Small World

Usually when we go to San Antonio on New Year's Eve, I book us into a flashy restaurant for dinner. Someplace like Boudro's or Morton's where we can have an elegant (translate expensive) meal to finish the year in style.

I didn't do that this year. Boudro's tends to rush you a bit on New Year's Eve and we went to Morton's last year and found that some of the other people in there were behaving so obnoxiously that it was difficult to enjoy the meal. We figured we'd see what was available when we got there.

The short answer is nothing. We couldn't make a reservation anywhere. Not even in our own hotel - which actually had a pretty good offer running but failed to mention it when we checked in the day before and was sold out by the time we found out about it. But it was not the end of the world. We decided to just wander around and graze - have an appetizer here, an entree there - we sure weren't going to starve.

We started off with potato skins at Waxy O'Connor's. Someone remind me to never order food there again. We'd had a bowl of soup there a couple years back and it wasn't good. The food had not improved. We moved on.

We arrived at County Line BBQ. We've eaten there before and the food was good. Not elegant, but good. We were told it was about a 20 minute wait. While waiting, we struck up a conversation with another couple who ended up inviting us to join them. Turns out James is an instructional designer/courseware developer and Sylvia left teaching to run after-school programs in Houston. Mark and I both have instructional design/education backgrounds so we had plenty to talk about. In fact, James believed he attended a session I was presenting at an ISPI (International Society for Performance Improvement) conference in either San Francisco or Anaheim some years ago. Small world.

We had an enjoyable dinner with them and then went on to watch the fireworks. But it's so crowded around Hemisfair Park that we lost them before the evening was over. Not to worry - we had already exchanged emails and phone numbers and I got a Happy New Year message on New Year's Day!

Then on New Year's Day while it was raining, we were playing darts. When we got tired of playing, a couple invited us to share their table. Turns out they're also from the Dallas area and that Judy and I have a friend in common. More emails and phone numbers. It's a small world after all!

(That song will be stuck in my head for days!)