12.20.10 — Gift Basketapalooza

Now this is more like it. When it starts coming in crates, you know someone is serious. Also, this one had a great variety of stuff. High quality chocolates. Flavored popcorn. Champagne in single-serve bottles (single serve at least for the booze hounds in this place). More peppermint bark. Crackers. Lobster spread. Salmon spread.

An aside — I like the easily applied consistency of a "spread," but I have a problem with calling the paté-like substance in conjunction with it's main ingredient an "X spread." Lobster spread just sounds... dirty.



Compare these chocolates with the box o' bulk cellophane in the other post from this morning. Which would you want to jump into and cover your body with? These may suck balls, but just look at them. You want these chocolates inside you and now. The other ones, not so much.



And oh lord, here is the topper. The Danish butter cookie tin. Actually, calling this a tin is inaccurate. It's more like a small industrial drum of cookies. I guarantee that once this monster makes it out into the general population (aka the Kitchen), it will be gone before the end of the day. These things are crack and this office is a willing pool of addicts.

We only have 5 working days before C-Day (yes, we're open and will be here until the wee hours on Christmas Eve — the glamorous advertising life). It took awhile, but the gift basket train is finally rolling in.

12.20.10 — In Bulk

I don't know if this qualifies as a gift basket or just really lazy packaging. It was a big box — like 12" x 24" x 3" or so — full of individually wrapped chocolates, in there grab bag style.

Figuring that the chocolates had to be really good to make up for the haphazard presentation, I asked someone who was walking away with a couple in hand how they were. Not good. I didn't follow up with my next question... then why did you come back for more?

12.17.10 — Son of Gift Basket

Another cracker/chocolate/cookie/pretzel-laden gift basket showed up. None of it even really got my temptation meter to even flicker.

12.14.10 — Gift Basket, Ho!

The first gift basket of the season. I honestly expected more of them to have shown up already. This one didn't disappoint as it was loaded with cookies, cheese sticks, kettle corn and two kinds of peppermint bark. It was attacked mere moments from the email announcing its arrival went out.

I'm sure there will be more to come, each more elaborate and overflowing with high calorie tidbits. They will be conveniently placed nearby where the urge to graze will be strong. A nibble here, a chunk there, a handful of this and that — before you know it you've eaten the equivalent of a damn Big Mac.

That isn't the worst news, however. A coworker's father sends us a big batch of peanut brittle each year. She posted a photo of the brittle as it cooled in the snow outside her father's house with the promise that it was on its way.

The brittle may break me. More to come...