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An evening out -- 12/10/10 |
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Nancy and I had a great time last night, getting to see some people we see once in a while, some people we haven't seen in years, and get to meet some new people -- and do it while eating delicious food at an upscale restaurant. The occasion was my employer's holiday party, held at Capriccio in Providence. Since they decided to close the office where I worked (although I mostly worked from home and only showed up in the office maybe two or three times a month, usually just when a meeting was scheduled), my co-workers and I scarcely ever get to see each other. (Okay, so on Monday a half a dozen of us got together for lunch -- but that was the first time we had seen each other since we got together for lunch last year.) When we first got there we got to talk with some of the same people I had seen at lunch on Monday -- plus one of the old gang at work who had missed our lunch because one of her kids was sick. Then we ran into Erika -- whom I had not seen in several years -- and her husband -- whom I think I had only met once before. Nancy and I settled down at a table with them and then were joined by another couple we had never met. She was an employee of my company who had just moved to Rhode Island a year or two ago. Interesting people, interesting conversation. I am not a tennis player -- but the others all were, except for Erika's husband. So there was a lot of talk about tennis. I was surprised that Erika's husband did not play because he was a former professional Jai alai player, but he explained that he found that it was just too strange to play on an open court, a court without walls. (Jai alai features very intense high speed balls bouncing off walls.) Then he discovered court tennis (also called royal tennis and real tennis), which is a modern revival of the medieval game -- where the balls do ricochet off the walls. Nancy and I both had arugula salads to start (shaved fennel, orange supreme, red onions, toasted almonds, sherry-honey vinaigrette) -- I had Scampi Posillipo (sautéed shrimp, garlic, cherry tomatoes, crushed red peppers, basil, served on capellini) and Nancy had salmon (pan-roasted, wild mushroom vellutata, sautéed spinach, with a pinot noir reduction) and then I had tiramisu for dessert and Nancy had chocolate mousse. Very nice. And now I have to post this because we have tickets to It's a Wonderful Life at Trinity Rep and it takes a while to get up to Providence. A brief introduction.... (edited to update it from 2006) A brief introduction for anyone who wanders in here from the Holidailies site -- I'm a middle-aged (*cough* okay,
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