Winning Friends with Salad

Hey all! Peter is still out partying the night away, but I’m home to do a quick post and then off to bed. This afternoon did not go as I would have hoped, in that I got stuck dawdling around the house, and then had to power errands run. I managed to get in a little cardio and weights at the gym, but not as much as I would have liked. It definitely would have put me in a better frame of mind if I had a good, hard workout under my belt before a party - but it was good enough. Cardio and weights = 300 calories burned.

FYI, I didn’t have a snack before my workout because my lunch was so heavy. I made the right call about that- I didn’t need one. My lunch held me through til dinner.

The agenda for tonight was dinner at Robert Emmett’s and then Casino Night at the Nokia Theater. So here’s the place cards at dinner:

I didn’t know this until I got to the reuinion: apparently Columbia University is made up of different branches: one is Columbia College, one is FU, the engineering school where P graduated from, and a couple others I don’t know the names of. So a bunch of the stuff tonight had ‘Columbia College’ written on it, which really tripped me up! My dad went to Columbia too, and actually graduated from Columbia College, so go figure. Every time P and my dad get together, all they talk about is Columbia. It’s nice that they have something in common.

Service at this resturaunt was TERRIBLE. But they had an open bar, so P was happy. I had a club soda and lime with dinner (sitting out the first round strategy). I started off with salad:

Sorry the photo was a bit blurry, I was trying to be discreet. Nothing special about this salad. For an entree, the choices were ravioli, chicken, or fish. I went with fish, which was a white fish. I think I made the right choice.

I don’t even think the fish was bathed in butter, so woohoo! I ate all the fish and veggies and none of the rice. Then for dessert, they had tirimisu:

This was good. Looking back, I don’t know if I should have finished this (which I did). Half would have been sufficient.

After dinner, we went to the Casino Night. Here’s me getting ready to play blackjack:

Everyone was given 1500 Columbia dollars to start with. P and I both cashed in 500 at the first blackjack table that looked ‘lucky’, whatever that means. Well, it turned out to be lucky! Peter’s pretty good, and our dealer didn’t know there was a 500 bet maximum, so within 20 min, we made over 15,000! Here are some pictures of the table:

On the left is P sticking the red card into the back of the deck. Right is the dealer shuffling.

With the Columbia dollars, you can buy Columbia gear: bags, cups, mugs, etc. As soon as I walked through the casino door and saw the spread, I knew what I wanted: a Columbia sweatshirt! (It should be noted that this was the most expensive item, of course.) Well, after 20 min at our lucky table, that baby was mine! Here’s me in my new favorite sweatshirt:

Anyway, back to food. Here was the spread at the casino night:

To the right there is a huge veggie basket, with a pretty good variety of items. Unfortunately, my sweet tooth was on overdrive, so I mostly stuck to this:

I sampled all of these. Possibly twice. Soo good.

I also had a club soda and vodka at the Casino night to get my mojo flowing.

So that was the first event of the reunion. Definitely a splurge for me, but I didn’t do any permanent damage. I’m not going to attempt a calorie count, but I know it was over my needs. Since I kind of let myself eat whatever I wanted today, I’m going to have to be a little stricter with myself tomorrow. Two days in a row of poor eating will leave a very sad Kate on the third day. Tomorrow the plan is to hit the gym first thing in the AM, bake treats for the BBQ, attend the BBQ, and then attend the Columbia reunion, day 2: dinner and dancing under the stars. It’s going to be a loooong day - I better get some sleep!