Late Pass Wednesday

With all the blog slacking that I've been doing since we've been back in Oregon, I'm sure you can imagine that I'm starting to accumulate some really great Late Pass Wednesday materials. This one goes all the way back to Bozeman; its a cute little prank that my former Grad Students at MSU pulled on me during the last week at work. Over the course of the year they had become known for various ambush office decorations, mostly commemorating the various staff members birthdays. Since my birthday fell over the winter break when they were all gone I had slipped through the cracks, and bragged about this fact to great lengths. The Monday of my last week at MSU I arrived at work to find two of our Grad Students sitting outside of my office. This was odd since they usually didn't get there that early in the morning. So I was immediatly suspicious. Well, this is what I found:

My office filled up with 300 (give or take a few that popped) orange balloons. They had actually taken the time to write on each balloon a reason that I should stay or a funny inside joke or saying among the staff.
Naturally since one of the Grad Students was a big "The Office" fan, a few nods to the show were involved.
Well, I carefully read each one and popped them all that morning. I think the girls were a little bit disappointed that i popped them so quickly, because they felt it necessary to provide an encore performance the next morning.
So on Tuesday I decided to give them a little bit of satisfaction (I really didn't want to have an office filled with balloons for the third day running) So I ended up leaving the balloons as long as I could tolerate them. The rule was, if a balloon made its way out of the office it had to be popped, they ones that stayed in could live. I packed up my book shelves and most of my desk all the time working around the balloons. The girls accused me of trying to kick balloons out of the office so that they could be popped. I made it until just after lunch time when I started feeling a little chlostrophobic and staticy and popped them all and went on with my day.

As much as I complained to the girls about and and acted like I hated it, it was a really cute prank, and it did make me feel like I would be missed. It will definitely be something that I won't forget soon.