Day 12

Workouts. . .
Walked the track 6 laps, alternated with running 3 laps, lifted weights for 30 minutes and then stretched for 5.

Tonight was the night of George’s company Christmas party. I know, the holidays have long since passed, but they like to have it late to make it easier to reserve space and to ensure everyone’s around. We went to the Mount Vernon Country Club in Genessee for their Friday night buffet, which includes king crab legs to make it quite popular with his company. This is my third visit there, none of which have been pleasant.

For starters, even when I ate meat, seafood was not my favorite. But it seems like every buffet billing itself as luxurious opens with seafood. This particular one has giant trays of shrimp parading around with bowls of cocktail sauce, and the table soon fills with creepy little exoskeletons and pieces of tail. Mmmm. Then comes the soup, which tonight was clam chowder. Pass. Following that, there’s the salad buffet, featuring more shrimp and a large silver tray of smoked salmon, oysters and caviar. Last year I did try the caviar and found it too salty for me. Then comes the dinner buffet, studded with fresh crab cakes, swordfish steaks, and of course the king crab legs served with urns of butter. Typically, I try to keep a low visibility about my pickiness. It’s not a source of high pride, so I don’t mention it unless anyone else brings it up and then I try to keep the noise to a minimum. However, I am already the object of scorn here. The wife of one office pal finds everything that I eat mystifying. While I do not comment on her personal choices, it’s entertainment for the entire table to point out what I have and why. And also to observe that while things are vegetarian, they are not healthy, like mashed potatoes. I never said I was dieting, or did I? No.

So while last year’s commentary centered around my disdain for most types of seafood (she ran through a list of every kind of seafood she could think of for my response to it), this year we learned about vegetarianism. It went so far that she actually stopped me next to the buffet, looked over my plate and rolled her eyes. The nice thing is that she makes such a huge deal about things that others at the table begin to sympathize with me. I can see them smiling in empathy and sometimes catching my eye when she exclaims about something particularly painful. The only nice thing about the evening was that I could end with the dessert table, always a meat-free zone, and a giant bowl of bananas foster.

What I ate today. . .
Tea with 1/2 c. 2% milk, grapefruit and orange, two dollar rolls with cheddar slices, venti chai, bite of cinnamon bagel, black tea, large salad with olives, croutons and grape tomatoes, 6 cubes of various cheeses, 1/2 large wheat roll, about a cup of prepared mashed potatoes that looked pretty greasy, slice eggplant parm, bananas foster over vanilla ice cream, chocolate chip cookie.