Meritorious!

Today was the Annual Embassy Awards Ceremony. It was long, and lacked any edge-of-the-seat suspense, but it was a nice day to be outside and it was unanimously declared to be better than working. Because we're the government, and because Congress keeps telling us to do more stuff while tightening the pursestrings, none of the Guatemalan employees got a raise this year. So, in a backdoor effort to keep morale high, they give just about everybody some sort of award, ranging from recognition for 25 years of service to one full year of driving embassy vehicles without an accident (actually the latter is probably more impressive, given Guatemala traffic and the levels of incompetence required to be fired by the government). It seemed that everyone in the embassy shook the Ambassador's hand at some point today. You might think that the Special Olympics everyone-gets-an-award approach might limit their value in the eyes of the recipients, but it seems like mostly everyone likes to be told they're great and they can quickly forget that everyone else was great, too. Of course, my award was different, as I fully deserved a little recognition for all my hard work saving lives back when Hurricane Stan breezed through the country.