I went to the zoo today with my new team for their morale event.

I got to the zoo a little early to give me time to set up food and drinks. I have to appreciate how you can never plan out how things will turn out. When I checked in at the entrance, they did not have any record of our group coming today and as luck would have it, she couldn't reach our zoo tour guides to confirm. The zoo personnel were very relaxed and just let us in. By that time, the caterer with Panera Bread was calling me to find out where to meet and deliver the lunches. I LOVE Panera Bread! The food was fabulous and the caterer was so kind to help move the drinks from my car to the shelter. By this time most of the folks had shown up and we started to eat when my co-worker gave me her cell phone.

Apparently, one of my other co-workers heard my name called on the radio for the payroll payoff. She called a 2nd co-worker who told her to call a 3rd co-worker, who then called the 4th co-worker who gave me her phone to talk to the 3rd co-worker to relay the message of my name being called. After all this, I had five mins to make the call but I didn't have their number in my phone so I began searching for the number on my phone's Internet but unfortunately ran out of time.

After lunch, we broke into our smaller groups. My group went behind the scenes of the African Safari where we got to the see giraffes, hippos, an ostrich up close. We were suppose to be able to feed the giraffe but the ostrich wouldn't let the giraffe near us. It was pretty entertaining. Then we went to the tapir's habitat which was also really cool. We were told that tapirs will spray urine 20 ft if they feel threatened which meant that everytime it turned around, our group would scram out of the way.

Once the tours were done, a small portion of the team met up at Duke's Chowder House. It was fun to hear each group swap stories of the day.

It was a pretty fun day! Not a terrible way to start a Monday!