Nice event this evening. People were dressed very fancy. Sparkles and beads, bow ties and cufflinks. Little bitty bags with long metal chains and shiny shoes, too.

The room was filled with dozens of nicely sized rounds. Not so big that you couldn’t introduce yourself to the person sitting on the other side of your diameter but too big to have a conversation across the centerpiece. The chairs were that light metal that was welded–or maybe strongly glued–together to look like bamboo. Bamboo that was sprayed a golden color. The biggest surprise was the tablecloth. It was a fancy print–a creamy, almost yellow, background with a somewhat Asian design of small red flowers, maybe poppies, with thin green vines dispersed almost in balance to the ecru. The fabric felt more like upholstery or a heavy drape than a tablecloth and, when you put your wine glass down, the embroidery or a seam or some unevenness would make you steady the stem to find a flatter spot.

There was a big water glass and a medium sized wine glass, but if your brought your pinot noir from the reception, you would notice that the cocktail wines were much smaller. That seems like a good decision by central catering.

The seats were fairly deeply padded, but after a few sets of remarks and videos and jokes and applause you wanted to stand and stretch. The planners were smart, too. They broke the program up around the courses to allow for standing and milling and visiting. Greetings from the dais, a catalogue of grateful thank you’s that may have been commercials, then a few segments accompanied by a salad. Main course and then more videos, emcee schtick and more segments. Dessert and coffee followed by the final two segments.

But, let me get back to that dessert thing. Really, to the coffee. There was only decaffeinated coffee served. Only decaf. What is up with that? It’s like seeing a soda machine that only has diet soda or walking up to a bar to find they only have 3.2 beer on tap or looking into your Halloween bag to see only apples, boxes of raisins and pennies lined up on a piece of tape.

It’s flipping the idea of coffee on its head. Coffee is coffee and decaf is a disarmed cup of coffee. Someone decided that all coffee served after dinner would be incapacitated. What? Caffeine been bothering you? Makes me wonder what the world is coming to. What kind of monsters serve strictly decaf? Where is my choice?

So I drank my impotent brew and then took to the huge chocolate thing on my plate. And I know that there was caffeine in that chocolate thing–along with maybe nutella. It was creamy and almost gloopy. And I ate too much of it. Now I’m too full of rich food to sleep.

Seriously, if those people were looking to take care of me, they would have served much smaller dessert portions. And some real coffee. I think I’m going to have to find some fizzy water. Damn nanny state.