Fundraising and Anniversaries

My agency had our biggest annual fundraiser last night. It's called Dining Out For Life, and it's actually kind of fun. The whole idea is that everyone should eat at a restaurant the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and the restaurant pledges to give a certain percentage of the money made to help serve out clients. Most give 25%, but some give 50-100%. There were almost 200 restaurants involved this year, with a volunteer at each location as a host.

I hosted Arcelia's Mexicana for the second year. My biggest realization after last night, as well as after talking to a co-worker today, is that the evening is actually fun if the host is appropriate for the restaurant.

Two years ago, I was assigned to this really high end place that was WAY too expensive for my friends. It's really only fun if you ask all of your friends and business associates to attend...it feels really supportive (I guess that may be more so for EFA employees...sometimes it makes me feel like my friends support me in what can be kind of an emotionally intense field). The expensive place not only made me feel guilty that my friends attended, but it was hard for me to feel ok spending that much on me!

This year, the boyfriend hosted with me. LAST year, I shamelessly threw myself at him in lame attempts to make him love me. Ok, it wasn't really like that. But last year we had both been out of relationships for what seemed like an appropriate amount of time, and we openly flirted for the first time (really, it's the first time we flirted at all...and it was fabulous). He'd invited me to his birthday party the next week, so I wanted to lay some careful groundwork, ie., make sure he knew I was interested.

Needless to say, our anniversary is the day after the birthday party. My plan worked so well that we had one date after another pretty much the entire week after the party. He moved in 5 months later (neither of us had ever lived together before...kind of a big deal), and it's a done deal, forever.

So, the fundraising event was great. A bunch of my friends ate with us, and it felt like another type of anniversary...the anniversary of when I decided to make the boyfriend mine! His birthday is on the 2nd, and the 4th we're leaving town overnight. He hasn't told me where or what, which is extra exciting!

I'll report back...but I'm hoping to write before then...I've got to get out of my writing rut.