Last year, because of the economy, Henry Schein canceled all Christmas parties.  We weren’t sure if this year would be the same.  About a month ago, Henry Schein sent an e-mail to all of its divisions stating that company-wide Christmas parties were still canceled, but individual department parties were okay.

My team decided to go to the Rodizio Grill for lunch and see A Christmas Carol afterward.  When I found this out, I was both excited and worried.  I love the Rodizio Grill, but have you seen their menu?  Welcome to Calorie City! I decided to enjoy myself because I haven’t been to the Rodizio Grill in more than five years.

When we got there, Megan gave everyone a cracker, which is a brightly colored paper tube, twisted at both ends.  It usually contains a party hat, joke, and some type of trinket.  If two people pull it, it’s supposed to give good luck to whoever has the larger end, kind of like a wishbone from a turkey.  They’re traditional in England around the holidays.

My cracker contained a green crown, a joke of Laffy Taffy quality, and a plastic compass. When I saw that Gentry got a purple crown, I quickly said, “Hey-Gentry-can-I-trade-you-crowns-kay-thanks!” At that point, I basically commandeered his crown without waiting for an answer. He had to know it was inevitable with my obsession with purple.

If you haven’t been to the Rodizio Grill, I recommend you try it at least once … unless your a vegetarian because servers bring around a variety of meats grilled in a traditional Brazilian way.  As you can imagine, this can be quite delicious and very fattening. Luckily, I’m not much of a meat person so I only ate some of it while shying away from the chicken hearts completely.  Not my idea of a good time.

I did eat a lot of the awesome grilled pineapple.  It’s glazed with brown sugar and grilled to perfection.  In pineapple, there’s an enzyme that causes your tongue to become raw when you eat too much of it.  However, that enzyme is neutralized during the cooking process so you can eat as much of the grilled pineapple as you want without killing your tongue and I definitely did.  I think I ate an entire pineapple, but I don’t feel guilty about it because it was so yummy and worth the amount of calories I consumed.

After lunch, I had a meeting with a financial aid adviser at BYU so I wasn’t able to go to the movie.  Honestly, I wasn’t too heart broken about it because I’m not much of a Christmas movie fan.  I do like the story of A Christmas Carol so I might go see it with Corey some time.

All in all, I think I can speak for everyone when I say, “We had a great time.”