Hobnobbing With the Drunk and Charitable
Date night is always fun, especially when it involves getting dressed up with one of your best friends.
Heidi and I decided we were due for one of these nights. We bought tickets to the Cabaret of Fools fund raiser for the Ririe Woodbury Dance Theater, knowing next to nothing about what the event would be like.
When we first arrived, we grabbed a few glasses of wine and began bidding on the silent auction items.
I think I bid on about ten.
I have no idea what they were for.
Fortunately we became distracted by the free hors d’oeuvre. We made the mistake of thinking they were the dinner that came with the tickets. So we chowed down thinking we better get our moneys worth of mini quiches, meanwhile all my silent bids were put to shame.
Two… or possibly three, drinks later, we found out there was still a full dinner to be served as well as entertainment, a live auction and dancing. We bought a few more drink tickets and entered the “entertainment” room we knew nothing about.
The great/messed-up thing about fund raising events like this is they know peoples wallets get proportionately loser with the amount of alcohol they ingest. Such was certainly true of the man at our table who, during the live auction, paid $250 for a package of chocolates, or the person who paid $600 for a case of 24 bottles of wine (valued at $440).
Heidi and I actually bid on the bottles of wine. We made a quick decision to combine our money and bid. Our max was $200.
Obviously, we’re hardcore gamblers.
Two-ish more drinks later we decided to leave.
Needing to sober up, we decide to walk in our high heels to another bar downtown. We couldn’t bring ourselves to enter a bar playing techno music or one filled with the “yeah bros and shiny hoes,” so we walked for quite some time and ended up at a little place called Kristauf’s Martini Bar which is totally decent if you’re ever in downtown Salt Lake City.
The rest of the night is a little hazy. All I know is I woke up at 3 in the morning smelling like McDonalds and feeling like death.
I’m such a light weight, why I thought I could keep up with the fund-raising socialite crowd is beyond me. Looking back now, I remember watching them pour a drink 3/4 full of booze with just a splash of mixer for color.
Jokes on them though, it doesn’t matter how strong you make my drinks, I’ll still never pay $250 for chocolates.
Blogfully yours,
Summer
I remember, years ago, I went to an afternoon baseball game with a girlfriend. She got a call while we were at the game. Next thing you know, the game is over, we’re racing back to our homes to shower and change and we’re meeting up again to go to a black-tie fundraiser. A friend of hers had a corporate table with extra seats. We were seat warmers, so to speak. It was a blast. And I don’t think people pay $250 for chocolates because they think that’s the going rate. They pay that money because they know the $200 above and beyond what they paid for the true value of the candy is going to a good cause. =)