All Work and No Play...

I belong to two teams at Intuit. Sometimes it's confusing to other people, but I manage to keep it straight.

One team is the Zipingo Product Development Team. For me, it's a virtual team. I see these guys once in a while when I fly into California. You see, I work in Tucson, Arizona, while other members work in Mountain View, San Diego, etc. We "get together" by conference calls regularly (with MeetingPlace), ping each other frequently(with AIM), and share lots and lots of email communications. We discuss everything from bugs to enhancements to customer research, and so on.

The other team I belong to is Customer Care in the Quicken Solutions Group. That's because Zipingo falls under the category of personal financial management. I mean, if you're going to manage your money after you spend it (with Intuit software, like Quicken), you might as well manage your money before you spend it (with Zipingo). And since I'm the lead for Zipingo customer care, which includes user feedback and community forums, I'm in this group, too. Make sense?

This weekend was SuperBowl Sunday. (No, duh!) And Jordan, who is a Customer Care manager, invited a bunch of us in QSG over to his house. You're looking at Jordan on the right. Go ahead -- hover your mouse to read the caption or click on any image to get a better view. Yep, that's a vacuum and you'd better watch it, 'cause he knows how to operate one.

Anyway, the party was great. We had the standard burgers and dogs and munchies, and then some. Being a domestic goddess (not really, I promise), I baked and brought along Lemon Poppyseed Muffins...it's a vice of mine. Anything with lemon, I'm there. Apparently, anything with chocolate and peanut butter, I'm there, too, if my post-SuperBowl weigh-in is any indication. Oh, well.

Now, just in case we liked things in stereo, Jordan set up three TVs. Jordan's guests roamed around, sitting in the den, in the living room and on the back patio, depending on whether or not someone snagged a better seat when someone else got up for a nosh or a sip. Folks brought along their little ones, who had full rein of the place. At one point, there was a bit of a land grab for the hammock.

Even my teenager had a good time, even though no one showed up who was her age. She finally caught on and started hitting up the mommies for babysitting jobs. Go figure.

I had such a good time, I'm going to insist that Jordan do it again. (Are you reading this, Jordan? Hello?) Gee, too bad I can't rate Jordan's party on Zipingo. He definitely has a future in event management.

So I thought I'd share some photos of the party. Well, mainly because I don't have a better public place to put them, and I needed something to write about today anyway. I hope it gives you an idea that we are real people here at Intuit...yeah, I know you knew that.

Oh, and don't ask me about the title for this blog post. I couldn't come up with anything clever. Must've been Sunday's chips and bean dip. (Yeah, right.) By the way, if you've read this far, thanks for the attention.

Does anyone know who said, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?" Just wondering.

~ ZipingoKim