Salad with ham slices, two cold salads, and a piece of carrot cake

I slid next door after the morning session and was faced not with food, but with silverware. RefWorks Lunch ‘n’ Learn went with buffet style: romaine lettuce leaves (an apparent Anaheim hotel staple), mushroom-tomato-and-asparagus salad, ‘chipotle’ potato salad (my red peppers have more spice, complained B.), and a sandwich bar. I opted out of the sandwich and just put some ham slices on top of the lettuce for an impromptu chef’s salad. A woman behind me was less excited about the format (I like to be served). It did result in a long line of librarians, but once we were told we could take from both sides of the table, things opened up a bit. I also ate a piece of carrot cake and kept eating it long after it started making me sick. My afternoon session turned out to be in the same room–Hyatt Regency Orange County/Anaheim Grand Ballroom B came to feel quite like home.

 

Lettuce wedge, chicken plate, and a piece of caramel mousse cake

After filing into one of five academic-librarian-packed Anaheim Marriott ballrooms, I sat down with M. to a salad of two romaine hearts with some kind of shaved hard cheese, a roasted half-tomato with garlic, and a buttered roll. As if that wasn’t enough, our licked-clean salad plates were whisked away and replaced with chicken in a tomato-and-red-onion gravy paired with broccoli rabe and a dollop of mushroom-and-asparagus risotto. M. saved B. a seat, so we got to see the vegetarian option too (it’s almost a ratatouille!). About halfway through the main course, a couple of reps stood up and took turns talking about a few new things I would probably buy if I had any money while we all clattered away with our silver on china. I finished up with cake and coffee, always an elegant way to end a meal. That was absolutely hands-down the best conference hotel meal I have ever eaten, and an appropriate celebration of the best redesigned interface I’ve seen in awhile. Finally! A library resource that actually works like the rest of the web!

 

Grilled chicken sandwich and surprises

They were all standing at attention, a clutch of bright red gingham squares beckoning from a table on the lawn just across the street from the library: box lunches! Like Christmas! MBWF, hard at work all reunion weekend, took a box for herself and snaked one for me too. We took them inside the Pub and unwrapped them like the glorious presents they turned out to be: grilled chicken sandwich, little dish of coleslaw, apple, bottle of water, bag of chips, two chocolate chip cookies, a plastic utensil and napkin sack, and a bag of trail mix! I felt like a giddy little kid. We ate with C. (who skipped the box for a small plate of vegetables) and shared stories of unlikely bird visitors–MBWF and I saw a falcon perched atop a McDonald’s in the Bronx last night; C. welcomed a lone white dove to her garage who was still there this morning. At some point about halfway through the bag, I lost interest in the salt and vinegar chips and I just threw them away. If I get hungry later, I still have the trail mix. Such abundance! Such waste!

 

Salad bar and a buttered roll with cheese tortellini and roast potatoes

At last year’s annual meeting we had to walk ten minutes to the dining room for lunch, so got the good news this morning that lunch would be held right next door to the conference room, in Regency Ballroom B. Since morning breakouts were held in the same room, lunch was a slow reveal: bowls of iceberg lettuce followed by fixins (black olives, tomatoes, cucumber slices, a giant cup of ranch dressing), buttered rolls, and steam trays of roast potatoes, cheese tortellini, beef slices, and chicken. I filled up on salad, potatoes, and buttered rolls, and sampled but didn’t finish the tortellini. I sat with S. and C. and a jumble of librarians I hadn’t met yet–B. stayed at her breakout session table and was missed. The introduction of new board members started just as I got up for a slice of the three-layer white cake with raspberry jam and white frosting–oops!

 

Hummus finger sandwiches and inexplicable guacamole cups

I’ll straight up admit that that was some seriously unseemly gullet-stuffing at the post-commencement ‘light snacks’ buffet. Jessica Lange’s speech exhorted us to be present with our senses and ready for unexpected opportunities, and trying to eke out a free lunch seemed a suitable tribute. They rolled out the savory carpet this year! I managed a full-sandwich equivalent of tiny hummus and vegetable sandwiches on white bread that seemed a little stale, but edible, and supplemented with phyllo dough guacamole cups. They were both very strange and very strangely popular: the second a Flik worker put down a fresh plateful, we were like a nest of starving baby birds. Squawk! Squawk! Can’t get enough of the guac cups! I washed it all down with a pink lemonade and took a sugar cookie for the road.

 

Two slices of pizza

I felt like a sentimental old fool over my two slices of pizza from La Bella in Yonkers up in the library pillow room this afternoon. We had our annual send-off lunch for graduating student workers, and golly I’m just so swelled-up with pride and excitement for all of them. C. is off to library school and an internship at Penn that has me so excited for her I could burst. A. thanked me for all my hard work in the library despite our differences vis-a-vis the Yankees and Cowboys (she enjoys the sporting teams of the hegemon; I hope adulthood changes her). C. is off to study folklore in Indiana and just how cool is that? And it feels like only yesterday that N. was enlightening me about the sponge capital of the world, and now she’s graduating from college. I went with the plain cheese slices because the mushrooms were canned.

 

Pizza and salad

Today was the final meeting of the Committee on Student Life. I am a regular invited guest, and I really love the free lunch. It’s a long story that I’ll tell you if you want, but we celebrated two members of the Student Affairs staff with their favorite meal today: Pizza and salad. I took a giant pile of lettuce and added some grilled tofu and a few deli slices of tofurkey. I love the tofurkey they get here–it is a pile of smoky, rubbery goodness. I had the balsamic vinegar because I was feeling fat. Then I had a buttered roll (I love buttered rolls; I could live on buttered rolls alone), a slice of pizza (nothing goes better with a buttered roll), and two chocolate chip cookies. G., the assistant director of Academic Computing, comes with me to the meetings. He had like four slices of pizza and a pile of cookies.