:whew: That’s a mouthful. And just to do it one better, all we needed was for Eve to be there and she would have been the “New Year’s Eve Eve and Eve’s Eve”. 
(Just show’s how timely :cough: my wit is - I didn’t come up with that until today.)
In response to Dallas Dopers again?
Since I was the guest, I get to do the notes. (How did that happen?) 
Okay, beginning with Saturday night, Dec 30. The dinner was held at Celebration in Dallas. Funky little restaurant, a conglomeration of several houses providing lots of small rooms for dining. Yet somehow we ended up having to share a room with three other tables of rotating patrons.
We had 13 participants at this gathering.
me (Irishman) of course
my sister (got sucked into her second IRL meeting)
Zyada
Chef Troy
Mrs. Troy
Jim B
Adam Yax
Psiekier (aka Pete)
his girlfriend Jaime
Palmyra
Maidenunicorn
Purplebear
Grace
Having misjudged the travel time, my sister and I were the first to arrive, a full 30 minutes early. Not too big a deal. Cheffie and Mrs. Cheffie weren’t too far behind us, and we staked out a corner of the bar until they got our table ready.
Conversation didn’t really kick off till we were seated and several of the others arrived. The interesting thing about Celebration is that (a) they serve the vegetables “family style”; and (b) you can get seconds - even on your entree. How it works - you order your entree, and then if you’re still hungry you can order seconds of any equal or lesser entree (except for the specials). We also had a discussion over what “family style” means - everybody grabs a handful, throws them at someone else, then you eat what’s on your shirt? You have to go to the kitchen and serve yourself from the pots? No, they bring out dishes and you serve from them. They had tasty mashed potatoes, some yummy yellow squash, and a spinach dish. Plus baskets of a variety of breads. Everyone ordered their favorite entrees, and the food was delicious.
There was a round of introductions for those of us who hadn’t met each other, especially the guests. I found out Adam pronounces his name “Yach”. Interesting.
Realize that after the talking started, it was very hard to keep track of everything. For starters, I was near one end, and it was a long table, so I couldn’t follow the multiple conversations well. Also, apparently I’m deaf. I kept hearing something like a comment and everyone laughing and scratching my head at what I missed. Occasionally I managed to get them repeated for the record, but several times I just looked puzzled and moved on. So if I miss anything, you others out there will have to fill in the missing details.
Pete brought up the thread discussing telemarketers. It is all but uniformly agreed that they suck. My sister once in college briefly took a job at it - that’s where I learned one of the key secrets of why they are so annoying. They are instructed that as long as you remain on the phone, they have to make at least 3 attempts to get you to buy. So being polite about it doesn’t work. You just have to say “Nope” and hang up. Or you can do the “do not call” list, but then you have to be responsible for tracking who you’ve told that, and whether they honor it or not.
The Simpsons was brought up. Used to be good, but this year hasn’t been as good. Followed by remarks about Star Trek in its various incarnations.
- Voyager’s last year
- Adam had the biggest ST geek checking him out on the computer game; “What have you heard about the next movie?”
- A friend of Chef’s gave them as a christmas gift memberships in the local ST club; “This guy had more than one Star Trek uniform.”
Grace arrives - late. (obligatory remark)
We did have one other doper present of sorts - beatle thoughfully called the restaurant and bought 2 bottles of champaigne, so we could celebrate properly. Thanks, beatle! We had a toast to beatle, to fighting ignorance, and to Jaime’s birthday (New Year’s baby!)
Zyada pondered aloud why Ag had to miss. She thinks he had a hot date. “Well I’m sure she’s not bad in bed.” - Chef. “And he’s in for a wild a wooly time.” “And he’s looking sheepish.”
As for the date, Jaime remarked, “Well so did Pete, but he’s here!” Got to hand it to Pete. Jaime said they’ve been going out about a month, and he brought her along to the doper gathering. He’s either brave or stupid.
Zyada thoughtfully provided awards for the Dallas crew. She’ll have to post the list. Someone remarked, “I couldn’t sell the award I got last year.” Irish sister replied, “Have you tried ebay?”
There’s something here about “Pete - doing charity work”. I think I meant to be able to interpret that later to mean something like he keeps busy or has missed meetings or something, but now all I have is the above.
Someone asked if Skyslash really exists, since he always backs out of the meetings. Supposedly he made 1 meeting. “He could have paid someone.”
Discussion of food brought up Zyada’s recollection of a restaurant that only sells fried chicken (NOT KFC). Similar policy on vegetables and such, but the only entree is fried chicken. Of course that does mean that everyone gets a hot plate straight from the vat.
Pete brought up Irving Mall (is that correct?) and the strange people - “It’s like the Cantina scene from Star Wars. ‘I have the death sentence in 9 systems.’”
We noticed Purplebear was enjoying the champaigne. (Actually it was french white sparkling wine not from the Champaigne region - but who’s that picky?) I think Palmyra passed PB her glass of champaigne, because Cheffie remarked “Palmyra’s trying to get Purplebear drunk.” Later I was told vehemently by Palmyra that it was everyone, not just her, trying to get PB drunk. I think the main person trying to get PB drunk was PB. We went through beatle’s two bottles on the toasts, then bought 3 more that mostly went to PB. She likes the bubbly - must be to feed her personality.
This sparked the inevitable drunk stories. But I don’t remember any of them.
Noticing that I wasn’t imbibing, Pete cleverly remarked, “An Irishman who doesn’t drink? Is this like the alternate universe where Spock has a goatee?” Pete makes entirely too many references to Star Wars and Star Trek to belong in the real world.
We remarked on being in a semi-private room, i.e. having other patrons share the room. “I’m thinking we need to tip extra to make up for the other guests in the room.” JimB tells us he told them we’d be loud.
Obligatory inscrutable remark - “My cat’s breath smell’s like cat food.” - Pete
Telemarketing again. I was told to put that.
There was some scuffle over Chef Troy’s body positioning. It seems he turned to listen to the other end of the table, then was rebuffed for ignoring our end, and finally twisted his body toward us and his head the other way. Then he put his arm up on the back of the booth and replied, “This way I get to pretend I’ve got my arm around Zyada.”
I remarked rather flippantly how Pete sorta resembles Aglarond. Pete retorted, “I weight twice as much as Aglarond. I think Chef Jr. weighs twice as much as Aglarond.”
“Is that a slam on Aglarond or my son?” - Cheffie
We seem to have had an Irish waiter named Ric o’Chet. When opening one of the bottles of Champaigne, he bounced it off the wall, off the table, and pegged Grace. He also was witty enough to offer Purplebear some advice: “If you drink and drive, don’t drive your own car.”
This was about the time I shifted ends of the table to record for posterity some of the fun from the other crowd. Specifically I set out to make sure Grace gets more than passing mention in the notes. It didn’t hurt that Palmyra was at that end of the table.
Purplebear acquired the bouncing cork and stuck it in her blouse to save. She started to put it in her bra. “You need another one.” That set off ensuing battle to creatively adorn her with corks. See the pictures.
Purplebear had 1 green pinky nail, 1 blue pinky nail, and the rest of her nails were red. No purple this time. But she was wearing purple. I thought Palmyra was wearing purple, too, but was informed her pants were blue.
Then we played musical chairs. First Grace moved to the opposite end of the table (to get away from me?) She claims it was to entertain my sister since I “abandoned” her. Irish sister was doing fine with Zyada, Jaime, and Pete. I guess she didn’t want to be in the notes after all. Come to think of it, Pete was sitting with Jaime on his right, Mrs. Chef on his left, Zyada, Grace, and Irish sister across from him. Hmmmmmm. At least I had the lovely Palmyra, Maidenunicorn, and Purplebear to keep me company, if I did have to share with Cheffie and JimB. After Grace swapped ends, Chef ran off to visit the facilities, and Maidenunicorn swapped seats from the outside to the inside of the table. Her comment to me was to see if Cheffie would take her vacated seat instead of making everyone between his seat and the end of the row get up again. On cue, he did. Then there was a remark to arrange us alternating boy,girl, but we were short a few guys. To which Jim B promptly volunteered to take two.
For some reason Maidenunicorn requested a plate, and then a fork. Palmyra handily pulled up both objects with alacrity and dexterity, right on cue. (They must have worked that out ahead of time.) I remarked that I wished I could come up with something to ask her for and see if she was equally as ready. Alas, I couldn’t come up with something funny on demand. But she did hand me a cell phone.
Purplebear ordered a piece of chocolate pie to round out her indulgences. She commented, “Chocolate is the best you can have next to sex.” Or with?
I didn’t get the context on this next part. Cheffie winds up a remark with the line “nothing intimidating.” Purplebear shot back, “You were there.”
Palmyra began intently working on folding a piece of paper. What is this, origami? She was carefully creasing the edges to make it square. :intent stare: She finally made a paper box that she inflated, and then threw at Pete.
Pete brought up the movie Heavy Metal, and that John Candy was one of the voices. Followed by a mention of old TV shows that I didn’t follow.
SNL and the Ambiguously Gay Duo.
Another Champaigne for PB.
Twister - the movie, not the game. We discussed the ramifications of being an intuition following “feeler” of the storm versus the corporate big-budget evil science guy. It was remarkable how they managed to go through the tornado at the end without being shredded by flying debris or impaled by a 2 by 4.
Purplebear started making the rounds with all the guys. The pictures don’t lie.
Palmyra kept stealing the notes from me and reading them. I think she was editing them while I wasn’t looking. So if anything is missing, blame it on her.
Some random comment about Prom stuff.
“I should have brought my recorder.” ? “No, that would have been fair to everyone. We like to take biased notes.” - The Chefster.
Chef said, “Jim is nice, but is he good? No, that would be me.” Uh huh.
Purplebear got her second cork, and demonstrated the matching headlights. Then she tried out the wire frames for the corks.
“A raw egg was being used.” Okay.
Palmyra replied incongruously “And that’s not even gramatically correct.” Or maybe that’s just my notes being incongruous.
Pete said regarding the bill - “That’s more than a car payment.” Calculating the bill was a chore. It was all lumped together. We could have had the waiter separate it, but somehow didn’t. Finally we broke out Zyada’s calculator. An hour later…
Pete told us he was once dumped on New Year’s Eve, at the party. His friend told him, “If I were you, I’d kill myself.”
As we were wrapping up, it was suggested that I could rely on my sister to fill in the parts I missed from the other end. They obviously don’t know my sister very well. “We talked about some stuff.” I could rag on my sister some more, but I’m not doing much better, and I had the advantage of the note paper and pen. Plus she’s not reading this anyway.
And that winds up the pile of scribbles I call notes from the Saturday bash. I’m sure everyone else has something to say. Thanks all for coming out and celebrating with me.
But wait! Someone suggested we do brunch! Oh no, not again! I don’t have time right now. I’ll post it later so I can get this loaded.
Oh, and Palmyra, I played nice. I didn’t even offer to be the Chef Jr. (from the tree decorating party).
And, you did get the notes a little garbled, my fine Irish friend. So, I’ll help you out with the details.