White Elephant Twist

On Monday, EHP will be moving to new diggs. Since many of my colleagues have inhabited their current offices for 7-10 years, you can imagine the heightened stress, increased dust clouds and bizarre discoveries going on at East Campus.

In an effort to have a little fun, Kathy suggested we have a white elephant gift exchange during our annual Thanksgiving luncheon. This took place yesterday. The usual potluck luncheon was Randy's Pizza, and the white elephant gift exchange had special rules. You were to bring the most bizarre thing unearthed from your office, and it had to be wrapped with materials from your office, too. My lovely gift is pictured right. I kept calling it a terradactyl, but Matt corrected me. "It's a dragon Tracey!"

There were some fabulously hilarious gifts: puppet heads of two of the most hated individuals ever to work at NIEHS; a "deluxe lanyard gift set" expertly crafted by Stephanie Bishop, which had us all in side-splitting laughter; candy-pooping chickens; a can of tuna, accompanied by a photo of one of EHP's editors from over a decade ago, complete with "fancy frame"; and many other random items. Fun was definitely had by all!

Oh, and the terradactyl/dragon will most likely make an appearance at our annual Christmas white elephant gift exchange. I just know all of my colleagues are counting the days until their chance to take him home with them...