wined and dined

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

well, tonight's been an interesting one.

two of our biggest vendors were in town and wanted to take us out to dinner. a limo took us to spark's steakhouse, where we had a private room waiting for us. i had to dress up. i hate dressing up. slacks, a shirt and sweater, nice shoes. it's the least i could do, but i didn't enjoy it.

wined and dined. swapping stories about how terrible local exchange carriers are and just basically talking shop. as expected, the engineers and operations crew migrated to one end of the table and the management and sales crew migrated to the other. i think it was a healthy split.

i got to speak to the VP of Operations at one of the companies for a while, and he seemed like a really nice guy. the only vegetarian of the bunch, and from australia, too. i didn't get a chance to ply him with questions on immigration or tell him how i think australia's AI research groups are neat.

one thing i'll have to research later on, is why red wine gives me a headache and white wine doesn't. all i can come up with is the flavor and texture. red has a full-bodied feeling, while white is crisp and dry. i should learn more about wine.

in other news, i just got off the phone with tina, who is back safe and sound in the states. quite a relief. hearing about that bus explosion really freaked me out. she's going to visit errica later this week to see a tori amos show. i wonder how that'll turn out. :)