The downside of doing my hair in a twist for the work Christmas party is that I have to re-do it in two braids before going to sleep (else it will be one big huge knot in the morning).

As ever, the food and the conversation were excellent. Our table consisted of the usual suspects, plus a couple I'd missed in the last few years, plus Talkative Support Person, plus another couple I didn't know well. Talkative Support Person held forth on many subjects, but it was interesting, and also the conversation flowed and split between and across clumps of the people at the table, so it was good (particularly as I was in the middle of one side of the table, which meant I could participate multiply).
( the food )

The conversation ranged over many topics: "how preferential voting works", the meaning of "grok", Monty Python, Felix the Cat, XKCD, BOFH, Open Source, the evils of Australian Internet filtering, Google (the verbing of nouns and the dilution of trademarks), the evils of Big Business, the frustrations of tech support (People Are Stupid), transputers, restaurants in France Italy, My First Computer (When I were a Lad, we were lucky to have punched cards...), the difference between Procedural, Functional and Object-Oriented programming, the pros and cons of various computer languages (including C, C++, Perl, Python, Cobol and Forth), all in all fairly geeky. The catch-phrase of the evening was "there are two kinds of people..."

A good time was had by all, I think.

I have made a brochure! My first. Under time pressure, what's more. I had to use MS-Word for it, but them's the breaks. I'm squeeing because it was under time pressure and therefore getting it done is a great relief and accomplishment.