Some meetings aren't fun, but others...

After I finish this blog post, I really need to get to reading two more chapters of Right Here Right Now because we'll be discussing it at our weekly intern meeting tomorrow. These meetings are for the most part fun because it's just us hanging out and talking about stuff. Sometimes it gets annoying, but I think these meetings are important. Another fun meeting we had was a couple of weeks ago at Cheryl's house. It was an all-staff meeting concerning summer camp, and since I wasn't a part of the summer some things flew right past me, but the part that made it fun was the awesome meal and the fact that her basement was filled with a bunch of cool M&M dispensers. One kind of meeting that is NOT fun is a bored  board meeting. We had to sit in on one last week. The first five minutes were fun when we the interns were introducing ourselves, and I gained a little more perspective on how camps and other ministries are run, but they didn't have food or anything.

Today we had a staff meeting, and it was a pretty good one too. But what made it great was the premise. Let me explain...
Yesterday I gave you a sneak peek at what I would be doing today by showing you a close-up picture. Here is the actual picture:

I took this picture in my bathroom, and it's the toilet paper dispenser! What I did today has nothing to do with toilet paper, but rather the brand: Sysco!

If you like going to Costco for the samples (Mom!), then you should make it a point to go to a Sysco event sometime in your life. This morning for breakfast I had a small cup of yogurt, and then when Erin took me to Blue Bottle Coffee Shop I felt obligated to buy a small ginger snap, but I would not allow myself to have anything else because I was told to be very very hungry for today's event.

Everyone on staff took a trip to La Vista Conference Center to enjoy Sysco's festivities. It was so big, even a panoramic picture could not capture even a fraction of it. So since I can't show you the whole room, here are some of the little stations so you can at least get a little bit of a feel of how it was set up:

I really wish that sweet potato fries and Otis Spunkmeyer weren't included in the first 10 booths that I went to. I was just chowing down on the cookies and goodies, and then realized I'm full and I have to get through the rest of this humongous room filled with food!

There was a lot of really good food there, and as part of my job, I had to continue eating even though I was stuffed. In the back of the room there were a few tables of fruit. Of course, different brands of fruit still taste pretty much the same, so they were only sampling strange and exotic fruits. This one blew my mind:

I have to apologize that I only took a picture of the rind, because I realized when I was almost done eating it that no one would believe me if I didn't have photo evidence. In fact, many of my coworkers saw it in real life and still didn't believe it. That picture above is watermelon! As I was eating it, it was completely blowing my mind and I had to show my coworkers. Some thought it was pineapple, and others thought it was some strange fruit. None of them actually believed it was watermelon until I had them take a bite. It was incredible; much better than that boring red stuff. I also got to try dragonfruit. Lots of drinks and stuff are flavored dragronfruit, but I never had the fruit itself before. (Sorry the pic's blurry; I had to continue eating in an attempt to ignore my stomach from telling me that it was full!)

I did go around to every station in the room, some I went to twice. Everything I tried, I liked. There were also some friendly sales reps that were fun to talk with. But towards the end, I was getting FULL. The one thing we were told to do was try to find a good bacon because the one we currently use at camp is gross, but when I actually started to see bacon booths I was so full that bacon definitely did NOT seem appetizing. Well into the day, Jeff (the maintainence guy and also the husband of our cook, Paula), asked me to try a yogurt parfait because everyone else who tried it liked it and they were considering getting it for the camp. I tried it, it was really good (although it tasted WAY too similar to McDonald's, but maybe they get their parfaits from Sysco?), but after two bites I had to throw it away because I was already getting a gag reflex from eating too much! It was then that I noticed that, although the people attending were really diverse (people from camps, schools, businesses, retirement homes, and even several nuns...I guess convents need to buy their food in bulk!), most of them had one thing in common: bellies! This was probably the first time in my life that I was actually jealous of people who had more stomach space. So after that, food just sounded gross, but I did snack on water-based treats, like juice and fruit. When we were getting ready to leave, several of my coworkers grabbed cookie ice cream sandwiches from an ice cream booth. I couldn't even stomach the thought of that, so instead I got a push pop, which is just sherbert. Still, I couldn't even finish that. 

There were some treats (both edible and non-edible) that I got to take home though:

This was probably my favorite piece of SWAG. On the back, it says "got milk?"

Cabella's was just across the street from the conference center, so we went there for our staff meeting. But first, shopping! I swa the above lion and thought it was a little too passive in attacking, don't you think? Anyway, four of us had a shooting competition (I lost), I looked at the aquarium and all the animal dioramas, and I bought some really good snow pants that were heavily discounted. Here are some animal and fish pics:

Now I'm back at camp, and I'm still full. As I started to write this post, Cheryl came in and delivered my mail so that it wouldn't be locked in her office overnight. One was a package from my family, and I opened it and it was filled with...FOOD! I mean, I'm really appreciative of it and all, especially since it's hard to make it to the grocery store and leftovers tend to get monotonous, but right now, I can't even think about making any food.
So that was my day; it was pretty fun and exciting. How was yours?