Dish, Washington, D.C.

My friend Leo was in the neighborhood tonight and wanted to go eat, so we popped over the Dish in the River Inn on the street behind my block. It's cold out tonight, so we didn't want to have to walk far. We started off with a martini and a cosmopolitan which came in oversized glasses--no need for a second round. I wasn't terribly hungry tonight, so I just ordered a frisee salad and a duck confit off the appetizer side of the menu, and Leo had some potato gnocchi and the wild salmon entree. For dessert, we each had a pistacchio, dried fig, and white chocolate bread pudding, which was tres bon, then we sat and lingered over coffee. I like this friend; we talked a little "business" and he expensed the dinner. I need to find more friends with expense accounts!

Hooters, Phoenix, AZ

Last Thursday I had the most harrowing experience in Phoenix. We had a 5-7 p.m. meeting, after which several of my immediate superiors invited me to join them for dinner. Being new, that's the sort of invitation one really can't turn down. So, we left the office building where we'd been meeting and walked over to a nearby shopping and dining district, where they promptly headed for a Hooters.

It was awful.

The place was loud and boisterous, the televisions were blaring sports, the waitresses—who weren't even pretty—were running around in way-too-tight skimpy t-shirts and Daisy Dukes so tiny their pubic hair was longer than their shorts, and the place was filthy. I don't even want to describe the smell and condition of the men's room. Everyone at my table ordered chicken wings and beer. I had a salad and iced tea. And what's worse, when the chicken wings arrived at the table, the waitress kept forgetting to bring my salad. I wonder if she even put the order in at the same time. It was a good fifteen minutes later before my salad came.

Why do these waitresses think that they need to shake their chests when they bring food or drink to a table? I refused to look at the waitress when she came by to interrupt our conversations, which only made her shake at me all the harder.

When I got back to my hotel, I had to take a long shower, cause I felt so dirty, so used, so violated.

San Marcos Golf Resort, Chandler, AZ

Phoenix was an interesting experience— my first time to visit the State of Arizona. Our conference was at the legendary San Marcos Golf Resort and Conference Center in Chandler. The hotel provided some of the most interesting coffee breaks. Ordinarily, one gets cookies or muffins or doughnuts or some such thing, but the morning breaks always had hard boiled egg halves and slices of cheeses with fancy crackers (I loved the chevre they served), and the afternoon breaks were always slices of melons and pineapple, which I found rather too hard to eat in a crowded lobby.

Off time was kinda boring in Phoenix and I don't think I'd like to live here. For one, I couldn't find any place decent to eat. The town was full of national franchise places, but I didn't have a single meal the whole trip worthy of description.