SoCal Recap: SoCal and Vegas farewell

As I mentioned, I was on a secret mission to surprise one of the co-conspirators of my Halloween in July send off. K, has it happens, is making the move across country and the company was having a send-off luncheon for her last Friday.

And one thing that came up was, wouldn't it be a hilarious surprise if I showed up for it? My answer was YES, I'm in. So I checked out PriceLine and booked a flight and arrived the Tuesday before.

The theme was SoCal and Vegas memories. We asked folks to dress up in something Vegas or SoCal themed. It could be as big as they wanted or as simple as wearing a UC or surf-brand t-shirt. That was the easy part.

We also planned to set up her office as a mini-casino, complete with poker table. A collaborative effort and it looked great! Yes that is my homemade Vegas sign:

When she showed up for work, we dressed her up in Elvis gear and we were dressed in our SoCal gear:

From left to right: hardcore Angels fan, our sweet Elvis, OC Housewife (yes! I made the "Coach" iron-ons, but borrowed the accoutrements), and a retiree turned Vegas gambler (if you've been to Vegas, you've definitely seen them).  I also cut my bangs but that didn't turn out so well...

But the final piece we surprised her was with a live lipdub video.  I saw the the one the Today show did for Meredith Vieira's last day and thought that we could totally do this for K.  With a bit of planning but NO rehearsal, with a lot of folks not fully grasping what we were doing, and homemade props, we pulled it off.  It was a single take, live running shot (throughout the entire office) lipdub video done to the Black Eyed Peas "I Gotta Feeling".  For better or worse, I cannot post a video as I'm sure we don't have everyone's approval (including the company's) but suffice it to say that the camera purportedly adds 10 pounds and on me, it's all on my big face.  But despite a big potato leading the goofiness, the best part was seeing K's reaction and seeing it all come together.

Big huge thanks to the camera man and editor (who confessed he was a huge doubter when I pitched the idea, but was pleased how well it all turned out):

Big thanks to this guy:

and this gal:

who talked me down from the ledge when I had a mini-freakout (during one of our late-night choreography/prop-making sessions) about trying to pull this video off with no rehearsal and in 3 days.

Thanks to this guy who embraced the Vegas identity full-force and choreographed a chunk of the video:

(Love the 'stache!)

And thanks to these ladies who helped make the office Casino a smash!

These were obviously taken at the Happy Hour (and by the black bars, I haven't bother asking for anyone's approval) at the end of the big day and yes, there were more pictures and folks to thank.  But I must confess after I had a little glass of my rum/Diet coke, I became afflicted with the non-photogenic Asian Glow which makes for horrible pictures unless the "black bar" was over my face.  But I'm so grateful to everyone for making this a memorable day for K!