an incredible sunset.

the end of the evening ended much like the night before. some time at the bar. then off to somebody's room for after-bar. (and again, more of the ping-pong bouncing game. I got to bed a little earlier this night, managing to hit my pillow at 2:25 instead of 3.

The fire wasn't exactly the "bonfire" they said it would be, but it was nice	I made an awesome new friend, who happens to also be my project manager.	I love the expression on our faces in this photo	Lane, Saisha, Myself and Sarah	This guitar player they hired in the background could play a mean Jimmy Buffet. He nailed "free bird" too.
Hi Lane.	Just some computer nerds, hanging out on the beach	Chillin' like a villian'	The sunset was amazing. seriously	The beach was covered with tons of cute little hermit crabs.

Sunday
Finally, last day was mostly uneventful. Ate breakfast with a few friends I had made over the weekend, and hung out with Sarah in her room for a while before driving her to taxi pick-up point (she doesn't drive, something about not knowing left from right, don't ask my why, it's weird). then the drive to boston for my flight home was traffic filled and rainy. nothing exciting there. Which brings it to me writing this in the airport.

I need to go home and detox for a couple of days now.

 

 

 

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