Friday, January 21, 2005

Not Circumference, Not Diameter, But Radius

Last night was GMA's marathon holiday party at Radius. A six course tasting menu paired with wine followed a cocktail hour of passed hors d'oeuvres. At one point, I had a barricade of six glasses in front of me. For some odd reason, the wait staff would take away other people's glasses, but would always leave mine. At some point, I told a waitress that I was finished with my glasses and there were too many and I felt a little overwhelmed. I guess I wasn't communicating clearly because she empathized by rearranging my glasses toward the center of the table, but didn't come back to remove them until much later. Dinner lasted until 11pm and we shot out of there as soon as we finished dessert. All the food was delicious, but here are my favorites in no particular order:

Apple Martini: Very fruity and refreshing, comes garnished with some apple slices.
Chocolate Torte: I'm glad we waited for dessert.
Cheese Puffs: Like cream puff pastry, but cheesy.
Prime Rib: Potato (good), port reduction sauce (good), BEEF (GOOD)
Potato Soup: We got bowls of little pototo chunks and then the waiter came with a teapot (I kid you not) of potato soup and poured each person a serving in their bowl.

As to be expected, there are always conversational highlights to be reconstructed. Steve was not sitting at my table so I have nothing to report on that front. My table of six included Adam, Leah, MC (Leah's husband), Amy and Shannon (Amy's roommate). The following is a reconstructed conversation about flags.

Shannon: I ordered some office supplies from the store room and I actually got all the flags I ordered. Usually, I'm lucky to get 4 packs. I couldn't believe it.
MC: You know, ribbons are the new "flags."
Leah: Man, I love those flags. I use them for everything and I don't know what we'd do without them. I have dozens in my office.
----start of a passionate 15 minute dialogue about flags--feel free to skip content----
plasticann: You never used them at Putnum?
Leah: Not really, maybe here and there, but now I use them for everything...pink, purple, blue...
Amy: I can't live without them either. When I go through a report, I use different colors to represent different things, but I forget what the colors represent by the end or I run out of the blue flags and I wonder whether I should go back and replace all the blue ones with a different color to maintain consistancy.
plasticann: I wonder how much we spend on flags for the office. They're expensive, it must be a major part of our overhead.
Amy: Rachel has to order all kinds of flags, some people like the ones with arrow and other ones like the big ones. Rachel says we would be the natural predators for flags.
plasticann: Yeah, but those opaque ones are the worst...they really unproductive.
Amy: You mean the tape ones?
MC: Are they like ribbons?
plasticann: No, they're opaque so you can't see where the sticky part starts and ends so they're really hard to use.
Amy: Those are terrible. I try to use them up so we can get nice ones, but I think Rachel keeps ordering them because they disappear.
----15 minutes later----
MC: What are you guys talking about?
Leah: Flags.
MC: Like American flags?
Leah: No...they're post-it plastic flags for marking papers.
MC: No wonder I was confused why you all were talking about flags.
plasticann: Is that why you said "ribbons are the new flag?"
MC: Yeah...like those yellow ribbons for the troops.
----conversation moves on to ribbons...yellow, pink, red, etc.----

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