5 years of service

On Friday evening Jason and I attended my company's Service Awards dinner at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. I was invited because in October, I celebrated my fifth anniversary at Scripps - employees are invited to the event every five years, and at this year's dinner there were 2,200 people celebrating an anniversary ranging from five years to 45 years of employment with the company!

During my first job after college, planning for the hospital's annual service awards dinner fell mainly to the marketing department, with some assistance from human resources. I was heavily involved in the planning for a couple of those dinners, which (if I'm remembering correctly ) usually had attendance of anywhere from 300-500 people. At the time I thought that was a huge party, but after comparing to Friday night's extravaganza a dinner with 300 people seems downright intimate!

It was fun to get dressed up and head downtown with Jason for a couple of hours. I realized just how many people at Scripps I've gotten to know during my 5-1/2 years of employment - during the cocktail hour I ran into so many people I knew, many of whom I hadn't seen since going out on maternity leave in mid-January. We sat with some fun colleagues, were entertained by members of the ensemble from Broadway's The Lion King who sang and danced during dinner, and enjoyed a nice surf-and-turf  dinner followed by casino games and dancing.

My feet hurt at the end of the night, but I wouldn't have passed up the opportunity to wear some killer heels!