Yesterday was the annual Babson student affairs divsion holiday lunch and Yankee swap. For those of you not familiar with the Yankee swap, it goes like this: you have a bunch of people bring presents. Everyone who brought a present draws a number. You pick in order, with the ability to either keep your gift or swap it with the gift of someone who went before you. The person who picks first then gets to choose from all the gifts.

My gift was OK, a mix of chocolate type things in a fairly nice holiday bag (snowy harbor scene with a lighthouse and all that; at least one person commented on the bag specifically, so props to Sarah for picking it out). There were 65 numbers. I chose 15. If you followed the way this is done, you realize that this is a crappy number. Given that two of the single digit numbers weren't taken, 15 became even that much more crappy.

I went up with the intention of not taking what was obviously alcohol (a swap fave) or a gag present. Last year, about 10 to 12 people got together and all gave the same gift: the Big Mouth Billy Bass. From what I've heard it was a well executed gag, with some of the fish repackaged, and at least one conspirator taking a Bass to deflect suspicion as to what office was behind the prank.

Needless to say, such skullduggery was warned off this year. That didn't stop some people; my office mate Brian bought a Rotato (a Popeil-style product) but squired scratch tickets in the bottom of the box. Two fish did make re-appearances; I get the sense that at least one Billy Bass will appear at each of these things until everyone who got one no longer works at Babson.

Anyway, I went up and started to look around, and got yelled at for peeking (which I wasn't!), so I just grabbed a box close at hand. It wasn't until I was taking the ribbon off that it dawned on me that I'd probably picked alcohol. I was wondering what I'd get stuck with as I finished unwrapping what turned out to be a bottle of Bailey's.

My thoughts were answered fairly soon, as an office mate of mine traded the snowman kitchen towels he pulled for the Bailey's. He wound up losing the bottle, too, but held on to it for quite some time. There was another bottle of Bailey's that traded hands at least twice. There were 3 bottles of wine that managed to stay with the people who picked them originally, which cheeses me off as I'd actually drink the wine (not a liquor fan per se, though Bailey's would probably be fine).

I tend to have crappy luck at things like this. At the last college bowl secret Santa/Yankee swap/whatever it was I participated in, I got a bag of Body Shop soaps that was intended for a malodorous teammate who didn't show. I suppose that actually worked out in the long run, as I didn't have to buy soap again until April. They weren't bad soaps, come to think of it.

OK, that worked out much better than I remembered (for me; the rest of the team still had to deal with the fumes that teammate put off). And as I think of it, I don't think I even participated in the only Yankee swap held during my tenure at the New England School of Law library.

Not that it wasn't memorable. A set of magnetic poetry got swapped something like six times, especially noteworthy given that there couldn't have been more than 20 people in the swap. That and, well, the library folks were all great to work with, but not the most festive people. I know, reserved librarians, who'd have thought?

My Boy Scout troop also did a present swap (no trading, at least not officially), which generally was dropping in candy to get someone else's candy. The Life Saver "gift books" were always popular. I had one friend do the "big box, small gift" gag by putting a couple of pens in a TV box, and filling the box with shredded paper or styrofoam peanuts or something. Showing that some things never change, one of the Billy Basses that returned yesterday was in just such a manner (the director of my office wound up with that one, proving that revenge is indeed a dish best served cold).

My other loss yesterday came from not getting to take the pointsettia centerpiece home as the most recent hire at my table. That honor went to the new Catholic priest on campus, who started in September. Can't argue against clergy, and I can't even say I wanted the plant that badly.

On a positive note, the food was really good. We also got a gift basket that netted me a $10 Blockbuster card and some candy. So it wasn't a total bust yesterday.