Having come from my last contracting job in Dallas for a big firm headquartered in Richardson and made up of mostly WASPs from Iowa that transferred there during the time my father handled the ReLo for Ebby, I am struck now by the wonderful diversity of my work team.

Here's a rundown of my team:

Co-worker A - A native Virginian, WASP, father of 2, George Mason grad, soon moving into a new home that he had built pre-fab

Co-worker B - A Cambodian Frenchman, who shares my love for a cup of hot tea, mid-afternoon

Co-worker C - A fully scarfed Muslim young woman who likes to wear headphones over that scarf and "rock out" during her testing and QA processes

CO-worker D - A crazy DBA from New Mexico that will stop by my cube and give me some random fact about something in far left field, but he does keep life interesting

Co-worker E - An African-American woman who's boyfriend is serving in Afghanistan and who used to be a ballerina and now drives a Mercedes and wears nothing but designer clothes

Co-worker F - An India "Indian" who has never been to India, but was born and raised in the UK

Co-worker G - A guy named "familiar American name" who is Chinese but rather than have us struggle with first names/last names/which one is which, changed his name to "familiar American name"

Co-worker H - Young, just graduated from popular NYC college WASP, who's the social director of the group, always promoting lunches out and activities for the group

Co-worker I - A Canadian who just happens to have parents born and raised in India

Yesterday, as we were taken to lunch at a really nice restaurant to celebrate the team's good performance during a recent In Process Review for our customer, I just sat there and marvelled about the diversity of this group. While I'm not thrilled about working for the military industrial complex that is my life with this Navy contractor, I have to say that beyond that, I've never enjoyed a work team more!

[UPDATE: After I hit the "save" button this morning, I knew I just needed to add that I really, really enjoyed D & D's friendship at CCA, but the boss from hell was a true downside AND my times with CPD were usually just the best too, as cops, especially Carrollton cops (and one DPD one - brother Kirk, and I'm in love with the SWAT guys too, thanks to Bravo TV!) are my heroes!]