What do you know, a talent show where people actually have talent . . .

Last night was Cabaret, the Law School's annual fundraiser for the public interest grants they award to students seeking, obviously, public interest work. A silent auction was going on in one room for donations from students and the community (I donated 3 roundtrips for running errands, which Rob valiantly but belatedly went to bid on in order to prevent me from actually having to give someone those 3 roundtrips . . . they had already taken the sheet away.) In the main room they were mixing a live auction for donations from professors (dinner w/ the prof, golf w/ the prof, flower arrangements, and so on) with performances by law students. I was quite impressed. There were some excellent dancers, (such as a traditional dance from XinJiang province in China and an Irish step dance) some rather funny musical acts (a hilarious music and dance rendition of a poem a written about a famous Contracts case, a Gilbert and Sullivan rip-off about what it's like to be a 1L - in the tradition of We Didn't Go to Harvard but law school specific), and some quality musical acts (such as Andy on the dulcimer and three guitarists doing a couple pop rock songs). I'm used to the junior high talent shows where the "talent" of the performers is somewhat debatable. This was good!

We had a nice dinner beforehand at ZaZa's too. It's an Italian place down on Cascadilla and 13, and I'm rather proud of myself for picking it because it turned out to be a great venue. Although I actually can't be too proud. Rob heard about it from a coworker and suggested it as a possibility for our Valentine's Day dinner, but we went to Boatyard instead. But we were planning on going to dinner with Kiernan, Duncan, and Desi, and Desi wanted some place better than Applebees, and Kiernan and I wanted someplace cheaper than the Heights. ZaZa's fit the bill perfectly. It had cloth pillars and cloth on the ceiling - an unusual and quite nice atmosphere. It reminded me of something off of Trading Spaces but much classier.

It was a nice dinner, and really nice for Rob to get to meet my friends in a little bit better setting than the semi-formal. He doesn't like occassions where the circumstances dictate that you have to kind of work hard to keep up a conversation - like places where loud music is playing! But it was a nice dinner, and we had no awkward pauses or dull moments at all, as far as I was concerned. Duncan was a "new guy" too, as we had never met Kiernan's new . . . . friend . . . before. He was very interesting and amiable, and all in all it was a nice evening.

Rob and I left Cabaret pretty early - 9:30pm. It went on for hours and then there were after parties, so people didn't get home until 4 and 5 am apparently. I'm vaguely disappointed that I didn't stick it out, but not terribly. I mean you know me the party animal!! You know though I would drink a hell of a lot more if I didn't have to pay for the alcohol. Thus the only time I've been truly drunk was at Brandy and Josh's wedding reception - incidentally that was also one of the few times I've been out drinking and not had to drive home, thus another reason why it's the only time I've really been completely inebriated instead of just having one or two and calling it quits. A law school friend of mine recently tried to tell me that drunk driving wasn't that big a deal and that it's the fault of the local government for not having a good local transportation system. (Talking about Connecticut, not Ithaca.) My suggestion that perhaps then people should just not get that drunk didn't go over so well. ;-)

Anyway, the down side of Cabaret being such a party night was that we only had 5 people at our basketball game today, 3 guys and 2 gals. And the only reason the other female was there was because I called her and offered to drive her to the game if she would come. So w/o subs we played a not so great game, and we lost. It was a tougher team anyway than we've been playing, too - we really could have used the subs. Ah well. C'est la vie.

And now time to return to Contracts.