NAC Annual Benefit Dinner. Despite my firm esconcement in middle age, this was my first experience attending a fancy-dancy charity dinner. I know it was fancy because they served tiny food—delicious, for sure, but tiny: the squash soup was served in a tiny ceramic urn that was about the size of a Hale and Hearty sample cup. Itty-bitty crepe purses filled with beets (not the icky kind of beets I used to stuff into my empty milk container at St. Brigid’s, these were real, tasty beets) were tied shut with 3-inch sections of fresh chives. An actual RDA-sized serving of rare red meat was accompanied by a coffee scoop of polenta with sweet corn, and mélange of julienned vegetables (we think one of them was rutabaga, but admitted that perhaps it was just that we liked saying the word “rutabaga”).

There were obligatory speeches, and a video featuring disabled young adults who had benefited from the program (and were now doing more with their lives than most kids from similarly disadvantaged neighborhoods). This all made THH a little misty, and I told her that she should forego adopting a kitten for her grands, and foster a child. I’m going to have to work on her a little more.

If this is what the A-List people do when they “go out every night,” then I’m all for it. Fun, sociable, and even though the $100 raffle tickets were way out of my league, I could tell myself I was being supportive of a worthy cause. If I had the choice, I’d rather throw $10 in the pot at an event like this than drop the same Andrew Jackson at a movie. And now I have another thing to add to my list of things to do when I win Lotto: buy tables at charity events and drag all my friends out for tiny food and big fun.

Unedited photos are @ Cynthia's Photo Journal.