As I mentioned about a month ago, The Admiral has retired from his jobby-job at the Corporation Place where he's worked for the last couple decades. Saturday night his colleagues threw him a shindig at Houston's Morton's Steakhouse down near the Galleria. It was lovely.
So, Friday Jamie and I drove into Houston.
On Friday evening, we visited with very longtime pals Shannon & Josh and their kid, Owen at Texas Tex-Mex fixture Ninfa's. Its been years since we'd seen any of the Houston contingent, and we had never met young Owen. Saturday we headed to the Galleria (a fairly tony shopping complex for those of you wondering) for lunch with Erica & Scott and their two kids, Isaac and Mara.
We've definitely headed into the phase where our pals from days of yore have had kids, and we have not, and that puts us in that Childfree American minority. We are now those weird people you remember from your own childhood who didn't match your understanding of the world in which the function of adults was to have kids so somebody would feed people e exitinglike you. They'd show up at the Holidays for meals, maybe, and have no concept of soccer practices, school programs, homework, etc... Also, those people just sort of stared at your kid-ness, did they not?
Yup. That's us. We are most definitely the weird kid-less people now.
We wandered the Galleria, a place I hadn't been since college. Its still expensive. Its far less depressing than most local malls, but I'm still amazed by how there is a place with so many expensive things, and I do not need or want any of it. That's not a moral stance, by the way. I'm just not into Coach bags or Valentino dresses or $200 crystal holiday-themed bunny trinkets. Its mind-boggling to me in many ways that there are enough people out there to support that economy, but there you go.
The dinner at Morton's was the sort of thing I put together a lot for my own job, so it was nice to be at one of these things and get to just attend and actually taste the food I'm eating rather than spend the time watching clocks, waiters, van drivers, etc...
Mostly, though, it was pretty great to see my dad's colleagues raise a glass to The Old Man and say a few good words about him after he put so much of his life into that company and into his colleagues. Certainly there's a bit of Tom Sawyer watching his own funeral to seeing people toast your career, as you wonder what others would say about you were you to be exiting your place of work. I know I've left enough jobs and worked enough places and that I'm acerbic enough and hard enough to work with in my way that its hard to imagine a scenario in which my colleagues would speak as warmly about both my work and my character.
My parents. They set the bar ridiculously high.
Anyhow, here's Jamie and me all dolled up for the event. Doesn't Jamie look great?
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| ah, red wine. You make wearing a tie all night bearable. |
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