I was in the supermarket recently and saw how ridiculously priced Rachel Ray's EVOO was, almost twice the price of the imported stuff. It was a funny orange color, if the price didn't turn me off the color sure did.

Yesterday I threw a goodbye 'Sundae Sendoff' for a summer student in our lab, I mostly taught him basic lab stuff and since my PI is not very good at stuff like this I thought it was appropriate. It was a rare occasion that everyone in our lab was present (well almost everyone) at anything besides lab meeting. Lab meetings in my book do not qualify as social gatherings, and since I've been in this lab for a very long time, it seems my PI expects me to come up with 'things' for us to do. And over the years I have become the lab photographer, PI never has a camera and his iPhone isn't all that. Frankly lab is boring, it's bench to desk to lunch to meetings to bench to coffee shop to desk to home.
Our institution (medical campus) is not in the most (well the least ) friendly/pedestrian part of the city. People literally do not venture out unless it's to get to another building that's not connected by a sky walk or underground tunnel, or they are starving and did not bring lunch. The other part of the med campus is too far to walk and the shuttle runs sporadically and it's just vast and lonely, on the other hand the main campus (where the undergrad is) is people friendly, has lots of activities etc. This also requires a shuttle ride but they have a B&N , a Starbucks, a museum and many other attractions.
Sometimes I feel that the grad students on the med campus maybe missing out from the 'grad school' experience and the other grad population because we are so far away. Different groups at med campus try to relieve this loneliness by having a variety of activities etc but this too is far and in between. Frankly our campus isn't designed for social interactions, it's all work. I think labs should have fun and PIs as the bosses should make sure that their employees are well rounded. I know people have outside activities and hobbies but we spend so many hours of the day Sun-Sun with each other, we should have fun stress relieving activities.
I hae recently instituted cook/bake-offs in our lab, people get to flex there culinary skills and the rest of us get to enjoy, this Monday it's suppose to be a curry. we've had cakes, brownies, cookies and even my PI participated and it's been a lot of fun.

What do other people do for 'lab fun'?