Multicultural Day and Bring Your Kid to Work

This has been a really fun week at my Agency. On Wednesday we had our Multicultural Day. Lots of people brought a dish to share, I brought my spicy meatballs which went over well. But this year I made a point of inviting the contractors that support my applications. They are diverse as well, and if we are celebrating diversity, they should be a part of it. I'm really glad I did too because the owner of one of the companies that supports me is from Taiwan. Her team brought pigs feet.

I promise you that if I lived until 100 I never thought that I would eat pigs feet. I tried it and it wasn't bad at all. Another team brought some Korean food, which I thought would be much more spicy than it was. Anyway, a good time was had by all, and my floor won in the food voting contest. I think that is 4 years in a row now. They might as well rename it the OIT food trophy.

The other really great thing this week was Bring Your Child to Work Day yesterday. This is a tough call because I don't want my kids to miss school, especially now when they are focusing on the testing and that stuff. I decided that this would be a good opportunity to take the middle child, you know, the one who never gets to do anything first. Well, he did this first, and he felt very special yesterday. He met with the Administrator of the Agency and several Associate Administrators. I let him use my key card, which amazed him. We went downtown to the USDA building and they had a terrific set-up on the patio. Each Agency was represented and everyone had something unique to offer. I think he really liked the bugs from ARS, and he liked the 5 pounds of fat from my Agency. He loved spinning the wheel and answering questions. It was a lot of fun for both him and me. Then we ate in the cafeteria in the South Building and caught up with a friend who used to work at my Agency and has since moved to the Department. But the thing he liked the most was the tour of the computer room, and within that, was when I mentioned that the floor is raised in case of a flood of water and when a colleague got a suction cup and lifted up a floor panel to show the floor.

It just goes to show you that you can never predict what is going to catch their attention. We both had a great time, and it was so nice to see all the Agencies really putting on a good show.