Today's our holiday potluck here at the paper and if there's one thing us wordsmiths know how to do, it's make food and eat it.
I've had two plates of food (smoked mesquite turkey, briscket, fruit salad, veggie, macaroni & cheese, potato salad...) and I'm working on dessert (cookies, brownies and cake) right now.

Holy crap.

We're all so wrecked from eating since 10 a.m. that it'll be a wonder if we actually publish a paper tomorrow.

It's cute, though, because a lot of people brought their kids in today and between that, the food and all the holiday decorating we've done it feels really familial around here today. Stuff like this is why I like the holidays.

Can I come to your party instead of giving my job market talk to the department? You could handle it, it's called 'Rule of Law and The Resource Curse', and the slides are already done.

Also, you can use my stomach, as I am so tense about this that I'm pretty sure I can't eat. Tips on attaining a state of relaxed competence much appreciated.

Nice pitch, but for the good of your company I'll pass and instead go and grab some more chocolate chip cookies - the same awesome ones I mused on in the CCC thread a couple weeks ago.

Tryptophan might help calm you. You know what has lots of tryptophan in it? Turkey and chicken. Speaking of which, what's that on the platter over on yon table...

Nice, but I'm always dubious of the offerings at employee-made potluck dinners... especially when I know which females don't wash their hands after using the bathroom... ick.

I imagine with writers though, you might be in the clear!

Speaking of stomachs, mine is growling.... time to go heat up my Progresso soup.... so much more exciting than your potluck, I'm sure.

I have had a turkey sandwich for lunch. Still pretty twitchy. But thanks for the suggestion