To Dine or Not To Dine

The corrosion guys from the southern end of Texas are in town for an off-site conference this week. I haven't met them before and haven't been to any of their field offices. So when I was invited to join the crew for dinner I was hesitant to say the least. I waffled back and forth on whether I would show all afternoon.

I went home and got bogged down in arguing with the DSL company and next thing I know little princess says "aren't you supposed to be gone?" Dang, I get up brush my hair and teeth and tell little princess "do your dishes, take a bath and at 7:30 call me on my cell phone." She wants to know why she's supposed to call me. "In case I'm not having fun I can use you as an excuse to leave."

"But what if you ARE having fun?"

Then I'll say "thanks for calling" and hang up.

The restaurant did a fabulous job of accommodating our party of 25 with no problems. The manager came out and assisted our waiter. We all ordered drinks and next thing I know appetizer of all kinds start appearing all over the table, guacamole, quesadillas, chips and salsa, grilled serrano peppers. I was starting to wonder if I should even order as I was filling up just trying to taste everything. Then they brought pitchers of margaritas so we didn't have to try and catch our waiter every time we needed a new drink. We all order something different and against my better judgment I order carne asada medium rare. What was I thinking? A large group like this, I'll be lucky to get hot food let alone a steak cooked to order. But they pulled it off and all the food came out at the same time and it was perfectly cooked. Then when you think it can't possibly get better, they bring out every dessert on their menu on large plates, sopapillas, 8 kinds of cheese cake, carrot cake, flan, raspberries with cream. We each took a bite or two of everything and passed the plates around.

All during the meal I had fabulous conversations with people I didn't know before I sat down and a couple with people I've known for sometime. We laughed and joked and made plans to get together in the future at the company golf tournament.

In the end I can't believe I almost let my fear of not having fun keep me from going.