Otter Co-op staff dinner and awards

Last night we attended the Otter Co-op's staff dinner and awards night held at Newland's Golf Course in Langley.

Of course, the only interesting thing is that neither of us work for the Otter Co-op.

Party crashers!

The Otter Co-op is a grocery store, hardware store, clothing, feed store, and has some gas stations. The main store is on 248th Street, the Otter area of Langley, close to Aldergrove. They recently amalgamated with the Consumer's Co-op, a hardware and feed store in Pitt Meadows. Here's where we come in. Kerry is on the board of directors at Consumer's. However he is soon to be out of a job when the amalgamation process is complete at the end of April.

It was a very nice meal and my tablemates were all happy to be the one of the first tables called up to the buffet. Never any doubt in my mind. Whatever table I sit at generally gets called quickly to the buffet. Great food, lots of vegetarian choices.

There were a lot of prizes available, lots of small items, so it looked like everyone's ticket would get drawed at least once. On our first round to the prize table I claimed a night light, spot light, flashlight thing. The prize numbers were held for awhile as the Co-op started to recognize longevity awards: 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, 30 years, and one employee for 35 years of service. This kind of dragged on for awhile. But we were entertained by the ballroom on the other side of the wall with music playing. We enjoyed not Glenn Miller's rendition of In The Mood, then the little bird song. Gee, I don't even know the English name to that song. I used to hear it all the time when I was living in Spain courtesy of Maria Jesus and her accordeon:

Pajaritos por aqui
Pajarits por alla
Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep

The English translation is roughly: little birdies over here, little birdies over there, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp.

And then everyone does the little birdie dance.

Afterwards I heard Staying Alive. Sounded like a good party going on over there. Should have maybe joined them. But we were there for the duration listening to all the longevity service awards. Some of them didn't even show up for the banquet.

And then more prizes were drawn, so we got in on the second round and got a new shirt for Kerry. The evening was dragging on at this point. Got out of there at 11pm. I'm not even sure how they could have sped up the process other than recognizing the people while everyone was eating.

Our last meal. Unless of course Kerry runs for the board of directors at the Otter Co-op.