well, now i can scratch it off my list — i met a man who was once a but­ler to the queen.

tonight there was an event at school, a din­ner about eti­quette (as part of the busi­ness world). this fel­low, john bourdage, gave a talk and showed us which fork to use (essen­tially). through the com­bi­na­tion of my family’s con­stant dinner-partying while i was grow­ing up and my gen­eral wannabe eurowee­nieness, i was already pretty up on what a fish fork is, and what a saucier does, and how to prop­erly use a nap­kin, but i went any­way, fig­ur­ing odds were low i’d never be able to meet a guy like this again (also, you know, free dinner).

i was nom­i­nated to go by one of the profs at school through some lead­er­ship coun­cil group that wishes to aid who profs think are stu­dent lead­ers. not only was i not the only per­son from my pro­gram there, but there were only three other kids from my col­lege — i snuck a peek at the atten­dance list.

said peek was able to be snuck by myself because the table i was at had nobody else sit­ting at it most of the night. really, there were about 60 kids there, and i was alone at my table of 8 until after the event started and another kid trick­led in and sat across from me. then the two event orga­niz­ers sat down at our table as well (hence attendance-sheet-peek-sneak).

the woman who sat next to me i think thought i was flirt­ing with her. first she said she thought i looked famil­iar, and i said i didn’t know how, and she said i had a very dis­tinc­tive look (this is true, though i won­der how much of that state­ment runs par­al­lel to “she is a hand­some woman”). any­who, after she asked what year i was, i asked if she was a senior, and that’s when i found out she was one of the orga­niz­ers. so i stam­mered a minute and said “well, i’m 30, so i can never tell how old oth­ers are around here, so i guess good com­pli­ment work, micah”. (it sounds about as coher­ent now as it did then.) so when the other woman who was an orga­nizer sat down, they started talk­ing and the woman next to me was all “…greg, MY HUSBAND…” sub­tlety go! i saw she was wear­ing a ring regard­less, jeez.

anyways…i digress. all the food was dairy-tastic, which was annoy­ing, but i think i ate around it fairly well (pro­sciutto, arti­chokes, a pleas­ingly spicier-than-standard yel­low squash/zucchini/red onion mix, and chicken with red sauce). like i said, though, inter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tion from mr bourdage. funny guy, too.