Greetings from the dining room at McCaw Hall, where I am without a doubt the youngest person here. I have all my own teeth.
Flying solo as I am this evening it affords me the ability to play with my phone at the dinner table without offending anyone. This in turn offers camouflage whereby I can pretend I am at a loss for what to phone-type next and let my eyes wander and review my dining “companions”:
1. I am not the only Dona sola here: there are two others, but they are infinitely more secure because the are not fiddling with their phones.
2. There are a good deal of elderly couples… One and all are dressed nicely and appear to be having those comfortable conversations that long term couples do. (“Well I’m not sure I should have a martini… There are *two* intermissions.” “Say what was that martini we had the other day… Yes you do know what I’m talking about it was at that place… Of course you were there…”)
3. There is too the very rare four top.
Pardon the pause… You may not have noticed it but I had to load the WordPress app for the iPhone. Much better.
At any rate I am halfway through dinner and the dining room is quite full now, lively and loud. I am fighting the urge to join a conversation to my right. The couple next to me is wonderful: not cloying, at ease, happy and laid back. They are now apparently celebrating being debt free and she knows the origins of pasta puttanesca.
I am also now, in this new crowd, much more cheerfully anonymous.
More at the first intermission.
Bobbie Conti 
I hope the night progresses into something magical and provocative.
[…] Dining by oneself comes with benefit and detraction. The benefit is that you get to pick whatever you want to eat without deference to the sensibilities of another person; if you really want to have the escargot you can have it without worrying whether or not your boyfriend’s throat muscles will clench. The detraction is that you can’t *share* it immediately with anyone; you have to revel in it and then pack all of that up and save it for the next time you see a friend or loved one. To that end, I made sure I emphasized the benefit. In this case, I had a split of Apex Cabernet, a duck pate appetizer, bucatini puttanesca, and about 2/3 of a black pepper panna cotta that came with huckleberries and pineapple. […]
[…] Check the other blog; I will post more later. I have acquired a new and expensive habit: https://bobbieconti.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/culture/ […]