NPH Picnic 2006
The annual NPH Picnic happened to fall on Wednesday of this past week, and as this is my first NPH picnic to attend, I was quite unsure of what to expect. The day itself began a little different from most, as we were prompted to not wear the usual “business casual” attire, and wore instead jeans, t-shirt, and tennis shoes. That alone was pretty sweet. At 11:00 we were dismissed to a field that is just south of the main office building, which is used pretty much exclusively for this event. First on the agenda: We were herded into an uncomfortably crowded area for about 20 minutes for the company photo, followed by the “picnic” part of the day – hot dogs and hamburgers that were really big and really good. This lasted until about 12:30, at which point the festivities began. There is, every year, some kind of competition which pits representatives from each department against each other to vie for the departmental trophy – a gumball machine. I don’t recall seeing said gumball machine yet, but there is a surprising amount of fervor to acquire it. This year it was a spoof of “The Amazing Year” (Dubbed by NPH as “The Incredible Race”) in which the contestents were paired up with someone else and had to complete a series of events. The events ranged from tag-teaming through the Adrenaline Rush II (monster-sized inflatable thingy, demonstrated by Darren Boyd above) to chronologically lining up different covers from Holiness Today from over the years. There was also digging for some kind of red stone in a sandbox and some other game I didn’t see that included a large plate of sour worms and a “barf bucket.” Our rep, Justin, was challenged by the… challenges… and the elusive trophy continued to remain… elusive.The best part of the afternoon was yet to begin: Frisbee Golf! In the words of one passer-by, “IS wouldn’t even come if we didn’t have frisbee golf.” Upon hearing this, I knew I had to participate and prove myself competant in order to be fully assimilated into this group. (bing and bing). It was a blast, and I took a couple good photos from it too. I did pretty well on the first 6 holes (hula hoops) but alas, the final three would leave me a few points behind Jason.
It was around 2 in the afternoon by this time, and we realized everyone else had gone inside. We took this as our cue that the picnic was over, and it was time to go back to work. Needless to say, it was an extremely productive afternoon.
Ah, the NPH picnic.
That’s sooooo……June 7th.