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Sep. 25th, 2009 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holytoastrLast night was the defenders awards dinner. My boss got our dept a couple tickets so I went. Free food is always a good thing, right?
During the cocktail hour, very pushy servers kept shoving crab and salmon in my face. They kept interrupting conversations with their stinky meat trays. I guess it wasn't a big deal though. I wasn't having any important conversations. Just being nice to donors and vendors. It's especially important to be nice to the donors so they give us more money. :P
Then we were called into the main room for the ceremony. I was sat at the unpopular table. For the longest time, it was just me and a donor at the table. Eventually it filled up with other coworkers that were running the event. It was weird sitting by ourselves for so long though.
Dinner was good. There was a tasty salad, minus the green tomato and the figs. And then I had a fancy vegetarian moroccan pie of some sort. At first it was too sweet, until I realized I was supposed to pour the sauce they gave me on it. Then it was just right. Dessert was a tiny chocolate pudding thing, a tiny cake, and a tiny fruit tart. Each only one bite! They were very cute, but I wish there was more of the cake.
Jeff Corwin was the mc for the night. He talked a lot about frogs. Ed Asner was there, introducing award winners. He's a strange funny man.
One of the award winners was a professor, so he brought tree branches in to demonstrate some of his research that led to his award. He said airport security gave him very strange looks bringing those in his luggage.
Ted Turner's children are totally bizarre. They gave their dad his award and their speech about him was all ower the place. It was about family vacations picking up trash, turner's bad back, dead pelicans on the beach, and how we should all buy his book cause he wrote it while he was on pain meds. They had to be pushed off the stage because they would not stop talking. It was funny, but very very weird.
Guests (but not employees) got copies of his book anyway after the ceremony. I bet they will be more likely to read it now that they know he was on drugs at the time.
While the dinner was very nice, I was not impressed by the hotel it was at. I already mentioned the pushy food tray people. Then the waitress for our table was extremely surly. If you asked for anything, she'd get huffy about it. One person was surprised to learn that the only food option was fish unless you requested a vegetarian dish well ahead of time. She asked if she could have vegetarian instead and the waitress chastised her. I got nearly growled at for asking if I could have tea instead of coffee. And my dessert was slammed onto the table when I asked if I could have the normal dessert rather than the vegan one.
Also, the toilets in the mayflower are practically on the floor. Was the hotel originally an elementary school?
After the ceremony, I took the train back home. Ben didn't want me to take the bus, so I waited at the station for him to come get me. He got a little lost though, so we got home really late. I was very tired and cranky by the time I got to bed. My dog was intensely happy to see me though.
Woke up this morning to rain and metro delays. However, metro actually did a smart thing and sent a completely empty train to our overpacked station. Everyone was able to at least get out of the rain while we waited for the tracks to clear ahead of us. I appreciated that.
It's a little weird how I was the first one in the office this morning. I guess everyone else partied a bit too hard last night.
During the cocktail hour, very pushy servers kept shoving crab and salmon in my face. They kept interrupting conversations with their stinky meat trays. I guess it wasn't a big deal though. I wasn't having any important conversations. Just being nice to donors and vendors. It's especially important to be nice to the donors so they give us more money. :P
Then we were called into the main room for the ceremony. I was sat at the unpopular table. For the longest time, it was just me and a donor at the table. Eventually it filled up with other coworkers that were running the event. It was weird sitting by ourselves for so long though.
Dinner was good. There was a tasty salad, minus the green tomato and the figs. And then I had a fancy vegetarian moroccan pie of some sort. At first it was too sweet, until I realized I was supposed to pour the sauce they gave me on it. Then it was just right. Dessert was a tiny chocolate pudding thing, a tiny cake, and a tiny fruit tart. Each only one bite! They were very cute, but I wish there was more of the cake.
Jeff Corwin was the mc for the night. He talked a lot about frogs. Ed Asner was there, introducing award winners. He's a strange funny man.
One of the award winners was a professor, so he brought tree branches in to demonstrate some of his research that led to his award. He said airport security gave him very strange looks bringing those in his luggage.
Ted Turner's children are totally bizarre. They gave their dad his award and their speech about him was all ower the place. It was about family vacations picking up trash, turner's bad back, dead pelicans on the beach, and how we should all buy his book cause he wrote it while he was on pain meds. They had to be pushed off the stage because they would not stop talking. It was funny, but very very weird.
Guests (but not employees) got copies of his book anyway after the ceremony. I bet they will be more likely to read it now that they know he was on drugs at the time.
While the dinner was very nice, I was not impressed by the hotel it was at. I already mentioned the pushy food tray people. Then the waitress for our table was extremely surly. If you asked for anything, she'd get huffy about it. One person was surprised to learn that the only food option was fish unless you requested a vegetarian dish well ahead of time. She asked if she could have vegetarian instead and the waitress chastised her. I got nearly growled at for asking if I could have tea instead of coffee. And my dessert was slammed onto the table when I asked if I could have the normal dessert rather than the vegan one.
Also, the toilets in the mayflower are practically on the floor. Was the hotel originally an elementary school?
After the ceremony, I took the train back home. Ben didn't want me to take the bus, so I waited at the station for him to come get me. He got a little lost though, so we got home really late. I was very tired and cranky by the time I got to bed. My dog was intensely happy to see me though.
Woke up this morning to rain and metro delays. However, metro actually did a smart thing and sent a completely empty train to our overpacked station. Everyone was able to at least get out of the rain while we waited for the tracks to clear ahead of us. I appreciated that.
It's a little weird how I was the first one in the office this morning. I guess everyone else partied a bit too hard last night.
